Monthly Archives: February 2008

more on eht

Theory

I’ve been asked what direct connection there is between EHT (Extended Heim Theory) and Dr. Tajmar’s work.  Such descriptions are beyond me to generate, though I can relate the writings of others.  So let me refer you to comments made recently on the PhysOrg public message board by Duane J. Oldsen.  Duane seems to have a good handle on the issues at hand.  Here are some direct outtakes:

To start off, Heim Theory (currently EHT, Extended Heim Theory) must be considered somewhat left field. It was Burkhard Heim’s private baby for several decades, since at least the ’50s, making rare German language forays into academic presentation and release. As far as I know, there is only Heim’s 1977 monograph and a 1976 presentation at MBB (now part of EADS) that are part of Heim’s official record.

EHT is composed of eight dimensions, the four of human experience, and an additional four that can be thought of as “bookkeeping” dimensions. Burkhard Heim had initially limited this to 6D, and EHT provides for an absolute maximum of 12D…

Heim was introduced to one Walter Droscher c.1980. At some point thereafter, the two begain working on Heim’s ideas together. Droscher reworked Heim’s original 6-dimensional model into an 8D model, which purportedly is able to account for all known forces and interactions, as well as predicting two additional forces. Droscher, in cooperation with Jochem Hauser, have been refining and publishing the Extended Theory via AIAA publications since at least 2002.

Structurally, EHT is similar to Loop Quantum Gravity… It predicts two additional forces, and claims the ability to predict the masses of fundamental particles from pure theory.

The two additional forces are variant gravitational forces, much weaker than normal gravity. “Quintessence” is a repulsive gravitational force that seems to match dark energy VERY closely. However, the timeline indicates that Heim predicted this force by the mid ’60s at latest, at least 5 years before universal expansion was observed. The second gravity-cousin is the gravito-photon force. EHT provides mathematical models that allow for the transformation of photons into attractive and/or repulsive gravitational particles, gravitophotons. It is the gravitophoton that is purported to allow the manipulation of gravity, and which provides the direct link to Tajmar’s work.  This is an excellent overview:[Note: Here is the link to the pdf referenced].

Until 2006, they were also reporting on a more radical claim, that the EHT physics potentially allow for FTL</i> [Note: Faster Than Light] travel. <i>However, at that time they thought that the technical requirements for even the STL (Slower Than Light) reactionless method would require truly gargantuan magnetic field strengths. 20+ Tesla for the most basic STL experiment, 80+ for the FTL. Since even the most minuscule laboratory verification would come nowhere near to real world application, the more extreme claims to gin up interest were probably justified.

After Tajmar’s announcement in 2006 however, Droscher & Hauser went back and took another look. They found that EHT gave good predictive agreement with the results Tajmar had reported. The Tajmar experiment and the proposed STL lab bench demonstrator were moderately similar, albeit that the gravitational fields produced were directed along different vectors. And each set of revised results from Tajmar is reported to have brought Tajmar’s observed results and the EHT predictions into closer and closer agreement.

Per private communication w/Hauser, Tajmar has many more results than those he has released. The released results being those best verified to the most anal retentive degree. Per public releases, Hauser and Tajmar have been in close contact for at least the last year.

is gmod green?

Applications, Methodology

As in the debate over biofuels, the total “environmental accounting” for a new technology should be taken into consideration before declaring one method as environmentally superior or more beneficial than another.  We will look at the possible environmental drawbacks of gMOD (from ore extraction to disposal) at another time.  Today I’d like to focus upon its environmental benefits for transportation.

One environmental benefit of gMOD is its potential to replace the burning of fossil fuels (FF) as a means for producing propulsion.  Configured for propulsion, a gMOD generator could replace the burning of fossil fuels by automobiles, trains and ships to produce both forward movement and braking.  A gMOD generator employed within a family vehicle would therefore be the environmental equivalent of an electric vehicle, since it converts electrical energy into vehicle propulsion, though field propulsion as opposed to mechanical propulsion.

However, any requirement to generate large magnetic fields (e.g. in the multiple Tesla range) or to cool generator coils to superconducting temperatures could easily make a gMOD generator an energy “hog” and unsuitable for mobile applications.  In addition, any need for a coil of several dozen or more meters in diameter (as suggested by Tajmar’s patent) would similarly make it impractical for single vehicle usage.  So a compact profile and efficient energy conversion are essential to its usefulness for many transportation needs.

Reduction of operating friction is another potential advantage of gMOD.  Small devices could provide lift-assist in airplanes, dirigibles and maglev (magnetic levitation) trains to improve their efficiency without relying exclusively on gMOD.  Even the conventional family car could benefit from the reduction of friction on wheel bearings, thus reducing operational temperatures and improving fuel efficiency… all made possible with an assist from a small gMOD generator. If standing fields can be shaped according to need then such fields could also be suitable for forming transient airfoil and hydrofoil shapes for reducing air drag and improving mileage.  The field could either form the entire envelope or provide the ability to dynamically change the displacement of air/water as speed or direction changes.

And then there are “flying platforms”.  A fleet of pilotless (autonomous) platforms controlled by Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and carrying a wide range of cargo containers could navigate between cities/nodes via satellite GPS.  Shipping goods between cities is perhaps the largest initial growth area for gMOD, even surpassing transport for people.  Such a system would reduce traffic load on highways and reduce wear and tear by fleet vehicles.  This would reduce maintenance costs and increase the longevity of our highways including the consumption of FF-based bituminous roadway material.

How do you ensure the success of a new technology today?  Answer:  Make it an essential strategy for Wal-Mart.  This has been true with RFID chips and it could be true with gMOD.  The biggest horizontal industry in the world is logistics — getting raw materials in, processing of products, packaging products, transporting, warehousing, distributing and retailing to the consumer.  gMOD platforms could fill that need.

If gMOD is found to be practical, there are only a few criteria which must be met to overcome barriers to introducing a gMOD generator.  These include:

1)The technology must be competitively priced both to purchase and to operate in comparison to alternate conventional technologies.

2)It must operate at an efficiency that allows it to perform work at various scales (ideally from palm-sized generators capable of lifting several kilos to closet-sized generators capable of lifting several tons.)

3)Its operation must not present unacceptably high risks to operators, citizenry, or the environment.

4)Any byproducts of its usage must be managed and disposed of safely.

Of these, items 3 and 4 represent areas of potential environmental impact.  It is these areas which represent the potential negative environmental impacts of gMOD technology.  Unfortunately, not enough is known about byproducts or safety risks specific to this technology to address them today.  We’ll reserve speculation about them for another day.

spaceport duluth

Applications

One of the most often described purposes suggested for gravity modification is space travel.  Space travel suggests the establishment of a spaceport and spaceports are actually common.  They currently exist in California (California Spaceport and Mojave Airport), Alaska (Kodiak Launch Complex), Florida (Kennedy), Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas .  Plans are also in various stages of development for Wisconsin (Sheboygan) and the New Mexico Southwest Regional Spaceport for space tourism.

However, such tourist facilities won’t have the infrastructure for shipping large tonnage of cargo.  Why is tonnage a factor?  Because even if we we don’t ship slabs of “blueberry” laden hematite from Mars to face building exteriors on Earth, or import tons of diamond-bearing kimberlite pipe ore from Olympus Mons, gMOD would still be useful for delivering suborbital payloads to ports around the world.  And for that tonnage we need a candidate port to become the first industrial spaceport.  Preferably it will be an existing major international airport or shipping port already transporting millions of tons of cargo a year.

Duluth could act as that first industrial spaceport.  The city is already an international port, one of the largest in America as gauged by tonnage.  It also has an international airport and an underutilized world-class aircraft facility.  The $25 million, 300,000 sq-ft Northwest Airlines Airbus Maintenance facility is located in Duluth International Airport.  Despite it capabilities, the underpayment of taxes by Northwest Airlines since May 2005 and the looming potential of a merger with Delta leaves the facility’s future uncertain. So why not reserve it as our first industrial spaceport facility?

Duluth’s location on Lake Superior has ready access to the two most desirable resources for industrial expansion into space: steel for building and fresh water for drinking.  Minnesota Steel Industries plans to bring in 2,000 construction workers to the defunct Butler Taconite site in Nashwauk to erect North America’s first fully integrated taconite-mine-to-steel mill.  The $1.6 billion plant is on a two year fast track for development.

Also, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world.  There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South America with a foot (30 cm) of water. Though water levels have declined in recent years, Superior could still contain all the other Great Lakes and three more Lake Eries.

The long expanse of Lake Superior from Isle Royale eastward would allow space vehicles to depart from the Duluth spaceport, climb over the lake, and reach orbit… matching most currently eastward orbits.  This is a necessary step before the first industrial goal:  removing the millions of pieces of space debris (space junk) currently in orbit.

Once cleared, satellite platforms could be placed into orbit.  Such platforms become not just satellites but potentially (thanks to gMOD) geosynchronous satellites suitable for all sorts of communications needs.  Payloads for the platforms could also include anything from orbital hostels (less formal the the five star hotel of the film “2001”) to fueling platforms for flights to the moon and planets.

More on Dröscher and Hauser

Theory

In the short version of the paper, <a href = “http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/AIAA5595JCP2007DarkAbbreviated.pdf”>”Advanced Propulsion Systems from Artificial Gravitational Fields”</a>, Walter Dröscher and Jochem Hauser discussed how they would reconfigure Tajmar’s apparatus to reflect one of their earlier designs that had previously employed fermionic coupling under a 25 Tesla magnetic field.

Their paper was published through the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics as document AIAA 2006-4608 in August of 2006.  But only now, it seems, are Dröscher, Hauser and Tajmar collaborating on a combined paper that will (apparently) address how combining D & H’s z-axis configuration for improved field propulsion with Tajmar’s bosonic coupling approach could provide a rapid way forward to gMOD.

What does this mean?

In contrast to Tajmar’s device which produced a field tangental the axis of rotation, D & H’s configuration would generate a gravitational field acting parallel to the axis of rotation of the rotating ring and “thus can serve as a field propulsion principle”.  In short, rather than Tajmar’s 200 meter rotating ring to provide 1g of lift, a coil half a meter in diameter with 4 square meters of surface area rotating at 200 meters per second is calculated to be able to lift itself from the surface of the Earth… IF it employs bosonic coupling.  This interaction between electromagnetism and gravitation is predicted by EHT (Extended Heim Theory), of which D & H are the primary authors.

Even though Tajmar has (very conservatively) spoken of generating a milli-g of acceleration within five years, Dröscher and Hauser’s configuration would make Tajmar’s configuration 3 orders of magnitude more efficient.  No news yet on the expected publication date for early drafts of the paper, but with the testing currently going on at EarthTech with Dr. Tajmar in attendance is it any wonder why some in the physics community are holding their collective breath?

why gmod?

Methodology

I’ve recently changed the title of this blog to “gMOD: gravity modification”.  Why gMOD?  First, it stands for “gravity modification”.  The traditional use of the term “antigravity” has been a hinderance to earnest researchers.  Dr. Ron Koczor of the Science Directorate, NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center knows about choosing the terminology to match your audience.  During an interview with him for a previous article he told me, “When you talk to the general public or the kids whose eyes are half-glazed with anticipation, call it “antigravity”.  But when you talk to people who control the course of research and who themselves have the credibility of their decisions questioned by higher-ups, I think you need to rethink your use of that term.”

Others, such as Dr. Tajmar, have used “artificial gravity”.  However that brings to mind only positive gravity that attracts.  Dr. Tajmar’s studies have discussed both an attractive and repulsive effect, so artificial gravity draws upon the wrong imagery to cover these effects.  In lieu of the term artificial gravity, Dr. Koczor prefers “gravity modification”.

I have used the term “modified gravity”, or modG, in past articles.  However, the term “Modified Gravity” has recently been used to describe a theoretical distance-dependence of gravity as an alternative to “dark matter” or Modified Newtonian Dynamics.  Therefore I’ve returned to Ron’s use of gravity modification to describe methods of modifying gravity locally whether attractive or repulsive.  Hence, “gMOD”.

There is also the “iPod” effect.  Like the first generation of digital “e” functions (email, eLearning, eCommerce, etc.), Apple has glommed onto the “i” devices (iPod, iPhone, iMac, etc.) and has defended it vigorously.  So I’ve coined “gMOD” or “gMod” as a way to described gravity-related functions and devices.  Hey, why not?

I also have a logo.  The floating “g” suggests that gravity is modified… even optional!  Enjoy.

g_MOD logo

 

 

earth tech international begins replication study

Theory

Earth Tech International of Austin Texas has <a href=”http://www.earthtech.org/experiments/tajmar/”>begun studies </a>to replicate Dr. Tajmar’s artificial gravity experiments.  ETI is a privately funded research organization dedicated to the exploration of new frontiers in physics.  ETI’s key principal is Dr. Harold Puthoff.

Theory papers: archive abstracts, downloadable papers, background notes can be found HERE.

Experiment papers: archive abstracts and downloadable papers can be found HERE.