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Hyperspace travel?
January 13th, 2010 by GenePodcast: Play in new window | Download
We’re going to step into the middle of a nifty science and engineering controversy. Today. On Engineering Works!
If you’ve ever taken a physics course, you know that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. A hundred-86-thousand miles a second. Seven-hundred – million – miles an hour. Everything physicists know says you can’t go faster. But some physicists and engineers think they can do an end run around the speed-of-light limit.
They say that ideas developed about 50 years ago by a German scientist named Burkhard Heim suggest that we could use a very strong magnetic field to push spacecraft into another dimension. A dimension where the physical laws that make the speed of light as fast as anything can go, don’t exist.
The idea sounds like science fiction. And a lot of top physicists say that’s all it is. But if it’s real, it could mean traveling to Mars in three hours or to a nearby star in three months. The interesting part is that the Department of Energy has a device – the Z-machine – that could produce the kind of ultra-powerful magnetic field we’d need to see if the idea might work. If it does, researchers could be testing a working engine in five years.
Even if everything turns out the way the visionaries think it will, it’ll be a long time before you can buy a ticket for a day trip to Mars.
So, beam us up, Scotty. We’re through here for now.
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Hey there! Seems to be displaying 3/4 of the post, could be my browser tho, no one else seems to be complaining!
Is this engine real?
So far this engine is just an idea, but if it works it would be big. That’s a big IF, though.
Whoa this stuff kinda blows my mind … will this engine ever become real?
unreal
Going back to physics, yes i have thought that the light is the fastest now giving the idea about the study well i think the engineer have some point, its a matter of physical laws and now they reveal many views well i think this is a must read post, great!
Okay, even if this dimension flipping theory worked, how in the world could you control where you would end up? Mars in a few hours? Or somewhere on the other side of the galaxy?! But this is why we like sci fi in the first place…Oh the possibilities :)
Ok great idea but where IS the actual science article. all I get to hear is a 2 min advert which is exactly the same as the text above!
A propulsion method probably based on this idea (called “contragravity” in the books) was a constant feature of H. Beam Piper’s speculative fiction in the 1960s.
This has been exactly the thing I was looking for. Astounding blog. Incredibly inspirational! The posts are so helpful and detailed. The links you have are also very useful too. Thanks a lot
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