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It is a riddle and almost a scandal: If you let a particle travel fast through a landscape of randomly moving round troughs – like a frictionless ball sent through a set of circling, softly rounded “teacups” inserted into the floor (to be seated in for a ride at a country fair) – you will find that it loses speed on average.

This is perplexing because if you invert time before throwing in the ball, the same thing is bound to happen again – since we did not specify the direction of time beforehand in our frictionless fairy’s universe. So the effect depends only on the “hypothesis of molecular chaos” being fulfilled – lack of initial correlations – in Boltzmann’s 19th century parlance. Boltzmann was the first to wonder about this amazing fact – although he looked only at the opposite case of upwards-inverted cups, that is, repulsive particles.

The simplest example does away with fully 2-dimensional interaction. All you need is a light horizontal particle travelling back and forth in a frictionless 1-dimensional closed transparent tube, plus a single attractive, much heavier particle moving slowly up and down in a frictionless transversal 1-dimensional closed transparent tube of its own – towards and away from the middle of the horizontal tube while exerting a Newtonian attractive force on the light fast particle across the common plane. Then the energy-poor fast particle still gets statistically deprived of energy by the energy-rich heavy slow particle in a sort of “energetic capitalism.”

If now the mass of the heavy particle is allowed to go to infinity while its speed and the force exerted by it remain unchanged, we arrive at a periodically forced single-degree-of-freedom Hamiltonian oscillator in the horizontal tube. What could be simpler? But you again get “antidissipation” – a statistical taking-away of kinetic energy from the light fast particle by the heavy slow one.

A first successful numerical simulation was obtained by Klaus Sonnleitner in 2010 – still with a finite mass-ratio and hence with explicit energy conservation. Ramis Movassagh obtained a similar result independently and proved it analytically. Both publications did not yet look at the simpler – purely periodically forced – limiting case just described: A single-degree-of-freedom, periodically forced conservative system. The simplest and oldest paradigm in Poincaréan chaos theory as the source of big news?

If we invert the potential (Newtonian-repulsive rather than Newtonian-attractive), the light particle now gains energy statistically from the heavy guy – in this simplest example of statistical thermodynamics (which the system now turns out to be). Thus, chaos theory becomes the fundament of many-particle physics: both on earth with its almost everywhere repulsive potentials (thermodynamics) and in the cosmos with its almost everywhere attractive potentials (cryodynamics). The essence of two fundamental disciplines – statistical thermodynamics and statistical cryodynamics – is implicit in our periodically forced single-tube horizontal particle. That tube represents the simplest nontrivial example in Hamiltonian dynamics including celestial mechanics, anyhow. But it now reveals two miraculous new properties: “deterministic entropy” generation under repulsive conditions, and “deterministic ectropy” generation under attractive conditions.

I would love to elicit the enthusiasm of young and old chaos aficionados across the planet because this new two-tiered fundamental discipline in physics based on chaos theory is bound to generate many novel implications – from revolutionizing cosmology to taming the fire of the sun down here on earth. There perhaps never existed a more economically and theoretically promising unified discipline. Simple computers suffice for deriving its most important features, almost all still un-harvested.

Another exciting fact: The present proposal will be taken lightly by most everyone in academic physics because Lifeboat is not an anonymously refereed outlet. But many young people on the planet do own computers and will appreciate the liberating truth that “non-anonymous peer review” carries the day – with them at the helm. So, please, join in. I for one was so far unable to extract the really simplest underlying principle: Why is it possible to have a time-directed behavior in a non-time-directed reversible dynamics if that time-directedness does not come from statistics, as everyone believes for the better part of two centuries? What is the real secret? And why does the latter come in two mutually at odds ways? We only have scratched at the surface of chaos so far. Boltzmann used that term in a clairvoyant fashion, did he not? (For J.O.R.)

“Olemach-Theorem”: Angular-momentum Conservation implies a gravitational-redshift proportional Change of Length, Mass and Charge

Otto E. Rossler

Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract

There is a minor revolution going on in general relativity: a “return to the mothers“ – that is, to the “equivalence principle” of Einstein of 1907. Recently the Telemach theorem was described which says that Einstein’s time change T stands not alone (since T, L, M, Ch all change by the same factor or its reciprocal, respectively). Here now, the convergent but trivial-to-derive Olemach theorem is presented. It connects omega (rotation rate), length, mass and charge in a static gravitational field. Angular-momentum conservation alone suffices (plus E = mc² ). The list of implications shows that the “hard core” of general relativity acquires new importance. 5 surprise implications – starting with global constancy of c in general relativity – are pointed out. Young and old physicists are called upon to join in the hunt for the “inevitable fault” in Olemach. (January 31, 2013)

Introduction

“Think simple” is a modern parole (to quote HP). Much as in “ham” radio initiation the “80 meter band playground” is the optimal entry door even if greeted with derision by old hands, so in physics the trivial domain of special relativity’s equivalence principle provides the royal entry portal.

A New Question

The local slowdown of time “downstairs” in gravity is Einstein’s most astounding discovery. It follows from special relativity in the presence of constant acceleration – provided the acceleration covers a vertically extended domain. Einstein’s famous long rocketship with its continually thrusting boosters presents a perennially fertile playground for the mind. This “equivalence principle” [1] was “the happiest thought of my life” as he always claimed.

To date no one doubts any more [2,3] the surprise finding that time is slowed-down downstairs compared to upstairs. The original reason given by Einstein [1] was that all signal sequences sent upwards arrive there with enlarged temporal intervals since the rocketship’s nose has picked up a constant relative departing speed during the finite travel time of the signal from the bottom up. Famous measurements, starting in 1959 and culminating in the daily operation of the Global Positioning System, abundantly confirm Einstein’s seemingly absurd purely mentally deduced prediction. From this hard-won 1907 insight, he would later derive his “general theory of relativity.” The latter remains an intricate edifice up to this day of which not all corners are understood as of yet. For example, many mathematically allowed but unphysical transformations got appended over the years. And a well-paved road running to the right and left of the canonical winded thread is still wanting. For example, the attempt begun by Einstein’s assistant Cornelius Lanczos in 1929 to build a bridge toward Clifford’s older differential-geometric approach [4] remains unconsummated.

In an “impasse-type” situation like this it is sometimes a good strategy to go “back to the mothers” in Goethe’s words, that is, to the early days when everything was still simple and fresh in its unfamiliarity. Do there perhaps exist one or two “direct corollaries” to Einstein’s happiest thought that are likewise bound to remain valid in any later more advanced theory?

A starting point for the hunt is angular-momentum conservation. Angular momentum enjoys an undeservedly low status in general relativity Emmy Noether’s genius notwithstanding. It therefore is a legitimate challenge to be asked to check what happens when angular momentum is “explicitly assumed to be conserved” in Einstein’s long rocketship where all clocks are known to be “tired” in their ticking rate at more downstairs positions in a locally imperceptible fashion. This question appears to be new. In the following, an attempt is made to check how the conservation of angular momentum which is a well-known fact in special relativity manifests itself in the special case of Einstein’s equivalence principle.

Olemach Theorem

To find the answer, a simple thought experiment suggests itself. A frictionless, strictly horizontally rotating bicycle wheel (with its mass ideally concentrated in the rim) is assumed to be suspended at its hub from a rope – so it can be lowered reversibly from the tip to the bottom in our constantly accelerating long rocketship (or else in gravity). Imagine the famous experimentalist Walter Lewin would make this wheel the subject of one of his enlightened M.I.T. lectures distributed on the Internet. The precision of the measurements performed would have to be ideal. What is it that can be predicted?

The law of “angular momentum conservation under planar rotation reads (if a sufficiently slow “nonrelativistic” rotation speed is assumed) according to any textbook like Tipler’s: “angular momentum = rotation rate times mass times radius-squared = constant” or, written in symbols,

J = ω m r² = const. (1)

From the above-quoted paper by Einstein we learn that omega differs across height levels, in a locally imperceptible fashion, being lower downstairs [1]. This is so because a frictionless wheel in planar rotation represents an admissible realization of a “ticking” clock (you can record ticks from a pointer attached to the rim). Then the height-dependent factor which reduces the ticking rate downstairs (explicitly written down by Einstein [1]) can be called K . At the tip, K = 1 , but K > 1 and increasing as one slowly (“adiabatically”) lowers the constantly rotating wheel to a deeper level [1]. Note that K can approach infinity in principle (as when the famous “Rindler rocketship,” with its many independently boosting hollow “rocket rings” that stay together without links, approaches the length of about one light year – if this technical aside is allowed).

The present example is quite refined in its maximum simplicity. What is it that the watching students will learn? If it is true that angular momentum J stays constant despite the fact that the rotation rate ω is reduced downstairs by the Einstein clock slowdown factor K , then necessarily either m or r or both must be altered downstairs besides ω , if J is to stay constant in accordance with Eq.(1).
While infinitely many nonlinear change laws for r and m are envisionable in compensation for the change in ω , the simplest “linear” law keeping angular momentum J unchanged in Eq.(1) reads:

ω’ = ω/K
r’ = r K
m’ = m/K (2)
q’ = q/K .

Here the fourth line was added “for completeness” due to the fact that the local ratio m/q – rest mass-over-charge – is a universal constant in nature in every inertial frame, with a characteristic universal value for every kind of particle. (Note that any particle on the rim can be freshly released into free fall and then retrieved with impunity, so that the universal ratio remains valid.) The unprimed variables on the right refer to the upper-level situation (K = 1) while the primed variables on the left pertain to a given lower floor, with K monotonically increasing toward the bottom as quantitatively indicated by Einstein [1].

How can we understand Eq.(2)? The first line, with ω replaced by the proportional ticking rate t of an ordinary local clock (Einstein’s original result), yields an equivalent law that reads

t’ = t/K ‚ (2a)

with the other three lines of Eq.(2) remaing unchanged. The corresponding 4-liner was described recently under the name “Telemach” (acronym for Time, Length, Mass and Charge). Telemach possessed a fairly complicated derivation [5]. The new law, Eq.(2), has the asset that its validity can be derived directly from Eq.(1).

The prediction made by the conservation law of Eq.(1) is that any change in ω automatically entails a change in r and/or m . There obviously exist infinitely many quantitative ways to ensure the constancy of J in Eq.(1) for our two-dimensionally rotating frictionless wheel. For example, when for the fun of it we keep m constant while letting only r change, the second line of Eq.(2) is bound to read r’ = r K^½ (followed by m’ = m and q’ = q ). Infinitely many other guessed schemes are possible. Eq.(2) has the asset of being “simpler” since all change ratios are linear in K. So the change law does not depend on height; only in this linear way can grotesque consequences like divergent behavior of one variable be avoided.

Now the serious part. We start out with the third line of Eq.(2). We already know from Einstein’s paper [1] that the local photon frequency (and hence the photon mass-energy) scales linearly with 1/K . Photon mass-energy therefore necessarily obeys the third line of Eq.(2). If this is true, we can recall that according to quantum electrodynamics, photons and particles are locally inter-transformable. Einstein would not have disagreed in 1907 already. A famous everyday example known from PET scans is positronium creation and annihilation. In this special case, two 511 kilo-electron-Volt photons turn into – prove equivalent to – one positron plus one electron, in every local frame. Therefore we can be sure that the third line of Eq.(2) indeed represents an indubitable fact in modern physics, a fact which Einstein would have eagerly embraced.

The remaing second line of Eq.(2) could be explained by quantum mechanics as well (as done in ref. [5]). However, this is edundant now since once the third line of Eq.(2) is accepted, the second line is fixed via Eq.(1). The fourth line follows from the third as already stated. Hence we are finished proving the correctness of the new law of Eq.(2).

How to call it? Olemach is a variant of “Oremaq” (which at first sight is a more natural acronym for the law of Eq.(2) in view of its four left-hand sides. But the closeness in content of Eq.(2) to Telemach [4], in which length was termed L and charge termed Ch, lets the matching abbreviation “Olemach” appear more natural.

Discussion

A new fundamental equation in physics was proposed: Eq.(2). The new equation teaches us a new fact about nature: In the accelerating rocket-ship of the young Einstein as well as in general relativity proper under “ordinary conditions” (yet to be specified in detail), angular momentum conservation plays a previously underestimated – new – role.

The most important implication of the law of Eq.(2) no doubt is the fact that the speed of light, c , has become a “global constant” in the equivalence principle. Note that the first two lines of Eq.(2) can be written

T’ = TK
r’ = rK , (2b)

with T = 1/ω and T‘ = 1/ ω‘ . One sees that r’/T’ = r/T . Therefore c-upstairs = c-downstairs = c at all heights (up to the uppermost level of an infinitely long Rindler rocket with c = c-universal at its tip). Thus

c = globally constant. (3)

This result follows from the “linear” structure of Eq.(2). The global constancy of c had been given up explicitly by Einstein in the quoted 1907 paper [1]. (This maximally painful fact was presumably the reason why Einstein could not touch the topic of gravitation again for 4 years until his visiting close friend Ehrenfest helped him re-enter the pond through engulfing him in an irresistible discussion about his rotating-disk problem.) In recompense for the new global constancy of c , it is now m and q that inherit the former underprivileged role of c by being “only locally but not globally constant.” It goes without saying that there are far-reaching tertiary implications (cf. [5]).

The second-most-important point is the already mentioned fact that charge q is no longer conserved in physics in the wake of the fourth line of Eq.(2), after an uninterrupted reign of almost two centuries. This result is the most unbelievable new fact. A first direct physical implication is that the charge of neutron stars needs to be re-calculated in view of the “order-of-unity” gravitational redshift z = K – 1 valid on their surface. Since K thus is almost equal to 2 on this surface, the charge of neutron stars is reduced by a factor of almost 2. Even more strikingly, the electrical properties of quasars (including mini-quasars) are radically altered so that a renewed modeling attempt is mandatory.

Thirdly, a topological new consequence of Eq.(2): “Stretching” is now found added to “curvature” as an equally fundamental differential-geometric feature of nature valid in the equivalence principle and, by implication, in general relativity. Recall that r goes to infinity in parallel with K , in the second line of Eq.(2) when K does so. This new qualitative finding is in accordance with Clifford’s early intuition. While an arbitrarily strong curvature remains valid near the horizon of a black hole where K diverges, the singular curvature is now accompanied by an equally singular (infinite) stretching of r . Thus a novel type of “volume conservation” (more precisely speaking: “conservation of the curvature-over-stretching ratio”) becomes definable in general relativity, in the wake of Eq.(2).

A fourth major consequence is that some traditional historical additions to general relativity cease to hold true if Olemach (or Telemach) is valid. This “tree-trimming” affects previously accepted combinations of general relativity with electrodynamics. In particular, the famous Reissner-Nordström solution loses its physical validity in the wake of Eq.(2). The simple reason: charge is no longer a global invariant. Surprise further implications (like a mandatory unchargedness of black holes) follow. The beautiful mass-ejecting and charge-spitting and electricity and magnetism generating, features of active quasars acquire a radically new interpretation worth to be worked out.

As a fifth point, the mathematically beautiful “Kerr metric” when used as a description of a rotating black hole loses its physical validity by virtue of the second line of Eq.(2). The new infinite distance to the horizon valid from the outside is one reason. More importantly, the effective zero rotation rate at the horizon of a seen from the outside fast-rotating black hole necessitates the formation of a topological “Reeb foliation in space-time” encircling every rotating black hole, as well as (in unfinished form) any of its never quite finished precursors [6].

There appear to be further first-magnitude consequences of the law of angular-momentum conservation (Eq.1), applied in the equivalence principle and its general-relativistic extensions. So the second line of Eq.(2) implies, via the new global constancy of c , that gravitational waves no longer exist [5]. On the other hand, temporal changes of a gravitational potential, for example through the passing-by of a celestial body, do of course remain valid and must somehow be propagated with the speed of light. (This problem is mathematically unsolved in the context of Sudarshan’s “no interaction theorem.”) These two cases can now be confused no longer.

At this point cosmology deserves to be mentioned. The new equal rights of curving and stretching (“Yin and Yang”) suggest that only asymptotically flat solutions remain available in cosmology in the very large – a suggestion already due to Clifford as mentioned [4]. If Olemach implies that a “big bang” (based on a non-volume preserving version of general relativity) is ruled out mathematically, this new fact has tangible consequences. Recently, 24 “ad-hoc assumptions” implicit in the standard model of cosmology were collected [7]. Further new developments in the wake of an improved understanding of the role played by angular-momentum conservation in the equivalence principle, general relativity and cosmology are to be expected.

To conclude, a new big vista opens itself up when the law of angular momentum conservation is indeed valid in the equivalence principle of special relativity of 1907. An inconspicuous “linear law” (Eq.2), re-affirming the role of Einstein’s happiest thought, imposes as the natural “80-meter band” of physics” – or does it not?

Credit Due

The above result goes back to an inconspicuous abstract published in 2003 [8] and a maximally unassuming dissertation written in its wake [9].

Acknowledgment

I thank Ali Sanayei, Frank Kuske and Roland Wais for discussions. For J.O.R.

References

[1] A. Einstein, On the relativity principle and the conclusions drawn from it (in German). Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität 4, 411–462 (1907), p. 458; English translation: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/GR&Grav_2007/pdf/Einstein_1907.pdf , p. 306.

[2] M.A. Hohensee, S. Chu, A. Peters and H. Müller, Equivalence principle and gravitational redshift. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 151102 (2011). http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v106/i15/e151102

[3] C. Lämmerzahl, The equivalence principle. MICROSCOPE Colloquium, Paris, September 19, 2011. http://gram.oca.eu/Ressources_doc/EP_Colloquium_2011/2%20C%20Lammerzahl.pdf

[4] C. Lanczos, Space through the Ages: The Evolution of geometric Ideas from Pythagoras to Hilbert and Einstein. New York: Academic Press 1970, p. 222. (Abstract on p. 4 of: http://imamat.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/1/local/back-matter.pdf )

[5] O.E. Rossler, Einstein’s equivalence principle has three further implications besides affecting time: T-L-M-Ch theorem (“Telemach”). African Journal of Mathematics and Computer Science Research 5, 44-47 (2012), http://www.academicjournals.org/ajmcsr/PDF/pdf2012/Feb/9%20Feb/Rossler.pdf

[6] O.E. Rossler, Does the Kerr solution support the new “anchored rotating Reeb foliation” of Fröhlich? (25 January 2012). https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/01/does-the-kerr-solution-support-the-new-anchored-rotating-reeb-foliation-of-frohlich
[7] O.E. Rossler, Cosmos-21: Twenty-four violations of Occam’s razor healed by statistica mechanics. (Submitted.)

[8] H. Kuypers, O.E. Rossler and P. Bosetti, Matterwave-Doppler effect, a new implication of Planck’s formula (in German). Wechselwirkung 25 (No. 120), 26–27 (2003).

[9] H. Kuypers, Atoms in the gravitational field according to the de-Broglie-Schrödinger theory: Heuristic hints at a mass and size change (in German). PhD thesis, submitted to the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Faculty of the University of Tubingen 2005.

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For those in Colorado who are interested in attending a talk by John Troeltzsch, Sentinel Ball Program Manager, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. please R.S.V.P Chris Zeller ([email protected]) by Tuesday, 26 February 2013 for badge access. US citizenship required.

6:00 pm Thursday, February 28th 2013
6:00 pm Social, 6:30 pm Program
Ball Aerospace Boulder Campus RA7 Conference Room
1600 Commerce St
Boulder, CO 80301

It will be good to see you there.

About the Talk:
The inner solar system is populated with a half million asteroids larger than the one that struck Tunguska and yet we’ve identified and mapped only about one percent of these asteroids to date.

This month’s program will introduce the B612 Foundation and the first privately funded deep space mission–a space telescope designed to discover and track Near Earth Objects (NEO). This dynamic map of NEOs will provide the blueprint for future exploration of our Solar System, enabling potential astronaut missions and protection of the future of life on Earth.

The B612 Foundation is a California 501©(3) non-profit, private foundation dedicated to protecting the Earth from asteroid strikes. Its founding members Rusty Schweickart, Clark Chapman, Piet Hut, and Ed Lu established the foundation in 2002 with the goal of significantly altering the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner.

The B612 Foundation is working with Ball Aerospace, Boulder, CO, which is designing and building the Sentinel Infrared (IR) Space Telescope with the same expert team that developed the Spitzer and Kepler Space Telescopes. It will take approximately five years to complete development and testing to be ready for launch in 2017–2018.

About John Troeltzsch:
John Troeltzsch is the Sentinel mission program manager for Ball Aerospace. Troeltzsch received his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado in 1983 and was immediately hired by Ball Aerospace. While working at Ball, Troeltzsch continued his studies at C.U. and received his Masters of Science in Aerospace Engineering in 1989. He has been a member of AIAA for over 30 years. During his 29 years at Ball Aerospace, Troeltzsch has worked on three of Hubble’s science instruments and in program management for the Spitzer Space Telescope. Following Spitzer’s launch in 2003, Troeltzsch joined Ball’s Kepler team and was named program manager in 2007. For the Kepler mission, Troeltzsch has managed the Ball team, including responsibility for cost, schedule, and performance requirements.

Link to pdf copy of invitation, http://www.iseti.us/pdf/AIAA-Sentinel-Feb.pdf

A Revolution in Physics and Cosmology

by Otto E. Rossler, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tubingen, Germany

A deterministic 2-particle system interacting with a fixed third particle (the wall of a confining T-tube) shows two kinds of behavior never seen in a deterministic system before: Dissipative and antididissipative behavior in both directions of time (dependent on the sign of the force law). Dissipative behavior occurs in both directions of time when the system is started from non-selected far-from-equipartition initial conditions while the potential (giving rise to the force law) is Newtonian–repulsive. Antidissipative behavior occurs (in both directions of time) when the system is started from non-selected far-from-equipartition initial conditions while the potential is Newtonian–attractive.

“Entropic” behavior had not been demonstrated before in a deterministic system. Now, both “entropic” and “ectropic” behavior are described under deterministic-chaos conditions. The numerical simulations are due to Klaus Sonnleitner (2010) and, independently, Ramis Movassagh (2011) who also provided an analytical derivation.

The “ectropic” behavior valid under attractive conditions gives rise to a new statistical mechanics besides thermodynamics, called cryodynamics. This new discipline governs the cosmos at large but at the same time has down-to-earth applications. It enables dynamically controlled hot fusion.

The described two facts are exciting. Whereas thermodynamics with its characteristic entropy production exists for the better part of two centuries, the sister discipline is a recent surprise new discovery. It enables an eternally recycling cosmos in the way anticipated by Heraclitus.

Theoretical and young physicists are invited to participate in the further development of cryodynamics. A book as big as detailed thermodynamics texts can be expected to be written. A second “machine age” is probably preprogrammed.

An empirically confirmable deterministic universe that shows both dissipation and anti-dissipation on two different size scales, the micro and the macro scale, is an exciting prospect. It gives you a whole new feeling at being honored to be a member of the universe.

My fear is that no one will believe that chaos theory is that powerful (Hamiltonian chaos theory was discovered by Poincaré toward the end of the 19th century). And that Newton and Einstein (there is no difference in this context) could win another prize of first magnitude.

I thank Christophe Letellier and Ali Sanayei for discussions. For J.O.R.

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

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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.