Just got tipped off to this story

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=16902006

Here is the paper

http://www.uibk.ac.at/c/cb/cb26/heim/theor...sicsaip2005.pdf


They could feasibly have a prototype within 5 years!!!

Happy New Year indeed everyone.

Be careful... we don't want _them_ to find us.

--Bill

Hold on there a minute. You realize of course that this proposal requires rewriting the present laws of physics, don't you? I'll get excited when I see some real science supporting this notion. Until then, I'll just wait for anti-matter warp drives.

This is the subject of the lead article in the 7 January 2006 New Scientist.

The 'prototype in five years' line appears to relate to the prospects of a high-Tesla test to determine whether any physical effects may be detected being feasible in about that timescale - not to the building of a spacedrive.

Bob Shaw

I just had a brief look at the paper itself, which is as clear as the proverbial water-enriched regolith. I'm no judge of the specific content, which seems to promise wonders indeed, but I can judge the cultural context as defined by the References.

These are skimpy, and in some cases appear to be quite 'generalist' in nature, and are *not* what I'd expected. The NS article *does* make it clear that Burkhard Heim only described this work once in a peer-reviewed form (and also that he must have been a most remarkable man, being horribly injured in the 1940s yet still pursuing his theories). His major claim to credibility appears to be that his theories have correctly predicted the masses of fundamental particles in ways that simply outshine competing methodologies.

Sandia Labs appears to offer the prospect of a test using the Z-machine X-ray generator, wich could probably generate the necessary magnetic fields.

Bob Shaw

This seems too nice to be true.

I read most of the article, and not understood everything, partly because it is high level theory, partly because it often makes non-obvious inferences.

It could be true while being still unnoticed by the experiments, as only very special conditions are required (fast speed into very high magnetic fields) which were never gathered into a lab, and no more in nature (although it could nicely explain the jets in pulsars and quasars: high speed + high magnetic fields). But at least the proposed test if feasible (at a moderate cost) and it should unambiguously prove or disprove this theory.

After, if it proves true, hello the stars...

"Sulu ahead warp factor 6...Engage!"

With this, we will be able to warp to follow to the U-F-0.

Rodolfo

A slim chance is better than none...and we really need something like this ASAP. However, I won't get my hopes up..

For more info, you might also want to check out:

http://www.uibk.ac.at/c/cb/cb26/heim/

and especially:

http://www.uibk.ac.at/c/cb/cb26/heim/theor.../raumfahrt.html

======
Stephen

My questions - assuming for a moment this method even has a chance of working.

* How would we know if another dimension/universe has a faster speed of light?

* How would we find it with this method?

* What if the dimension/universe in question does have a faster speed of light, but then that means its other physical laws don't jive with our own and the starship that tries it is either destroyed or stuck in this alternate dimension/universe?

* If it does work, is this why we haven't seen ETI - they are all dimension-jumping in their starships?

* What if there are beings who live in said dimension/universe who really don't like interlopers from other realities using their reality for a faster ride? This might also explain why we haven't seen ETI yet.

Just once I'd like to see a theory of this kind that doesn't invoke the near-magical abilities of alternate dimensions or string physics or need the technology and energy requirements of a Kardashev Type 3 civilization.

Or maybe we're still thinking Newtonian and everyone else in the galaxy has gone post-Einsteinian?

Ughh. Is anyone else having visions of the Podkletnov debacle? I mean it's virtually identical.

After a first expectative reaction, I must tell I am a bit skeptic about this. The paper postulates that our space-time has four more dimentions than the already known 3 space dimention and time dimention. Starting from this, applying einsteinian calculus can produce a coherent theory, and predict many things. (especially Heim notes that the gravitation results from curvature of the three space dimentions, and he then deducts that the other forces result from curvature in the other dimentions, which makes sense). The problem is that the author don't provide evidence of the existence of such other dimentions. So that only experiment can settle the issue. Fortunately the proposed experiment with the "sandia Z machine" would (after the theory) produce clearly measurable effects at a low cost. So I think this experiment must be done. But I would not bet on it.








Good question, ljk4-1. Of course we could start the usual debate about why we don't yet have visits of ETI, because they don't exist, because we are the firsts, because they consider us as inferior war-prone specy bound to quickly destroy our planet, because we are in a space zoo, etc. But in the instance my prefered hypothesis would be simply that Heim's theory don't work.

It would be noted too that there are discrepancies between the UFO behaviors and the Heim's spaceships behaviors. One of the main is about the fact that UFO can apparently accelerate at thousands of g, a thing which would crush any biological occupier, and that the Heim machine is not supposed to do. Unless we see UFOs in one of the n parallel spaces of the theory?

There is a common belief about the warp drive being a marvellous thing, but I say it don't work. Why?

Warp drive is supposed to work as follow: a spaceship folds the space around it, and this produces a gravitationnal field which accelerates the ship. On some variants it can accelerate at higher speed than light.

What I say is that this is strictly equivalent to a surfer who would surf on a wave he produced himself with blowing on the ocean. Admitting he could do that with a 100% efficiency, he would simply recover with his surf the energy he used to blow. Or the force exerted by surfing and the force necessary to create the wave are the reaction of each other, and thus they cancel each other with a perfect exactitude.

A curved space is a mass. We can create a warp drive very easily: take a heavy iron ball (for warping space) and a balsa model spaceship, and let them float inside the shuttle or ISS. You would see the spaceship model approaching the iron ball, attracted by its mass (to be exact we should do the experiment into free space, not aboard the ISS which has a stronger gravitationnal field. On Earth one could use a Cavendish-like experiment). In order to maintain the acceleration, we should keep a constant distance between the spaceship model and the "space warping" iron ball, by attaching the iron ball to the model spaceship, so what it is alway in front of it and it exerts a constant acceleration on it. But in doing so, the global center of mass receives no acceleration, and we just have a useless "modern art sculpture" unable to move, because the attractive force (by the warping mass) and the force necessary to move the warping mass are the reaction of each other.

Anyway warped space has a mass, that you have to move too, and unfortunately it is much heavier than any spaceship.

This reasoning is also true, I think, with any distortion of space, including warping having the effect of a negative mass.

We could use cold fusion to power it, but dont let the oil company spies find out because they will put out contracts on all of us.

We *know* Einstein's relativity is incomplete. We *know* quantum theory is incomplete. We *know* the standard model of particle physics is incomplete.

There is an enormous ferment in extended theories of physics showing up on xarchive.org, much oriented at a greater theory that can explain big bangs, dark matter and dark energy, together with the minor detail that our part of the universe permits us to exist. Speculations/Hypotheses/Theories being published in the preprints range from Loonatik to Fringe to Exotic to Extended variations on conventional physics.

I'm UTTERLY unqualified to understand the mathematics and physics behind the ideas beyond the armwaving-over-beers level, but I'm happy to applaud as the show gets interesting. I LIKE magnetic monopoles. I LIKE shadow-matter or mirror-matter. I LIKE tachyons. I LIKE cosmic-string. I have no idea, no prejudice whether any of these exist in our universe, but I'm rooting for the more, the merrier.

My impression is that the 1950's theory that's the basis for this new article and proposals is "far fringe", but not lunatik Hoaxland class physics.

I hope that we'll find the universe's laws permit some equivalent of warp drive and some equivalent of Faster-than-light drive. I doubt that it does, but that's pure prejudice, too. All we know now is that what we think we know is wrong because it's incomplete, but we suspect that what we know now is mostly a reasonably accurate subset of what the more complete theory will reveal, as Newtonian Physics is a subset of Einsteinian Physics.

We DO live in "Interesting Times"

There is a short SF story (I forget who by) about this. The main character is convinced hyperspace exists, and that the government is covering up work on it. He gets to the heart of the secret project, to be told that yes, hyperspace does exist, and that the speed of light is much, much slower there....

Chris

I agree with a lot you have said except

and

If its not repeatable, I'm afraid that to me it belongs in that category, besides it contravenes E = mc2. The has just recently again been tested and again and found to be to be correct to 1 par in an even larger squillion
Newtonian Physics is not a subset of Einsteinian Physics
This discussion reminds me of a Beach Boys song

I don't think we're barking up the right tree when we describe "alternate dimensions" as if they were classic, comprehendable three-axis dimensions that just don't happen to exist within our own dimensional frame of reference.

As I understand the "gestalt" of some of the cosmogenic theories out there, some of the ways the Cosmos shows itself to us seem to require that, very early on during the Big Bang, there must have existed a much larger number of physical dimensions than the three we can perceive. I know I've read one theory that suggests the expansion of the observable Cosmos is related to the collapse to zero or near-zero lengths between any two given particles along most of the other physical dimensions that exist.

If we're going to postulate moving through or within other dimensions, I think we should do so with the idea that we need to find a set of physical dimensions where all distances have collapsed to near-zero, but within which particles are separated *just enough* that we can correlate them to their positions in our perceived three dimensions. That would allow controlled information flow from any one spot in the Cosmos to any other given spot -- and that woud *have* to open up some pathways for physical travel. I would hope.

So -- the idea of finding "some other dimension" where the speed of light is faster seems a little, I don't know, parochial. I think that the real Cosmos will be much mroe complex and interesting than that.

And, BTW, if a really strong magnetic field can drop a mass into other dimensions, why doesn't the Sun drop into another dimension? Or Jupiter? Or Earth, for that matter?

-the other Doug

I agree.

You refer to the "superluminal expansion" that have been found at some quasars and galacitc centers and observed with VLBI (very long baseline interferometry) and perhaps other means now.
Well that phenomenon have been nicely explained and there was a very good article in Scientific American a number of years back that explained it in a way that even I could understand. A very short summary would be that the jets move so fast that relativistic effects comes into play and make it appear that the 'blob' do exceed the speed of light even though it actually doesnt. It all depends on the angle at which we observe the jet and that it travels at a good fraction of the speed of light.



Yes I am aware of the claims of Eugene Podkletnov, it caught my interest very briefly when I first read something in one ordinary newspaper. And I dont turn any idea down just because it is unusual, so I searched for additional informaiton, but it soon dawned to me it was yet another 'cold fusion thing'.

As for the other dimensions, its no great mystery, but one everday event .....in case you happen to be born as one electron!
But that you would be able to get a big chunk of matter to drop into that realm just with one magnetic field (regardless of how strong it is) does not sound likely at all.

To say nothing of magnetars

Chris

Maybe that's what black holes are - when a magnetar creates such a powerful field that it blinks itself into another dimension, leaving a "hole" in ours. Or maybe they're what's left from a starship making the jump using a Heim Drive.

If only Heim had collaborated with a guy named Lick, we could call warping through space like this the Heim-Lick Manuever.

Hey, they used to speculate that gamma-ray bursts were the antimatter reaction drives of starships or even interstellar space battles, and pulsars were interstellar navigation beacons or immense galactic communications systems. Maybe some still are.

Regarding Heim, Wikipedia has a few things to say on his ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhard_Heim

Some major tidbits from the New Scientist article:

Claims of the possibility of "gravity reduction" or "anti-gravity" induced by magnetic fields have been investigated by NASA before (New Scientist, 12 January 2002, p 24). But this one, Dröscher insists, is different. "Our theory is not about anti-gravity. It's about completely new fields with new properties," he says. And he and Häuser have suggested an experiment to prove it.

This will require a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil to create an intense magnetic field. With a large enough current in the coil, and a large enough magnetic field, Dröscher claims the electromagnetic force can reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it floats free. Dröscher and Häuser say that to completely counter Earth's pull on a 150-tonne spacecraft a magnetic field of around 25 tesla would be needed. While that's 500,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field, pulsed magnets briefly reach field strengths up to 80 tesla. And Dröscher and Häuser go further. With a faster-spinning ring and an even stronger magnetic field, gravitophotons would interact with conventional gravity to produce a repulsive anti-gravity force, they suggest.

Dröscher is hazy about the details, but he suggests that a spacecraft fitted with a coil and ring could be propelled into a multidimensional hyperspace. Here the constants of nature could be different, and even the speed of light could be several times faster than we experience. If this happens, it would be possible to reach Mars in less than 3 hours and a star 11 light years away in only 80 days, Dröscher and Häuser say.

So is this all fanciful nonsense, or a revolution in the making? The majority of physicists have never heard of Heim theory, and most of those contacted by New Scientist said they couldn't make sense of Dröscher and Häuser's description of the theory behind their proposed experiment. Following Heim theory is hard work even without Dröscher's extension, says Markus Pössel, a theoretical physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany. Several years ago, while an undergraduate at the University of Hamburg, he took a careful look at Heim theory. He says he finds it "largely incomprehensible", and difficult to tie in with today's physics. "What is needed is a step-by-step introduction, beginning at modern physical concepts," he says.

The general consensus seems to be that Dröscher and Häuser's theory is incomplete at best, and certainly extremely difficult to follow. And it has not passed any normal form of peer review, a fact that surprised the AIAA prize reviewers when they made their decision. "It seemed to be quite developed and ready for such publication," Mikellides told New Scientist.

At the moment, the main reason for taking the proposal seriously must be Heim theory's uncannily successful prediction of particle masses. Maybe, just maybe, Heim theory really does have something to contribute to modern physics. "As far as I understand it, Heim theory is ingenious," says Hans Theodor Auerbach, a theoretical physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who worked with Heim. "I think that physics will take this direction in the future."

It may be a long while before we find out if he's right. In its present design, Dröscher and Häuser's experiment requires a magnetic coil several metres in diameter capable of sustaining an enormous current density. Most engineers say that this is not feasible with existing materials and technology, but Roger Lenard, a space propulsion researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico thinks it might just be possible. Sandia runs an X-ray generator known as the Z machine which "could probably generate the necessary field intensities and gradients".

...

Supporters of Heim theory claim that it is a panacea for the troubles in modern physics. They say it unites quantum mechanics and general relativity, can predict the masses of the building blocks of matter from first principles, and can even explain the state of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.n....200&print=true

So the big reason Heim has been ignored by mainstream scientists is that he worked outside of academia and wasn't big on publishing his work right away.
Sound familiar?

Many thanks for the explanation. Previously, I had a vague idea about warp since it has many meanings. It is like to make a perpetual movement by the feedback of created energy. The space and time are warped.

Rodolfo

No I was not refering to this. I knew that this was explained by a kind of perspective effect.

A physicist named Miguel Alcubierre came up with his own Warp Drive concept in 1994:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

The paper:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009013

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/364496.stm

Many thanks ljk4-1, This night I will read them. Now is almost impossible to read but yes with calm.

Rodolfo

That joke about the Heim-Lick Manuever made me want to, er, you know.

Puke.

Well done, keep up the bad work, etc, etc.

Bob Shaw

I'm *not* an apologist for Heim, but the descriptions I've read of his work - so far - suggest that he's not simply another member of what Patrick Moore cannily described as the 'Green Ink' brigade. He appears to have made the jump from unusual theories to actual predictive accuracy with some aplomb, and although he's most likely wrong (just on the balance of probabilities) he's probably no dafter than Tommy Gold or Fred Hoyle on their better days (or poor old Eric Laithwaite on his worst).

At the least, he's stimulating, and an iconoclast rather than just another (boring) heretic.

Bob Shaw

There certainly seems to be a confluence of both new and...uh..."fringe" work concerning gravitation and the (in)famous vacuum zero-point field during the last fifteen years or so. Overall, this seems to be a healthy thing; I only hope that some really valuable nuggets of signal can be separated from the noise!

Other than this latest Heim work, have there been any at least semi-credible advances to report? I am aware of some of the NASA research concerning the Casimir Effect, but that's about it...surely some of the more physically inclined (ta-da, da! ) members of UMSF are aware of such, if anyone is.

One thing I would personally very much like to see is a definitive empirical derivation of the Newtonian gravitational constant to settle the uncertainty issue once and for all, and also firm up predictive theories. Earth-based experimental measurements are clearly too vulnerable to systemic interference for any hope of repeatable accuracy. I don't suppose that the results from Gravity Probe B will have any applicability to this...?

So you were all choked up about it?

cough cough

Yeah, that pun kinda stuck in my craw as well...

What disturbs me the most in this theory is not the bad pun (translate please I did not understood) but the four extra dimentions introduced without explanations. Of course this is legitimate if it makes a whole solid and complete theory, but at a moment we shall have to demonstrate the real existence of these dimentions.


(In the case of the Heim theory, they are not space dimentions as we understand it, but something else, eventually similar to the "imaginary" dimention in the vector describing an alternative current).


On the other hand, we have a vacuum which has in fact many properties, such as to contain various fields, having physical constants, creating virtual particules, etc. This is much for something which is just vacuum!
And when we see the gravitationnal field explained as a curvature of space, it is intuitive and tempting to explain each field as a curvature in a different way (in other dimentions, says Heim).

Such theories, even if one day they prove false, are anyway useful. It is the process of science to test many theories, and not a mistake to keep at theories which later prove false. (The theories of Newton, of the aether, were first useful steps). Even in the field of physics, there are many competing theories, and tests currently compare experimental results with several competing theories. Some of these theories also involve other spatial dimentions, but "packed" in such a way that they don't appear at human scale.

Heim also makes me think of Hawking: they are both severely communication disabled, both with an intense inner life and high theoretical level, and all producing though provoking theories.

The Heimlich Maneuver, used to remove objects blocking people's throats if they are choking on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimlich_maneuver

George R.R. Martin, "FTA", Analog, 1974.

Exactly, and Einstein was also socially inept and for the most part was forgetful and often lived in his own world.

I really think that Heim's work should be previewed and his theories tested before being discounted. The ones that have been tested regarding (quantam spin rates) have been accurate to 7 decimal points.

The problems is - there are few physicists who understand Heim's mathematical equations.

Thanks ljk4-1, for this important clarification. I was afraid of something more obscene, but it is still very efficient to make puke anyway.

Not so fast: Einstein was an interesting person, but there is a tendency nowaday to re-interpret great characters as being somewhat ill, so that it "reassures" certain persons who don't like to see others better than them. So I saw Mozart in a clown, Alexandre the Great as an homosexual, Leonardo da Vinci as an anti-church conspireer, etc. Einstein was good at school, he had to bear maccarthysm after fleeing the nazis, and he was interested in peace and spirituality. One who was really ill was Gödel, who was certainly a genius but unable to take care of himself to the point of letting himself die from hunger. Einstein was not really like that...






True. There was also his prediction of the mass of particules (without Higgs boson) very accurate too, even much more accurate than allowed by the uncertainty on the gravitationnal constant G, nobody understand why.






Ah, you reassure me, I am not alone!

What I understand anyway is that his hermetries are mathematical descriptions of the way each subset of the 8 dimentions can play and interact to cause particules and fields to appear. Namely there are four subsets:
-R3 space (3 dimentions)
-T1 time (1 dimention)
-S2 structure (2 dimentions)
-I2 Information (2 dimentions)
about each combinaison of these (containing either S2 ot I2 or both) makes an hermetry, and each hermetry is a particule and its corresponding force (for more exact info see here

Two Internet sources on Heim:

http://www.heim-theory.com/Contents/contents.html

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/01/05/spacedrive/

No matter what Heim's has published, I do believe his theory since I have seen the strange movement of U-F-O (local TV and newspapers pictures) which traveled as it has no mass over Chilca desert, 50 kilometers south of Lima, Peru around 10 years ago. That news was worlwide published with pictures. I do believe that and we must pursue the investigation on the Heim's theory since the new dimensions must exist.

Rodolfo

The Centauri Dreams Web site has an article and links on the alleged hyperdrive,
including a chance for discussion here:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=501

To be noted in this:

Heim work may be false, we cannot know right now. But it is worth to note that it is the first time we see a theory which speaks of antigravitation, superluminic travel and hyperspace which don't look completelly cook at first glance.
Still more curious: Heim theories may enable us to build:

-repulsors, to float above the ground of a planet
-engines to accelerate at high speed
-hyperdrives, which would allow us to pass into an "hyperespace" an back to normal space.

This is exactly the STAR WARS flight techniques!!!

Hope this will not lead us into the cruel world of Star wars...

Marc Millis on Hyperspace Propulsion

Centauri Dreams asked Marc Millis, former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, for his thoughts on so-called hyperspace propulsion, as recently published in an article called “Take a Leap into Hyperspace” (New Scientist, 5 January 2006). The article has received wide coverage because of its sensational implication that we may be much closer to a breakthrough in interstellar propulsion than anyone realized. And as discussed here in the last few days, it draws on the work of the German theoretician Burkhard Heim and the later refinements of Walter Dröscher and Jochem Häuser.

Millis’ response follows. But he leads it off with this qualification: “My assessments below are only a cursory response rather than the result of a full technical review. If I had done a full technical review, I would have submitted it to a journal. Given the level of interest, however, and the habit that many of us have to jump to conclusions (pro or con), I thought I should comment.”

With that necessary provisio, the podium belongs to Marc Millis:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=504

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, abstract
gr-qc/0511086

From: Mohammad Mansouryar [view email]

Date (v1): Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:31:52 GMT (873kb)
Date (revised v2): Mon, 2 Jan 2006 16:50:09 GMT (2740kb)

On a macroscopic traversable spacewarp in practice

Authors: Mohammad Mansouryar

Comments: 44 pages, 8 Boxes of Figs, typos and one box corrected, one formula and some links along with some new notes added, some references changed

A design of a configuration for violation of the averaged null energy condition (ANEC) and consequently other classic energy conditions (CECs), is presented. The methods of producing effective exotic matter (EM) for a traversable wormhole (TW) are discussed. Also, the approaches of less necessity of TWs to EM are considered. The result is, TW and similar structures; i.e., warp drive (WD) and Krasnikov tube are not just theoretical subjects for teaching general relativity (GR) or objects only an advanced civilization would be able to manufacture anymore, but a quite reachable challenge for current technology. Besides, a new compound metric is introduced as a choice for testing in the lab.

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0511086

An interesting test of Heim theories could come from natural phenomenon with high magnetic fields and large masses of fast moving matter: black holes accretion disk, neutron stars, and especially neutron stars with high magnetic field (magnetars).

The models of such bodies should be explainable only with Heim theories. Especially it is not yet understood why all these bodies emit axial jets of matter, eventually at nearby light speed. It is not obvious why this axial movement occurs in systems completelly dominated by rotational movements. Eventually they would result of the two alternate gravitationnal forces predicted by Heim theories. There is just a little hitch to this: such jets also occur during the formation of the solar systems, where high magnetic fields are not expected.

I thought that during the T-Tauri phase there *were* high magnetic fields, as evidenced locally by the heating experienced by chondrules during their formation?

Bob Shaw

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0512117

From: Jos\'e Antonio Jim\'enez Madrid [view email]

Date (v1): Mon, 5 Dec 2005 18:16:18 GMT (11kb)
Date (revised v2): Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:46:25 GMT (12kb)

Chaplygin gas may prevent big trip

Authors: José A. Jiménez Madrid (IAA, Granada & IMAFF, Madrid)

Comments: 6 pages, no figures, uses Revtex. Version accepted for publication in Physics Letters B. Discussion of results revised and expanded. Seven new references have been also included

Report-no: IMAFF-RCA-05-11

This paper deals with the study of the accretion of a generalized Chaplygin gas with equation of state $p=-A/\rho^\alpha$ onto wormholes. We have obtained that when dominant energy condition is violated the size of wormhole increases with the scale factor up to a given plateau. On the regime where the dominant energy condition is satisfied our model predicts a steady decreasing of the wormhole size as generalized Chaplygin gas is accreted. Our main conclusion is that the big trip mechanism is prevented in a large region of the physical parameters of the used model.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512117

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=541

On Travel Close to Lightspeed

In a paper to be delivered tomorrow at the Space Technology & Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque, Franklin Felber of Starmark Inc. (San Diego) will present research on the gravitational field of a mass moving close to the speed of light.

Without seeing Felber’s work, Centauri Dreams is reluctant to comment on his assertion in an article on the Physorg.com site:

http://www.physorg.com/news10789.html

that “…a mission to accelerate a massive payload to a ‘good fraction of light speed’ will be launched before the end of this century…”, other than to say that STAIF is a venue where fascinating ideas routinely emerge, not all of which stand up to scrutiny.

The paper is titled “Exact Relativistic ‘Antigravity’ Propulsion,” and it is followed by another intriguing title, “The Alcubierre Warp Drive in Higher Dimensional Spacetime,” by Eric Davis and H.G. White. Also worthy of attention is James Woodward’s “Mach’s Principle, Flux Capacitors, and Propulsion.” More on all three as information becomes available. You can find the entire STAIF schedule here:

http://www.unm.edu/~isnps/staif/2006/

'Antigravity' Propulsion System Proposed

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/06...ntigravity.html

An 'antigravity' propulsion system will be proposed at the Space Technology and
Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque on February 14 by Dr.
Franklin Felber.

Note - Paper linked from this article.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0505/0505099.pdf