Hyperspace Drive? Another Dimension?

From Defense Tech.org :

Real-Life Hyperspace Drive?

Are you ready to make the jump to hyperspace? A controversial paper, outling a "motor [that] would propel a craft through another dimension at enormous speeds" is making waves in military and scientific circles, New Scientist reports. "It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon in time for dinner. There's just one catch: the idea relies on an obscure and largely unrecognised kind of physics."

The Scotsman notes that...
The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft."

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.

Professor Jochem Hauser, one of the scientists who put forward the idea, told The Scotsman that... "NASA have contacted me and next week I'm going to see someone from the [US] air force to talk about it further, but it is at a very early stage. I think the best-case scenario would be within the next five years [to build a test device] if the technology works."

Sandia National Laboratories, in New Mexico, "runs an X-ray generator known as the Z machine" which might be able to test some of the basic science behind Hauser's theories, New Scientist observes.

For now, though, [Sandia space scientist Roger] Lenard considers the theory too shaky to justify the use of the Z machine. "I would be very interested in getting Sandia interested if we could get a more perspicacious introduction to the mathematics behind the proposed experiment," he says. "Even if the results are negative, that, in my mind, is a successful experiment."

(Big ups: DS)
January 5, 2006 01:55 PM Space

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