Here's my take on what they're doing (I'm not an advocate -- before yesterday I'd never heard of Heim theory). It looks like they're taking the R4 Minkowski space from Einstein and extending it to 8 dimensions. It lets them come up with a set of metrics, for instance for the photon, W bozon, Z boson, graviton, etc. (that is, for the fundamental forces). Apparently the math also lets them come up with additional metrics, for two postulated particles that they have named gravitophotons and quintessense particles, corresponding to two additional postulated fundamental forces.
By manipulating the math it looks like they're expressing the photon metric in terms of the postulated gravitophoton metric. When they do this, it's in the form of a scalar potential, a vector potential, and an additional tensor potential (the scalar and vector potentials are reminiscent of the Lorenz force law we all know and love). The paper attempts to devise an experiment in which most of the terms cancel and only the gravitophoton component remains, which they interpret as a condition where gravitophoton particles dominate in the region of the magnetic field. Because of the properties of the postulated positive and negative gravitophoton particles, they propose that the effect should be a cancellation of the existing (Earth's) gravitational field if the strength of the gravitophoton field force is high enough.
There seems to be lots of hand-waving in the PDF, and I get the impression that a large piece is missing, that is, something detailing the fundamentals of Heim theory. This is really necessary to try to understand what they're claiming is going on, and barring that one is forced to take them on faith. Hopefully they will come out with something comprehensive that starts with basic principles and leads to their conclusions. I did a web search and there is a claim that Heim theory predicts the masses of several subatomic particles to within several decimal places of precision of experimental values, which has apparently never been done elsewhere, so perhaps this theory holds promise.
Looks like they may be on to something.
I'll have to read the PDF. I'd never heard of Hauser before yesterday.
To this day, I still find it funny the Rienmann's metric tensor equations (19th century Math) are being used to solve 21st century physics equations. However, there has been real change on this because physicists are creating some "new" math.
Thirty years ago...it use to be that the mathematicians had
all these mathematic equations as "answers" but no questions for those answers...that was where the Theortical physics and Astrophysics guys came around to provide the questions...And now cosomology is no longer a funny word, and considered a cutting edge field...and finding its way into the Applied Sciences. (Such as building an engine to manipulate quantum space.)
I think there's a lot people wondering..."Geeee why wasn't this thought of before?" The answer to that was...when you're a starving (whether math or various discipline of physics) PHD looking for grant/fellowship/job (at least in the past) such "Hyperspace" endeavors were flights of fancy. As I understand it...that has changed.
If anything...this article has made me want to do a little research into Hiem.
Honestly, I had heard of such efforts before Hauser's work through discussions on VSL.
(HHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA...and everybody loves Lorenz Invariance.)
You have to give NASA credit here. Over a year ago that put out a call to the science community to provide any kind of SWAG for stellar propulsion. And offered dollars to support anything proven credible, which is why you get an ESA guy...going to NASA and the USAF.
I had a chance to talk to Edward Teller before he died, and while he was still lucid...in 1992, his speculation on M-Theory, or unified field theory, was that there would be an answer to it...early in the 21st century. He really liked Witten...though the community as a whole shunned him. The Father of the H-bomb just doesnt bode well with some of the guys, but he was a big "Taking the Theoretical to the Applied Science kind of guy." And that should be admired.