There was no one standing beside Chimp with a joystick, manipulating the robot’s every movement. Instead, Chimp’s head and body are packed with cameras, sensors and processors that allow it to generate a 3D model of its environment, which it sends back to a control team. “If it is a task that is familiar, we can say ‘grab that drill or turn that valve’,” says Tony Stentz, a Carnegie Mellon university professor who runs Chimp. Or to put it more bluntly, the robot was making many of the decisions itself.

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My previous 2009 submission “Gravitational acceleration without mass and noninertia fields” to Physics Essays, had taken 1.5 years to review and be accepted. Therefore, I decided against Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft’s recommendation as I estimated that the entire 6 papers (now published as Super Physics for Super Technologies) would take up to 10 years and/or $20,000 to publish in peer reviewed journals.

Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft had brought up something interesting in his 2008 paper “A locally finite model for gravity” that “… absence of matter now no longer guarantees local flatness…” meaning that accelerations can be present in spacetime without the presence of mass. Wow! Isn’t this a precursor to propulsion physics, or the ability to modify spacetime without the use of mass?

As far as I could determine, he didn’t pursue this from the perspective of propulsion physics. A year earlier in 2007, I had just discovered the massless formula for gravitational acceleration g=τc^2, published in the Physics Essays paper referred above. In effect, g=τc^2 was the mathematical solution to Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft’s “… absence of matter now no longer guarantees local flatness…”

Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft used string theory to arrive at his inference. Could he empirically prove it? No, not with strings. It took a different approach, numerical modeling within the context of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (STR) to derive a mathematic solution to Prof. Gerardus ‘t Hooft’s inference.

In 2013, I attended Dr. Brian Greens’s Gamow Memorial Lecture, held at the University of Colorado Boulder. If I had heard him correctly, the number of strings or string states being discovered has been increasing, and were now in the 10^500 range.

I find these two encounters telling. While not rigorously proved, I infer that (i) string theories are unable to take us down a path the can be empirically proven, and (ii) they are opened ended i.e. they can be used to propose any specific set of outcomes based on any specific set of inputs. The problem with this is that you now have to find a theory for why a specific set of inputs. I would have thought that this would be heartbreaking for theoretical physicists.

In 2013, I presented the paper “Empirical Evidence Suggest A Need For A Different Gravitational Theory,” at the American Physical Society’s April conference held in Denver, CO. There I met some young physicists and asked them about working on gravity modification. One of them summarized it very well, “Do you want me to commit career suicide?” This explains why many of our young physicists continue to seek employment in the field of string theories where unfortunately, the hope of empirically testable findings, i.e. winning the Noble Prize, are next to nothing.

I think string theories are wrong.

Two transformations or contractions are present with motion, Lorentz-FitzGerald Transformation (LFT) in linear motion and Newtonian Gravitational Transformations (NGT) in gravitational fields.

The fundamental assumption or axiom of strings is that they expand when their energy (velocity) increases. This axiom (let’s name it the Tidal Axiom) appears to have its origins in tidal gravity attributed to Prof. Roger Penrose. That is, macro bodies elongate as the body falls into a gravitational field. To be consistent with NGT the atoms and elementary particles would contract in the direction of this fall. However, to be consistent with tidal gravity’s elongation, the distances between atoms in this macro body would increase at a rate consistent with the acceleration and velocities experienced by the various parts of this macro body. That is, as the atoms get flatter, the distances apart get longer. Therefore, for a string to be consistent with LFT and NGT it would have to contract, not expand. One suspects that this Tidal Axiom’s inconsistency with LFT and NGT has led to an explosion of string theories, each trying to explain Nature with no joy. See my peer-reviewed 2013 paper New Evidence, Conditions, Instruments & Experiments for Gravitational Theories published in the Journal of Modern Physics, for more.

The vindication of this contraction is the discovery of the massless formula for gravitational acceleration g=τc^2 using Newtonian Gravitational Transformations (NGT) to contract an elementary particle in a gravitational field. Neither quantum nor string theories have been able to achieve this, as quantum theories require point-like inelastic particles, while strings expand.

What worries me is that it takes about 70 to 100 years for a theory to evolve into commercially viable consumer products. Laser are good examples. So, if we are tying up our brightest scientific minds with theories that cannot lead to empirical validations, can we be the primary technological superpower a 100 years from now?

The massless formula for gravitational acceleration g=τc^2, shows us that new theories on gravity and force fields will be similar to General Relativity, which is only a gravity theory. The mass source in these new theories will be replaced by field and particle motions, not mass or momentum exchange. See my Journal of Modern Physics paper referred above on how to approach this and Super Physics for Super Technologies on how to accomplish this.

Therefore, given that the primary axiom, the Tidal Axiom, of string theories is incorrect it is vital that we recognize that any mathematical work derived from string theories is invalidated. And given that string theories are particle based theories, this mathematical work is not transferable to the new relativity type force field theories.

I forecast that both string and quantum gravity theories will be dead by 2017.

When I was seeking funding for my work, I looked at the Broad Agency Announcements (BAAs) for a category that includes gravity modification or interstellar propulsion. To my surprise, I could not find this category in any of our research organizations, including DARPA, NASA, National Science Foundation (NSF), Air Force Research Lab, Naval Research Lab, Sandia National Lab or the Missile Defense Agency.

So what are we going to do when our young graduates do not want to or cannot be employed in string theory disciplines?

(Originally published in the Huffington Post)

Yes, both DARPA and NASA are at some level interested in interstellar propulsion. Mine was one of approximately 35 (rumored number) teams from around the world vying for this DARPA grant, and Dr. Bae was with a competing team. I presented the paper “Non-Gaussian Photon Probability Distributions”, and Dr. Bae presented “A Sustainable Developmental Pathway of Photon Propulsion towards Interstellar Flight”. These were early days, the ground zero of interstellar propulsion, if you would.

Dr. Bae has been researching Photon Laser Thrust (PLT) for many years. A video of his latest experiment is available at the NASA website or on YouTube. This PLT uses light photons to move an object by colliding with (i.e. transferring momentum to) the object. The expectation is that this technology will eventually be used to propel space crafts. His most recent experiments demonstrate the horizontal movement of a 1-pound weight. This is impressive. I expect to see much more progress in the coming years.

At one level, Dr. Bae’s experiments are confirmation that Bill Nye’s Light Sail (which very unfortunately lost communications with Earth) will work.

At another level, one wonders why or how the photon, a particle without mass, has momentum that is proportion to the photon’s frequency or energy. A momentum that is observable in Dr. Bae’s and other experiments. This is not a question that contemporary physics asks. Einstein was that meticulous when he derived the Lorentz-FitzGerald Transformations (LFT) from first principles for his Special Theory of Relativity (STR). Therefore, if you think about it, and if we dare to ask the sacrilegious question, does this mean that momentum is a particle’s elementary property that appears to be related to mass? What would we discover if we could answer the question, why does momentum exist in both mass and massless particles? Sure, the short cut don’t bother me answer is, mass-energy equivalence. But why?

At the other end of photon momentum based research is the EmDrive invented by Roger Shawyer. He clearly states that the EmDrive is due to momentum exchange and not due to “quantum vacuum plasma effects”. To vindicate his claims Boeing has received all of his EmDrive designs and test data. This is not something that Boeing does lightly.

In this 2014 video a member of NASA’s Eagleworks explains that the EmDrive (renamed q-thruster) pushes against quantum vacuum, the froth of particle and antiparticle pairs in vacuum. Which raises the question, how can you push against one type and not the other? In 2011, using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope photographs, Prof. Robert Nemiroff of Michigan Technological University, made the stunning discovery that this quantum foam of particle and antiparticle pairs in a vacuum, does not exist. Unfortunately, this means that the NASA Eagleworks explanation clearly cannot be correct.

So how does the EmDrive work?

In my 2012 book An Introduction to Gravity Modification, I had explained the importance of asymmetrical fields and designs for creating propellantless engines. For example, given a particle in a gravitational field and with respect to this field’s planetary mass source, this particle will observe an asymmetrical gravitational field. The near side of this particle will experience a stronger field than the far side, and thus the motion towards the planetary mass. Granted that this difference is tiny, it is not zero. This was how I was able to determine the massless formula for gravitational acceleration, g=τc^2, where tau τ is the change in the time dilation transformation (dimensionless LFT) divided by that distance. The error in the modeled gravitational acceleration is less than 6 parts per million. Thus validating the asymmetrical approach.

In very basic terms Shawyer’s New Scientist paper suggests that it is due to the conical shape of the EmDrive that causes microwave photons to exhibit asymmetrical momentum exchange. One side of the conical structure with the larger cross section, has more momentum exchange than the other side with the smaller cross section. The difference in this momentum exchange is evidenced as a force.

However, as Dr. Bae points out, from the perspective of legacy physics, conservation of momentum is broken. If not broken, then there are no net forces. If broken, then one observes a net force. Dr. Beckwith (Prof., Chongqing University, China) confirms that Dr. Bae is correct, but the question that needs to be addressed is, could there be any additional effects which would lead to momentum conservation being violated? Or apparently violated?

To be meticulous, since energy can be transmuted into many different forms, we can ask another sacrilegious question. Can momentum be converted into something else? A wave function attribute for example, in a reversible manner, after all the massless photon momentum is directly proportional to its frequency? We don’t know. We don’t have either the theoretical or experimental basis for answering this question either in the positive or negative. Note, this is not the same as perpetual motion machines, as conservation laws still hold.

Shawyer’s work could be confirmation of these additional effects, asymmetrical properties and momentum-wave-function-attribute interchangeability. If so, the future of propulsion technologies lies in photon based propulsion.

Given that Shawyer’s video demonstrates a moving EmDrive, the really interesting question is, can we apply this model to light photons? Or for that matter, any other type of photons, radio, infrared, light, ultraviolet and X-Rays?

(Originally published in the Huffington Post)

The Xodus One Foundation thinks this is feasible. To that end the Foundation has started the KickStarter project Ground Zero of Interstellar Propulsion to fund and accelerate this research. This project ends Fri, May 9 2014 7:39 AM MDT.

The community of interstellar propulsion researchers can be categorized into three groups, those who believe it cannot be done (Nay Sayers Group – NSG), those who believe that it requires some advanced form of conventional rockets (Advanced Rocket Group – ARG), and those who believe that it needs new physics (New Physics Group – NPG).

The Foundation belongs to the third group, the New Physics Group. The discovery in 2007 of the new massless formula for gravitational acceleration g=τc^2 , where τ is the change in time dilation over a specific height divided by that height, led to the inference that there is a new physics for interstellar propulsion that is waiting to be discovered.

What would this physics look like if nothing can travel faster than light? Founder & Chairman, Benjamin T Solomon, of the Xodus One Foundation believes that the answer lies in our understanding of photon probability. Can we discover enough physics to figure out how to control photon probability?

To facilitate this discovery one can participate in the Ground Zero of Interstellar Propulsion. If Solomon is right …

…and Japan is Hard at Work.
Suffice it to say, when Japan finds out its robots aren’t good enough — JAPAN RESPONDS! For more on how Japan has and is addressing the situation, have a jump on over to AkihabaraNews.com.

Oh, and here’s some awesome stuff sourced from the TheRobotReport.com:


Larger Image - PDF With Links

At the present time the primary players are associated with the DARPA funded 100-Year Starship Study, as Icarus Interstellar who is cross linked with The Tau Zero Foundation and Centauri Dreams is a team member of the 100YSS. I was surprised to find Jean-Luc Cambier on Tau Zero.

Gary Church recently put the final nail in the Icarus Interstellar‘s dreams to build a rocket ship for interstellar travel. In his post on Lifeboat, Cosmic Ray Gorilla Gary Church says “it is likely such a shield will massive over a thousand tons”. Was he suggesting that the new cost of an interstellar rocket ship is not 3.4x World GDP but 34x or 340x World GDP? Oops!

Let us look at the record. Richard Obousy of Icarus Interstellar and Eric Davis of Institute for Advanced Studies claimed that it was possible, using string theories to travel at not just c, the velocity of light but at 1E32c, or c multiplied by a 1 followed by 32 zeros. However, Lorentz-FitzGerald transformations show that anything with mass cannot travel faster than the velocity of light. Note that Lorentz-FitzGerald is an empirical observation which was incorporated into Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.

It is quite clear that you can use string theories to say anything you want. I used the term ‘mathematical conjecture’.

In April 2008 the esteemed Michio Kaku said in his Space Show interview, that it would take several hundred years to do gravity modification.  But Michio Kaku is a string theorist himself. And I might add down to Earth one at that, since his opinion contradicts Richard Obousy and Eric Davis.

Then there is George Hathaway also with the Tau Zero Foundation who could not reproduce Podkletnov’s experiments, even when he was in communication with Podkletnov.

And this is the one group our astronaut Mae Jemison, leader of the 100YSS effort, has teamed up with? My sincerest condolences to you Mae Jemison. Sincerest condolences.

For the answer to the second question, you have to look within yourselves.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

In this set of posts I discuss three concepts. If implemented these concepts have the potential to bring about major changes in our understanding of the physical Universe. But first a detour.

In my earlier post I had suggested that both John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman, giants of the physics community, could have asked different questions (what could we do differently?) regarding certain solutions to Maxwell’s equations, instead of asking if retrocausality could be a solution.

I worked 10 years for Texas Instruments in the 1980s & 1990s. Corporate in Dallas, had given us the daunting task of raising our Assembly/Test yields from 83% to 95%, within 3 years, across 6,000 SKUs (products), with only about 20+ (maybe less) engineers, and no assistance from Dallas. Assembly/Test skills had moved offshore, therefore, Dallas was not in a position to provide advice.  I look back now and wonder how Dallas came up with the 95% number.

Impossibly daunting because many of our product yields were in the 70+%. We had good engineers and managers. The question therefore was how do you do something seemingly impossible, without changing your mix of people, equipment and technical skills sets?

Let me tell you the end first. We achieved 99% to 100% Assembly/Test yields across the board for 6,000 SKUs within 3 years. And this, in a third world nation not known for any remarkable scientific or engineering talent! I don’t have to tell you what other lessons we learned from this as it should be obvious. So me telling Dr. David Neyland, of DARPA’s TTO “I’ll drop a zero” at the first 100YSS conference in 2011, still holds.

How did we do it? For my part I was responsible for Engineering Yield (IT) Systems, test operation cost modeling for Overhead Transfer Pricing, and tester capacity models to figure out how to increase test capacity. But the part that is relevant to this discussion was team work. We organized the company into teams, brought in consultants to teach what team work was and how to arrive at and execute operational and business decisions as teams.

And one of the keys to team work was to allow anyone and everyone to speak up. To voice their opinions. To ask questions, no matter how strange or silly those questions appeared to be. To never put down another person because he/she had different views.

Everyone from the managing director of the company down to the production operators were organized into teams. Every team had to meet once a week. To ask those questions. To seek those answers. That was some experience, working with and in those teams. We found things we did not know or understand about our process. That in turn set off new & old teams to go figure! We understood the value of a matrix type organization.

As a people not known for any remarkable scientific and engineering talent, we did it! Did the impossible. I learned many invaluable lessons from my decade at Texas Instruments that I’ll never forget and will always be grateful for.

My Thanksgiving this year is that I am thankful I had the opportunity to work for Texas Instruments when I did.

So I ask, in the spirit of the Kline Directive, can we as a community of physicists and engineers come together, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not, to make interstellar travel a reality within our lifetimes?

Previous post in the Kline Directive series.

Next post in the Kline Directive series.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

In this post I will explore Technological Feasibility. At the end of the day that is the only thing that matters. If a hypothesis is not able to vindicate itself with empirical evidence it will not become technologically feasible. If it is not technologically feasible then it stands no chance of becoming commercially viable.

If we examine historical land, air and space speed records, we can construct and estimate of velocities that future technologies can achieve, aka technology forecasting. See table below for some of the speed records.

A quick and dirty model derived from the data shows that we could achieve velocity of light c by 2151 or the late 2150s. See table below.

The extrapolation suggests that on our current rate of technological innovation we won’t achieve light speed until the late 2150s. The real problem is that we won’t achieve 0.1c until 2118! This is more than 100-years from today.

In my opinion this rate of innovation is too slow. Dr. David Neyland, of DARPA’s TTO was the driving force behind DARPA’s contribution to the 100-year Starship Study. When I met up with Dr. David Neyland during the first 100YSS conference, Sept. 30 to Oct 2, 2011, I told him “I’ll drop a zero”.  That is I expect interstellar travel to be achievable in decades not centuries. And to ramp up our rate of technological innovation we need new theories and new methods of sifting through theories.

Previous post in the Kline Directive series.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.