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If, we as a community, are intending to accelerate the development of interstellar travel we have to glower at the record and ask ourselves some tough questions. First, what is the current record of the primary players? Second, why is everyone afraid to try something outside the status quo theories?

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.

Einstein Mining

Otto E. Rossler, Faculty of Science, University of Tubingen, Germany

The young Einstein was the most fertile scientific mind of history. He first saw the observer-private nature of simultaneity, a consequence of the global constancy of the speed of light c valid in Maxwell’s equation. He then spotted the twin miracle (“paradox”): that a returned twin clock is younger than its stay-put sibling. The transversal Doppler effect described in the same 1905 paper was equally new. At the end of this miraculous year stood the improved Weber law (E exactly equal m times c-square) destined to become tragically consequential when Lise Meitner would recall its strength 34 years into the future. Two years after the miraculous year, there followed Einstein’s biggest discovery in the present author’s mind: the gravitational clock slowdown near the bottom of a constantly accelerating rocketship compared to a twin clock in its tip. It implies a second twin paradox (spending time downstairs lets you stay younger in Alan Lightman’s phrase).

This bundle of subsequently observationally confirmed predicted effects is an eternal heritage. Maxwell’s advice: go back to the origin of an already discovered gold vein since it is there that others inevitably originate is still valid. This is the excuse for the new notion of “Einstein mining.”

Specifically, the idea put forward here is that the clock slowdown on the lower floor – the gravitational twin paradox – stands not alone. This triggers the following naïve question: What happens to angular-momentum conservation when all processes are slowed-down downstairs? In special relativity, angular momentum is known to be conserved. So it must be conserved near the bottom of Einstein’s constantly accelerated rocketship which is described by special relativity alone, and then by analogy also on a lower floor in gravity.

This apparently new question is not hard to check. A horizontally rotating frictionless bicycle wheel (a massive ring with a fixed hub in the middle) can be suspended from a torque-free thread that is attached to its hub, allowing in this way to be lowered and hauled-up again inside the accelerating rocketship (or in gravity in Lewin’s lecture hall). What happens if angular momentum is conserved in the slowed-down wheel downstairs?

This is a typical “thought experiment with consequences” in the Einstein fashion. Please, lower the wheel carefully and haul it up again equally carefully. Then we know that a number of rotational ticks will have been skipped in the past of our retrieved wheel-clock. However, what happened to angular momentum in the meantime at the reduced rotation speed downstairs? How was it conserved since the ticking speed and hence angular momentum must be the same again after the hauling-up procedure as Einstein showed for any type of clock? Thus, angular momentum is bound to have been conserved all the way down and up again by our rotational clock in spite of the intervening reduced rotation rate that was in charge downstairs. If the rotation speed was reduced while angular momentum was conserved, something else is bound to have changed downstairs to make up for the change in rotation rate. Otherwise, angular momentum could not have been conserved continually.

Fortunately, angular momentum J happens to be determined by very few factors apart from the rotation rate omega itself, in our horizontally rotating bicycle wheel. It is only two factors: radius and mass. The formula reads at low speeds which suffice for the purpose:

J = constant = omega times radius-squared times mass (1)

Here omega is the rotation rate which as we saw is reduced downstairs. What is it that you are going to bet for the remaining two factors, mass and radius? There are 4 linear factors standing on the right hand side (omega, radius, radius, mass) the product of which is constant if angular momentum J is to be preserved.

Any combined change law of the mass and the radius which is able to compensate for the change in omega is a candidate. This includes the possibility that one of the two variables, radius and mass, stays unchanged (for example, mass). Simplicity calls for linearity (proportionality or anti-proportionality) regarding either of the two (size and mass). If size goes up in direct proportion with omega and mass goes down by the same factor, J is also conserved downstairs. Does this simplest – since linear – case make any sense? It makes physical sense for an independent reason due to Einstein. He showed in 1907 that the energy of a locally emitted photon is reduced downstairs in parallel to the reduction in the ticking (here rotation) rate. Quantum mechanics subsequently showed that the mass-energy of the photon can be locally transformed into an ordinary particle of the same rest-mass energy in principle and vice versa. Positronium is a case in point. Picture one of those familiar “PET” machines to be operating downstairs. Thus the masses of all particles that are locally at rest downstairs are reduced in parallel with the ticking rate.

This finishes our foray into the mind of Einstein. We were able to extract one more feature from his most important finding, gravitational time dilation. Diameters (radii, lengths) go up in proportion, while masses go down. And – as the example of positronium annihilation shows in addition – charge goes down along with the rest mass since the two keep their ratio locally on every particle. The so obtained final result (omega down, r up, r up, m down, q down) can be remembered by the acronym “Olemach” since omega O, length L, mass M and charge Ch are involved.

This is the strength of angular-momentum conservation when entered into Einstein’s gravitational time dilation. Who would have thought that such a simple deep result is still possible? The consequences are staggering as usual with Einstein (black holes acquire totally new features, for example). But this is not our topic. We are happy to have found another implication of Einstein’s mind.

I thank Ali Sanayei for a discussion. For J.O.R.

Recently, I met Josh Hopkins of Lockheed’s Advanced Programs, AIAA Rocky Mountain Region’s First Annual Technical Symposium (RMATS), October 26, 2012. Josh was the keynote speaker at this RMATS. Here is his presentation. After his presentation we talked outside the conference hall. I told him about my book, and was surprised when he said that two groups had failed to reproduce Podkletnov’s work. I knew one group had but a second? As we parted we said we’d keep in touch. But you know how life is, it has the habit of getting in the way of exciting research, and we lost touch.

About two weeks ago, I remembered, that Josh had said that he would provide some information on the second group that had failed to reproduce Podkletnov’s work. I sent him an email, and was very pleased to hear back from him and that the group’s finding had been published under the title “Gravity Modification by High-Temperature Semiconductors”. The authors were C. Woods, S. Cooke, J. Helme & C. Caldwell. Their paper was published in the 37th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, 8–11 July 2001, Salt Lake City, Utah. I bought a copy for the AIAA archives, and read it, reread it, and reread it.

Then I found a third team they published their lack of findings “Gravity Modification Experiments Using a Rotating Superconducting Disk and Radio Frequency Fields”. The authors were G. Hathaway, B. Cleveland and Y. Bao. Published in Physica C, 2003.

Both papers focused on attempting to build a correct superconducting disc. At least Wood et al said “the tests have not fulfilled the specified conditions for a gravity effect”. The single most difficult thing to do was to build a bilayered superconducting disc. Woods et al tried very hard to do so. Reading through Hathaway et all paper suggest that they too had similar difficulties. Photo shows a sample disc from Woods’ team. Observe the crack in the middle.

Further, Woods’ team was able to rotate their disc to 5,000 rpm. Hathaway’s team reports a rotational speed of between 400–800 rpm, a far cry from Podkletnov’s 5,000 rpm. This suggests that there were other problems in Hathaway’s disc not reported in their paper. With 400–800 rpm, if Hathaway were to observe a significant weight change it would have been less than the repeatable experimental sensitivity of 0.5mg!

Here are some quotes from Hathaway et al’s original paper “As a result of these tests it was decided that either the coil designs were inefficient at producing …”, “the rapid induction heating at room temperature cracked the non-superconducting disk into two pieces within 3 s”, “Further tests are needed to determine the proper test set-up required to detect the reverse Josephson junction effect in multi-grain bulk YBCO superconductors”.

It is quite obvious from reading both papers that neither team were able to faithfully reproduce Podkletnov’s work, and it is no wonder that at least Woods et al team stated “the tests have not fulfilled the specified conditions for a gravity effect”. This statement definitely applies to Hathaway et al’s research. There is more to critic both investigations, but .… this should be enough.

Now, for the final surprise. The first team I had mentioned earlier. Ning Li led the first team comprised of members from NASA and University of Huntsville, AL. It was revealed in conversations with a former team member that Ning Li’s team was disbanded before they could build the superconducting discs required to investigate Podkletnov’s claims. Wow!

If you think about it, all these “investigations” just showed that nobody in the US was capable of faithfully reproducing Podkletnov’s experiments to even disprove it.

What a big surprise! A null result is not a disproof.

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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.

Gravity Modification – New Tools

Posted by Benjamin T. Solomon in business, cosmology, defense, education, engineering, general relativity, particle physics, philosophy, physics, policy, spaceTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To understand why gravity modification is not yet a reality, let’s analyze other fundamental discoveries/inventions that changed our civilization or at least the substantially changed the process of discovery. There are several that come to mind, the atomic bomb, heavier than air manned flight, the light bulb, personal computers, and protein folding. There are many other examples but these are sufficient to illustrate what it takes. Before we start, we have to understand four important and related concepts.

(1) Clusters or business clusters, first proposed by Harvard prof. Michael Porter, “a business cluster is a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions in a particular field. Clusters are considered to increase the productivity with which companies can compete, nationally and globally”. Toyota City which predates Porter’s proposal, comes to mind. China’s 12 new cities come to mind, and yes there are pro and cons.

(2) Hot housing, a place offering ideal conditions for the growth of an idea, activity, etc. (3) Crowdsourcing, is a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people. This process can occur both online and offline. Crowdsourcing is different from an ordinary outsourcing since it is a task or problem that is outsourced to an undefined public rather than a specific body. (4) Groundswell, a strong public feeling or opinion that is detectable even though not openly expressed.

I first read about the fascinating story of the making of the atom bomb from Stephane Groueff’s The Manhattan Project-the Making of the Atomic Bomb, in the 1970s. We get a clear idea why this worked. Under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves, and J. Robert Oppenheimer the US, UK & Canada hot housed scientist, engineers, and staff to invent and produce the atomic bomb physics, engineering and manufacturing capabilities. Today we term this key driver of success ‘hot housing’, the bringing together a group of experts to identify avenues for further research, to brainstorm potential solutions, and to test, falsify and validate research paths, focused on a specific desired outcome. The threat of losing out to the Axis powers helped increase this hot housing effect. This is much like what the Aspen Center for Physics is doing (video here).

In the case of the invention of the light bulb, the airplane, and the personal computer, there was a groundswell of public opinion that these inventions could be possible. This led potential inventors with the necessary basic skills to attempt to solve these problems. In the case of the incandescent light bulb, this process took about 70 years from Humphrey Davy in 1809, to Thomas A. Edison and Joseph Wilson Swan in 1879. The groundswell started with Humphrey and had included many by the time of Edison in 1879.

In the case of the airplane the Wright brothers reviewed other researchers’ findings (the groundswell had begun much earlier), and then invented several new tools & skills, flight control, model testing techniques, test pilot skills, light weight motors and new propeller designs.

The invention of the personal computer had the same groundswell effect (see Homebrew Computer Club & PBS TV transcripts). Ed Roberts, Gordon French, Fred Moore, Bob Harsh, George Morrow, Adam Osborne, Lee Felsenstein, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, John Draper, Jerry Lawson, Ron Jones and Bill Gates all knew each other before many of them became wealthy and famous. Bill Gates wrote the first personal computer language, while the others invented various versions of the microcomputer, later to be known as the personal computer, and peripherals required. They invented the products and the tools necessary for the PC industry to take off.

With protein folding, Seth Cooper, game designer, developed Fold It, the tool that would make the investigation into protein folding accessible to an undefined public. Today we describe this ‘crowdsourcing’. Notice that here it wasn’t a specialized set of team that was hot housed, but the reverse, the general public, were given the tools to make crowdsourcing a viable means to solving a problem.

Thus four key elements are required to foster innovation, basic skills, groundswell, hothouse or crowdsourcing, and new tools.

So why hasn’t this happened with gravity modification? Some form of the groundswell is there. In his book The Hunt for Zero Point, Nick Cook (an editor of the esteemed Jane’s Defense Weekly) describes a history that goes back to World War II, and Nazi Germany. It is fund reading but Kurt Kleiner of Salon provides a sober review of The Hunt for Zero Point.

There are three primary reasons for this not having happened with gravity modification. First, over the last 50 years or so, there have only been about 50 to 100 people (outside of black projects) who have investigated this in a scientific manner. That is, the groundswell of researchers with the necessary basic skills has not reached a critical mass to take off. For example, protein folding needed at least 40,000 participants, today Fold It has 280,000 registered participants.

Second, pseudoscience has crept into the field previously known as ‘antigravity’. In respectable scientific circles the term used is gravity modification. Pseudoscience, has clouded the field, confused the public’s perception and chased away the talent – the 3 C’s of pseudoscience. Take for example, plutonium bomb propulsion (written by a non-scientist/non-engineer), basic investigation shows that this is neither feasible nor legal, but it still keeps being written up as a ‘real’ proposition. The correct term for plutonium bomb propulsion is pseudoscience.

Third reason. Per the definition of gravity modification, we cannot use existing theories to propose new tools because all our current status quo theories require mass. Therefore, short of my 12-year study, no new tools are forth coming.

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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.

OK, why do we need a different technology to achieve commercial viability (as in mass space tourism) for either interplanetary or interstellar travel?

In many of my previous posts I had shown that all the currently proposed technologies or technologies to be, are either phenomenally expensive (on the order of several multiples of World GDP), bordering on the impossible or just plain conjecture. This is very unfortunate, as I was hoping that some of the proposals would at least appear realistic, but no joy. I feel very sorry for those who are funding these projects. For a refresher I have posted an updated version of the Interstellar Challenge Matrix (ICM) here which documents 5 of the 11 inconsistencies in modern physics. I give permission to my readers to use this material for non-commercial or academic uses.

I recently completed the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravity modification published under the title An Introduction to Gravity Modification, 2nd Edition. For the very first time we now have a scientific definition for gravity modification:

Gravity modification is defined as the modification of the strength and/or direction of the gravitational acceleration without the use of mass as the primary source of this modification, in local space time. It consists of field modulation and field vectoring. Field modulation is the ability to attenuate or amplify a force field. Field vectoring is the ability to change the direction of this force field.

Note that this definition specifically states “without the use of mass”, for obvious reasons – for example it does not make sense to carry around the mass of a planet to propel 7 astronauts, does it?

By this definition alone, we have eliminated all three status quo theories – general relativity, quantum gravity and string theories. Therefore, the urgent need to construct a new theory that will facilitate the development of gravity modification technologies.

And further, by this definition we know the additional requirements of such a new theory. The theory should show us, firstly, how to attenuate or amplify the gravitational field strength, and secondly, how to change the direction of this force field – all without using mass.

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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.

“Metaballon anapaúetai” was the original 2-word phrase. Since the physical science of thermodynamics knows only one time’s arrow, Heraclitus appeared outdated for 1 ½ centuries.

Recently though, a second fundamental time’s arrow was found in nature. It defines cyodynamics, a full-fledged sister discipline to thermodynamics (cryós = cold, thermós = hot). Both jointly form the subject matter of statistical mechanics. The new subfield of cryodynamics applies whenever the forces acting between the particles in question are attractive. Thermodynamics applies when they are predominantly repulsive. Hot plasmas, for example, are governed by both disciplines – which fact puts fusion technology on a new promising basis.

The new combined discipline re-enables an eternally recycling perpetual-motion cosmos. The implied chaos-theoretic combined mixing and unmixing process, found by Anaxagoras to be implicit in Heraclitus‘ work, is thereby confirmed.

A third name needs to be added though, Einstein’s. The giant perpetual-motion machine would not work in the absence of general relativity forming the third element.

Hawking first glimpsed the fundamental importance of black-hole recycling. This fact places him into the same row – now four names. His insight was modified recently by a feature described by Oppenheimer and Snyder – the discoverers of a physical black-hole theory in 1939 – but which since has fallen into oblivion: a gravitational-redshift proportional time dilation. Black holes for this reason are never finished in finite outer time.

This fact means that a new form of Hawking radiation exists at the expense of the original, too simplistic picture: Whenever two black holes are about to merge, each of them unfinished with its eternally in-falling particles (whereby space is locally expanded by the same factor), the particles bound for the smaller black hole’s future horizon get “redirected” towards the prospective horizon of the larger black hole and in consequence get radiated away.

The reason is differential-topological in kind: Each particle has to cross an invisible boundary (a separatrix) existing between the two prospective attractors (black hole horizons). Namely, away from the smaller prospective black hole and towards the bigger one. On reaching the separatrix, however, the particle is freed, since a separatrix cannot be crossed so that the particle in question can escape towards the outer universe. The mechanism of this new Hawking radiation is more complicated and less co-determined by quantum mechanics than the old one. Nevertheless the intuition is the same: “Hawking evaporation.” Cosmic rays are its main consequence.

In this way, the cosmos is eternally “rejuvenated” with 50 percent of its black hole matter and hence all matter. The mental picture of Heraclitus is reconfirmed. I hope Hawking will reply.

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts, Legal Standing, Safety Awareness, Economic Viability, Theoretical-Empirical Relationships, and Technological Feasibility.

In a previous post on Technological Feasibility I had stated that a quick and dirty model shows that we could achieve velocity of light c by 2151 or the late 2150s. See table below.

Year Velocity (m/s) % of c
2200 8,419,759,324 2808.5%
2152 314,296,410 104.8%
2150 274,057,112 91.4%
2125 49,443,793 16.5%
2118 30,610,299 10.2%
2111 18,950,618 6.3%
2100 8,920,362 3.0%
2075 1,609,360 0.5%
2050 290,351 0.1%
2025 52,384 0.0%

That is, at the current rate of technological innovation we could as a civilization reach light speed in about 140 years. More importantly we could not even reach anywhere near that within the next 100 years. Our capability would be 6.3% of c.

The Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformation informs us light speed would require an infinite amount of energy (i.e. more than there is in the Universe!), thereby highlighting the weaknesses in these types of technological forecasting methods. But these models still serve a purpose. They provide some guidance as to what is possible and when. The operative word is guidance.

Rephrasing is required. Is the technological light speed horizon of the 2150s too far out? If you are as impatient as I am the answer is ‘yes’. It would not be in the spirit of the Kline Directive to accept a 2150s horizon. 2150s is for people with no imagination, people who have resigned to the inevitable snail’s progress of physics. Further, we now know the inevitable impossibility using our contemporary physics because of the 5 major errors.

Completing the Interstellar Challenge Matrix (ICH) gives:

PDF version available here.

What are we left with? We have to find new directions, new models, new mathematical constructions, that address all 5 errors. And in the spirit of the Kline Directive, there needs to be a better method of sifting through academic papers “ … to provide reasonability in guidance and correctness in answers to our questions in the sciences …”

What do we do for starters? Here are my initial recommendations are:

1. The physics community has to refocus on mathematical construction hypotheses.

2. More experimental physicist leading combined teams of experimental and theoretical physicist.

3. Prioritize research funding by Engineering Feasible Theories, 100-Year Theories, and only then Millennium Theories.

I started this series of blog posts in order to achieve interstellar travel sooner rather than later, but we as a community are heading in the wrong direction. It won’t work to build bigger carriages. It won’t work add more horses, as some would suggest. That would be like flogging a dead horse. We have to do something radically different. That is why the Kline Directive matters.

I have made the assumption that technological feasibility is a necessary step. Yes it is, given our lack of technological capability to reach the stars in a realistic and finite time frame. Technology feasibility very quickly leads back to the next question of commercial viability, the second step.

Future feasible technologies will iterate between technological feasibility and commercial viability until we can reach the stars in a manner we don’t have to ask the question, whom do we select to leave Earth?

Until then we are not ready!

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.

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts, Legal Standing, Safety Awareness, Economic Viability, Theoretical-Empirical Relationships, and Technological Feasibility.

My apologies to my readers for this long break since my last post of Nov 19, 2012. I write the quarterly economic report for a Colorado bank’s Board of Directors. Based on my quarterly reports to the Board, I gave a talk Are We Good Stewards? on the US Economy to about 35 business executives at a TiE Rockies’ Business for Breakfast event. This talk was originally scheduled for Dec 14, but had moved forward to Nov 30 because the original speaker could not make the time commitment for that day. There was a lot to prepare, and I am very glad to say that it was very well received. For my readers who are interested here is the link to a pdf copy of my slides to Are We Good Stewards?

Now back to interstellar physics and the Kline Directive. Let’s recap.

In my last four posts (2c), (2d), (2e) & (2f) I had identified four major errors taught in contemporary physics. First, to be consistent (2c) with Lorentz-Fitzgerald and Special Theory of Relativity, elementary particles contract as their energy increases. This is antithetical to string theories and explains why string theories are becoming more and more complex without discovering new empirically verifiable fundamental laws of Nature.

Second, (2d) again to be consistent with Lorentz-Fitzgerald and Special Theory of Relativity, a photon’s wave function cannot have length. It must infinitesimally thin, zero length. Therefore, this wave function necessarily has to be a part of the photon’s disturbance of spacetime that is non-moving. Just like a moving garden rake under a rug creates the appearance that the bulge or wave function like envelope is moving.

Third, that exotic matter, negative mass in particular, converts the General Theory of Relativity into perpetual motion physics (sacrilege!) and therefore cannot exist in Nature. Fourth, that the baking bread model (2e) of the Universe is incorrect as our observations of the Milky Way necessarily point to the baking bread model not being ‘isoacentric’.

Einstein (2f) had used the Universe as an expanding 4-dimensional surface of a sphere (E4DSS) in one of his talks to explain how the number of galaxies looks the same in every direction we look. If Einstein is correct then time travel theories are not, as an expanding surface would necessarily require that the 4-dimensional Universe that we know, does not exists inside the expanding sphere, and therefore we cannot return to a past. And, we cannot head to a future because that surface has not happened. Therefore, first, the law of conservation of mass-energy holds as nothing is mysteriously added by timelines. And second, causality paradoxes cannot occur in Nature. Note there is a distinction between temporal reversibility and time travel.

In this E4DSS model, wormholes would not cause time travel but connect us to other parts of the Universe by creating tunnels from one part of the surface to another by going inside the sphere and tunneling to a different part of the sphere. So the real problem for theoretical physics is how does one create wormholes without using exotic matter?

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.


The 100,000 Stars Google Chrome Galactic Visualization Experiment Thingy
So, Google has these things called Chrome Experiments, and they like, you know, do that. 100,000 Stars, their latest, simulates our immediate galactic zip code and provides detailed information on many of the massive nuclear fireballs nearby.


Zoom in & out of interactive galaxy, state, city, neighborhood, so to speak.

It’s humbling, beautiful, and awesome. Now, is 100, 000 Stars perfectly accurate and practical for anything other than having something pretty to look at and explore and educate and remind us of the enormity of our quaint little galaxy among the likely 170 billion others? Well, no — not really. But if you really feel the need to evaluate it that way, you are a unimaginative jerk and your life is without joy and awe and hope and wonder and you probably have irritable bowel syndrome. Deservedly.

The New Innovation Paradigm Kinda Revisited
Just about exactly one year ago technosnark cudgel Anthrobotic.com was rapping about the changing innovation paradigm in large-scale technological development. There’s chastisement for Neil deGrasse Tyson and others who, paraphrasically (totally a word), have declared that private companies won’t take big risks, won’t do bold stuff, won’t push the boundaries of scientific exploration because of bottom lines and restrictive boards and such. But new business entities like Google, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, & Planetary Resources are kind of steadily proving this wrong.

Google in particular, a company whose U.S. ad revenue now eclipses all other ad-based business combined, does a load of search-unrelated, interesting little and not so little research. Their mad scientists have churned out innovative, if sometimes impractical projects like Wave, Lively, and Sketchup. There’s the mysterious Project X, rumored to be filled with robots and space elevators and probably endless lollipops as well. There’s Project Glass, the self-driving cars, and they have also just launched Ingress, a global augmented reality game.

In contemporary America, this is what cutting-edge, massively well-funded pure science is beginning to look like, and it’s commendable. So, in lieu of an national flag, would we be okay with a SpaceX visitor center on the moon? Come on, really — a flag is just a logo anyway!

Let’s hope Google keeps not being evil.

[VIA PC MAG]
[100,000 STARS ANNOUNCEMENT — CHROME BLOG]

(this post originally published at www.anthrobotic.com)

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts, Legal Standing, Safety Awareness, Economic Viability, Theoretical-Empirical Relationships, and Technological Feasibility.

There is one last mistake in physics that needs to be addressed. This is the baking bread model. To quote from the NASA page,

“The expanding raisin bread model at left illustrates why this proportion law is important. If every portion of the bread expands by the same amount in a given interval of time, then the raisins would recede from each other with exactly a Hubble type expansion law. In a given time interval, a nearby raisin would move relatively little, but a distant raisin would move relatively farther — and the same behavior would be seen from any raisin in the loaf. In other words, the Hubble law is just what one would expect for a homogeneous expanding universe, as predicted by the Big Bang theory. Moreover no raisin, or galaxy, occupies a special place in this universe — unless you get too close to the edge of the loaf where the analogy breaks down.”

Notice the two qualifications the obvious one is “unless you get too close to the edge of the loaf where the analogy breaks down”. The second is that this description is only correct from the perspective of velocity. But there is a problem with this.

Look up in the night sky, and you can see the band of stars called the Milky Way. It helps if you are up in the Rocky Mountains above 7,000 ft. (2,133 m) away from the city lights. Dan Duriscoe produced one of the best pictures of our Milky Way from Death Valley, California that I have seen.

What do you notice?

I saw a very beautiful band of stars rising above the horizon, and one of my friends pointed to it and said “That is the Milky Way”. Wow! We could actually see our own galaxy from within.

Hint. The Earth is half way between the center of the Milky Way and the outer edge.

What do you notice?

We are not at the edge of the Milky Way, we are half way inside it. So “unless you get too close to the edge of the loaf where the analogy breaks down” should not happen. Right?

Wrong. We are only half way in and we see the Milky Way severely constrained to a narrow band of stars. That is if the baking bread model is to be correct we have to be far from the center of the Milky Way. This is not the case.

The Universe is on the order of 103 to 106 times larger. Using our Milky Way as an example the Universe should look like a large smudge on one side and a small smudge on the other side if we are even half way out. We should see two equally sized smudges if we are at the center of the Universe! And more importantly by the size of the smudges we could calculate our position with respect to the center of the Universe! But the Hubble pictures show us that this is not the case! We do not see directional smudges, but a random and even distribution of galaxies across the sky in any direction we look.

Therefore the baking bread model is an incorrect model of the Universe and necessarily any theoretical model that is dependent on the baking bread structure of the Universe is incorrect.

We know that we are not at the center of the Universe. The Universe is not geocentric. Neither is it heliocentric. The Universe is such that anywhere we are in the Universe, the distribution of galaxies across the sky must be the same.

Einstein (TV series Cosmic Journey, Episode 11, Is the Universe Infinite?) once described an infinite Universe being the surface of a finite sphere. If the Universe was a 4-dimensional surface of a 4-dimensional sphere, then all the galaxies would be expanding away from each other, from any perspective or from any position on this surface. And, more importantly, unlike the baking bread model one could not have a ‘center’ reference point on this surface. That is the Universe would be ‘isoacentric’ and both the velocity property and the center property would hold simultaneously.

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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.