Posted on 02/11/2006 4:31:06 PM PST by PatrickHenry
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light.
New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts.
Felber's antigravity discovery solves the two greatest engineering challenges to space travel near the speed of light: identifying an energy source capable of producing the acceleration; and limiting stresses on humans and equipment during rapid acceleration.
"Dr. Felber's research will revolutionize space flight mechanics by offering an entirely new way to send spacecraft into flight," said Dr. Eric Davis, Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin and STAIF peer reviewer of Felber's work. "His rigorously tested and truly unique thinking has taken us a huge step forward in making near-speed-of-light space travel safe, possible, and much less costly."
The field equation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has never before been solved to calculate the gravitational field of a mass moving close to the speed of light. Felber's research shows that any mass moving faster than 57.7 percent of the speed of light will gravitationally repel other masses lying within a narrow 'antigravity beam' in front of it. The closer a mass gets to the speed of light, the stronger its 'antigravity beam' becomes.
Felber's calculations show how to use the repulsion of a body speeding through space to provide the enormous energy needed to accelerate massive payloads quickly with negligible stress. The new solution of Einstein's field equation shows that the payload would 'fall weightlessly' in an antigravity beam even as it was accelerated close to the speed of light.
Accelerating a 1-ton payload to 90 percent of the speed of light requires an energy of at least 30 billion tons of TNT. In the 'antigravity beam' of a speeding star, a payload would draw its energy from the antigravity force of the much more massive star. In effect, the payload would be hitching a ride on a star.
"Based on this research, I expect a mission to accelerate a massive payload to a 'good fraction of light speed' will be launched before the end of this century," said Dr. Felber. "These antigravity solutions of Einstein's theory can change our view of our ability to travel to the far reaches of our universe."
More immediately, Felber's new solution can be used to test Einstein's theory of gravity at low cost in a storage-ring laboratory facility by detecting antigravity in the unexplored regime of near-speed-of-light velocities.
During his 30-year career, Dr. Felber has led physics research and development programs for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Department of Energy and Department of Transportation, the National Institute of Justice, National Institutes of Health, and national laboratories. Dr. Felber is Vice President and Co-founder of Starmark.
Source: Starmark [Felber's own firm, apparently]
Beats me.
If that's the downside, well I guess I could live with it.
"Einstein rejected a 5-dimensional solution because it didn't feel right..."
Let's not forget, Einstein also rejected the cosmological constant and the expansion of the universe...I think he felt it didn't feel right either.
Later he claimed it was his biggest mistake...
Dang! I was hoping to hear of the solution this year!
Cheers!
1 |
It's not just a good idea...
It's ze Law!
L
Rotate the narrow-angle tractor beam to the rear so it exerts braking force.
Here's hint: notice the style of the writing. This reads more like somebody trying to sell you a new car with a fancy new transmission technology than it does a serious science discovery.
That alone pegs my bullshit detector.
Additionally, as you've already pointed out, particle accelerators routinely accelerate particles well past 0.577c, so this effect should have already been seen in the lab for years if it were true.
And lastly, didn't "Physicist" post something a while back that basically showed that if you could "counter" the effect of gravity, then in principle you can build a perpetual motion machine to do useful work for free, which is to say it violates energy conservation.
But that's just my layman's take; I'll way for the big guns to weigh in on this.
Why, you simply have to put on the brakes, to slow down from Ludicrous Speed.
It's a narrow beam projecting in front of you. So, to get the star in the beam, you essentially have to tell your spaceship to fly right through the star, or something close to that.
Felber me up Franklin just doesn't have that ring...yet.
mc
d'oh.
Captain: 'Full Felber ahead, Mate!'
Mate: 'Aye, Captain...but she cawn't take much more. She's gonna blow!!'
It's a press release, and apparently it's from Felber himself. I hope he's not jumping the gun and doing a "cold fusion" act. We shall see.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. There have been confirmation experiments since 1919 that have validated general relativity. The modern confirmation experiments tend to be more on the order of determining if general relativity is still accurate to some insane number of decimal places (similar to the experiments with QED). Physicists generally hope that there is a bump or an error in their measurements because it means that the theory is not completely refined, therefore giving them something to do! It may come to be that there is a certain range of velocities or masses at which GR does not follow observations (and physicists certainly hope this is the case!), but then it will be put in a similar place as Newtonian mechanics--valid over only a certain range.
Ping
This is simply unacceptable. I want my anti-gravity NOW. No excuses.
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