Comments on: Questioning the Foundations of Physics to Achieve Interstellar Travel: Part 1

By: Benjamin T. Solomon

Benjamin T. Solomon — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 19:51:56 +0000

Thanks, Mirela, for your comments. True, but …

The real problem is not that GR or QM does not work. The real problem is that we cannot develop ‘reasonable’ propulsion engines with these theories. You don’t have to listen to me, just google and figure the costs yourself from the info available on the internet. It will astound you.

The other problem is the claimed technologies are outlandish. For example, with current theories you end up carting around 1,000,000 tons of black hole matter to propel 1 ton of real matter. Really? Our current 40-year chemical rocket technologies can do better than that!

We need to debunk a lot of the stuff out there not because they don’t work in theory but because many of these proposed technologies will bankrupt governments before they can get started, assuming that is they are technologically feasible.

Therefore, before we can even get to considering realistic concepts, and alternative theories, we have to debunk much of the stuff out there. Remember, the US is no longer alone in its endeavors to reach the stars, and if we keep harping on outlandish or economically infeasible projects we WILL be left behind.

By: Mirela

Mirela — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 07:22:04 +0000

39 4–19-12 replies: Lets start with Newton and his law of gvatiry. Newton wondered why Apple fell down, why it didnt stay there or why not move up? Well, he thought, probably Earth exerted a force. So everything falls down on earth. Then he extended the same principle and found that the same force of Sun caused planets to move around it, and so on. We had Newton’s laws for several centuries, but without the answer to the question WHY? Why or How did a massive object pull down smaller ones?The theory we have today is that Gravity is NOT a force like what Newton had thought, but instead it is the geometry of space time. Objects in free fall dont feel any force as such. You feel gvatiry only when you resist it, either by being on land resisting the pull towards the center of the earth, or on a rocket trying to escape gvatiry. But still we do not know why or how the presence of mass or momentum-energy causes the geometry of space-time to change ie we are not aware of the actual mechanism involved in this behavior. But we know that it does happen.Now coming to how Einstein thought that mass-energy causes space-time curvature. First we have special relativity and its success. And then Einstein’s attempt to introduce gvatiry and non-uniform motion into it, which led to GR. What puzzled Einstein here was that the mass calculated by using inertia (Newton’s second law of motion), and the mass calculated using gvatiry (Newton’s law of gvatiry) were one and the same. So he guessed they must be indeed related to each other. Infact it was this equivalence which made Galileo easily explain why all objects fall at the same rate.Now that we have the equivalence principle and the famous elevator thought experiment which proves this, let us consider the path of a light beam in an accelerated elevator, and as we know it will appear to be bent because the elevator would have moved up by the time the light reaches the other wall of the elevator. Right? So if the equivalence principle is really true, then light should bend even under the influence of gvatiry. Isnt it?And if it does, what else can be the conclusion other than that gvatiry causes space (space-time) to bend? Since gvatiry itself is caused by mass, it should be the momentum-energy that causes spacetime to curve or bend.Infact it was one of the first predictions of GR which was then also tested successfully during a total solar eclipse, where in it was found that Sun caused light passing around it to bend. −8Was this answer helpful?

By: Benjamin T Solomon

Benjamin T Solomon — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 16:34:29 +0000

Thanks chieko, Armacedon and j merton .

I have posted Part 2, here:
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/09/questioning-the-foundations…vel-part-2

By: Benjamin T. Solomon

Benjamin T. Solomon — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:34:46 +0000

Thomas Golz, I had not heard of Dewey Larson until today. I googled him and found this link, http://www.lrcphysics.com/.

After a quick look at the website, I found I could not figure out what his thesis was in terms of ‘concrete’ physical events or processes. Maybe his way of thinking is so far different from mine I could not relate to it.

My views are much closer to relativity but not the same as.

By: Benjamin T. Solomon

Benjamin T. Solomon — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:29:14 +0000

CB, thanks, I’ll contact you soon.

Can you elaborate more on what this “government intelligence panel on future technologies” conclusions were?

Also, I did briefly look at Alcubierre’s work. In Part 2, I’ll explain my reasoning for trying a different approach to physics that is not related to relativistic, quantum or string theories.

If you stay close to the experimental results, mass cannot be accelerated past the velocity of light. So concepts like warp speed (my apologies to scifi writers) or 1,000+ velocity of light cannot be realized. A velocity greater than velocity of light cannot occur in Nature, so I’m doubtful that an Alcubierre-type drive can be physically realized.

One needs to note per Prof. Morris Kline’s “Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty” that mathematics has become so sophisticated that it can now be used to prove anything.

By: GaryChurch

GaryChurch — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 18:56:30 +0000

3 more fans of gravity modification; more reason to believe we are selecting ourselves for extinction. Like faking the moon landing and cold fusion, there is always some foolish distraction to occupy our attention while doomsday approaches.

By: j merton

j merton — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:22:58 +0000

& so did I. To science is to question everything. Otherwise it’s just nescience.

By: Armacedon

Armacedon — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 09:34:17 +0000

@Gary…I did read it too. I support the efforts of author and others. Putting everything in question, is absolutely necessary in order to make a real breakthrough discovery.
@Benjamin T. Solomon please keep up working and exploring. I liked the article.

By: chieko

chieko — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 06:12:20 +0000

@Gary…I did.

By: Gary Michael Church

Gary Michael Church — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 04:34:29 +0000

Solomon- you are a quack
Why don’t you and the other 2 stooges go where the kind of people who like your bizarro rambling will find it. No one who comes here is going to read it.