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 post I discuss three concepts, that if implemented should speed up the rate of innovation and discovery so that we can achieve interstellar travel within a time frame of decades, not centuries.

Okay, what I’m going to say will upset some physicists, but I need to say it because we need to resolve some issues in physics to distinguish between mathematical construction and conjecture. Once we are on the road to mathematical construction, there is hope that this will eventually lead to technological feasibility. This post is taken from my published paper “Gravitational Acceleration Without Mass And Noninertia Fields” in the peer reviewed AIP journal, Physics Essays, and from my book An Introduction to Gravity Modification.

The Universe is much more consistent than most of us (even physicists) suspect. Therefore, we can use this consistency to weed out mathematical conjecture from our collection of physical hypotheses.  There are two set of transformations that are observable. The first, in a gravitational field at a point where acceleration is a compared to a location at 0 an infinite distance from the gravitational source, there exists Non-Linear transformations Γ(a) which states that time dilation t_a/t₀, length contraction x₀/x_a, and mass increase m_a/m₀, behave in a consistent manner such that:

(1)

.

The second consistency is Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformations Γ(v) which states that at a velocity v compared to rest at 0, time dilation t_v/t₀, length contraction x₀/x_v, and mass increase m_v/m₀, behave in a consistent manner such that:

(2)

.

Now here is the surprise. The Universe is so consistent that if we use the Non-Linear transformation, equation (1) to calculate the free fall velocity (from infinity) to a certain height above the planet’s or star’s surface, and it’s corresponding time dilation, we find that it is exactly what the Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformation, equation (2) requires. That there is this previously undiscovered second level of consistency!

You won’t find this discovery in any physics text book. Not yet anyway. I published this in my 2011 AIP peer reviewed Physics Essays paper, “Gravitational Acceleration Without Mass And Noninertia Fields”.

Now let us think about this for a moment. What this says is that the Universe is so consistent that the linear velocity-time dilation relationship must be observable where ever velocity and time dilation is present, even in non-linear spacetime relationships where acceleration is present and altering the velocity and therefore the time dilation present.

Or to put it differently, where ever Γ(a) is present the space, time, velocity and acceleration relationship must allow for Γ(v) to be present in a correct and consistent manner. When I discovered this I said, wow! Why? Because we now have a means of differentiating hypothetical-theoretical gravitational fields, and therefore mathematical conjectures, from natural-theoretical gravitational fields, which are correct mathematical constructions.

That is, we can test the various quantum gravity & string hypotheses and any of the tensor metrics! Einstein’s tensor metrics should be correct, but from a propulsion perspective there is something more interesting, Alcubierre tensor metrics. Alcubierre was the first, using General Relativity, to propose the theoretical possibility of warp speed (note, not how to engineer it). Alcubierre’s work is very sophisticated. However, the concept is elegantly simple. That one can wrap a space craft in gravitational-type deformed spacetime to get it to ‘fall’ in the direction of travel.

The concept suggest that both equations (1) and (2) are no longer valid as the relative velocity between the outer edges of the spacetime wrap and an external observer is either at c, the velocity of light or greater – one needs to do the math to get the correct answer. Even at an acceleration of 1g, and assuming that this craft has eventually reached c, equation (1) and (2) are no longer consistent. Therefore, my inference is that Alcubierre metrics allows for zero time dilation within the wrap but not velocities greater than the velocity of light. Therefore, it is also doubtful that Dr. Richard Obousy hypothesis that it is possible to achieve velocities of 1E30c with a quantum string version of Alcubierre warp drive is correct.

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 discuss part 2 of 3, Mathematical Construction versus Mathematical Conjecture, of how to read or write a journal paper that is not taught in colleges.

I did my Master of Arts in Operations Research (OR) at the best OR school in the United Kingdom, University of Lancaster, in the 1980s. We were always reminded that models have limits to their use. There is an operating range within which a model will provide good and reliable results. But outside that operating range, a model will provide unreliable, incorrect and even strange results.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like what the late Prof. Morris Kline was saying? We can extrapolate this further, and ask our community of theoretical physicists the question, what is the operating range of your theoretical model? We can turn the question around and require our community of theoretical physicists to inform us or suggest boundaries of where their models fail “ … to provide reasonability in guidance and correctness in answers to our questions in the sciences …”

A theoretical physics model is a mathematical construction that is not necessarily connected to the real world until it is empirically verified or falsified, until then these mathematical constructions are in limbo. Search the term ‘retrocausality’ for example. The Wikipedia article Retrocausality says a lot about how and why of the origins of theoretical physics models that are not within the range of our informed common sense. Let me quote,

“The Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, proposed by John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman, uses retrocausality and a temporal form of destructive interference to explain the absence of a type of converging concentric wave suggested by certain solutions to Maxwell’s equations. These advanced waves don’t have anything to do with cause and effect, they are just a different mathematical way to describe normal waves. The reason they were proposed is so that a charged particle would not have to act on itself, which, in normal classical electromagnetism leads to an infinite self-force.”

John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman are giants in the physics community, and these esteemed physicists used retrocausality to solve a mathematical construction problem. Could they not have asked the different questions? What is the operating range of this model? How do we rethink this model so as not to require retrocausality?

This unfortunate leadership in retrocausality has led to a whole body of ‘knowledge’ by the name of ‘retrocausality’ that is in a state of empirical limbo and thus, the term mathematical conjecture applies.

Now, do you get an idea of how mathematical construction leads to mathematical conjecture? Someone wants to solve a problem, which is a legitimate quest because that is how science progresses, but the solution causes more problems (not questions) than previously, which leads to more physicists trying to answer those new problems, and so forth .… and so forth .… and so forth .…

In Hong Kong, the Cantonese have an expression “chasing the dragon”.

Disclaimer: I am originally from that part of the world, and enjoyed tremendously watching how the Indian and Chinese cultures collided, merged, and separated, repeatedly. Sometimes like water and oil, and sometimes like water and alcohol. These two nations share a common heritage, the Buddhist monks, and if they could put aside their nationalistic and cultural pride, who knows what could happen?

Chasing the dragon in the Chinese cultural context “refers to inhaling the vapor from heated morphine, heroin, oxycodone or opium that has been placed on a piece of foil. The ‘chasing’ occurs as the user gingerly keeps the liquid moving in order to keep it from coalescing into a single, unmanageable mass. Another more metaphorical use of the term ‘chasing the dragon’ refers to the elusive pursuit of the ultimate high in the usage of some particular drug.”

Solving a mathematical equation always gives a high, and discovering a new equation gives a greater high. So when we write a paper, we have to ask ourselves, are we chasing the dragon of mathematical conjecture or chasing the dragon of mathematical construction? I hope it is the latter.

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.