Heim Theory

[TheFaithfulStone]

So, I was reading this BS article on Slashdot about the hyperdrive, and this thing called "Heim Theory", which is basically a unified quantum field theory. Using Heim theory it's possible to calculate the the masses of elementary particles with only four free parameters, and observations basically (but not perfectly) mesh with the predicted values.

Cool. It also predicts quintessence, or some kind of "anti-grav" force like dark energy, something not unlike the "branes" of m-theory, and some particularly odd little particle called a "graviphoton" which links the EM and gravitational forces. Odd.

Of course, I don't buy for a second that this enables hyperdrive (some BS about "entering other dimensions") but it's predictions of mass seem pretty interesting, especially as my limited understanding of the Standard Model says it's mass predicitions aren't nessecarily any MORE accurate. (Plus that free parameters thing....)

Anyway, my point being is that this doesn't seem any MORE bullshitty than string theory, or any MORE mathematically complex than M-theory, and yet everyone whose qualified to judge these things says it quackery. Of course, it's testable quackery.

Somebody with a better handle on Heim theory wanna explain why it's crud? I'm having a difficult time saying it's not better science than commonly accepted, but untestable or unfound things like M-Theory and the Higgs Boson.

Gracias,
TFS

[TheFaithfulStone]

Crap, I'm a fool. I've posted this twice. How do I get rid of one of them?

[infamous]

Originally Posted by TheFaithfulStone

Anyway, my point being is that this doesn't seem any MORE bullshitty than string theory, or any MORE mathematically complex than M-theory, and yet everyone whose qualified to judge these things says it quackery. Of course, it's testable quackery.

Somebody with a better handle on Heim theory wanna explain why it's crud? I'm having a difficult time saying it's not better science than commonly accepted, but untestable or unfound things like M-Theory and the Higgs Boson.

Gracias,
TFS

By no means do my credentials demand the undivided attention of present scientific authority. Never-the-less, I have been spending some time trying to digest the aspects of this theory and I personally find it quite interesting. Early in the study of Physics, science viewed the divisability of matter to be infinite, not until the notion came along that there might be a limit to it's divisability did the idea of the atom surface. Today, we now know that even the atom can be divided into various constituent parts. Wether we have reached the finite limit yet remains to be seen, but none the less, we have conceded to the notion that there must indeed be a limit. There are even a few scientists that believe there exists a finite quantum of time. Wether this is true or not is not the purpose of this critique. My purpose is only to suggest that; If it is imaginable to find a finite limit for mass and energy and also time, is it not also possible that the very strutcture of space is also finite in nature? Heim Theory is proposing that space itself is divisable into finite capsules of 6 dimensional character. I find this a very refreshing and interesting approach to understanding the Fabric of Space-Time.

[Turtle]

___Infy brought this to my attention as he knows I like my Perfect Numbers & Six is here to termpt me. I found the following link with an abstrat of Heim Theory:
http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/A_Abstract.pdf

More reading to do!

[TheFaithfulStone]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___Infy brought this to my attention as he knows I like my Perfect Numbers & Six is here to termpt me. I found the following link with an abstrat of Heim Theory:
http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/A_Abstract.pdf

More reading to do!

Yeah, that was full of a lot of calculus I didn't understand. My original point was that I didn't understand why the Heim Theory get relegated to the "crackpot theory" page. It makes reasonable predictions for the masses of all subatomic particles - they aren't any farther off than the ones made by the Standard Model for the W and Z Bosons (at least to my untrained eye.) It has some of the niceties of string theory, in that it basically describes the world as a collection of interacting subatomic (in this case planck-scale) "strings" or "metrons." It doesn't require Higgs Boson, althought it does require neutral electron (neither found, yet.)

Basically, to me, this doesn't seem any MORE off that M-theory, or string theory, or LQG, or Standard Model but it has the added property that you could test it and find out. Heim theory makes a prediction about "gravi-photons" or some such that you ought to be able to set up an experiment to detect. As far as I am aware no one has done this experiment. String theory doesn't have this benefit, and Standard Model would have us all floating around, as it can't explain gravity (a fairly gaping hole.)

So why is this quackery? It seems like it ties everything up pretty neatly, and the insight itself is pretty simple. (All matter is the interaction of six dimensional "vibrations" of the structure of space-time itself. Vibrations in different dimensions produce different particles.) Plus (and I keep coming back to this) there's an experiment you can do....

So, what makes this junk science and Edward Witten the most brilliant physicist alive today? What am I missing?

TFS

[styryx]

I can see why Heim theory isn't well known based on the history of it's creator. However, writing general relativity in quantum mechanical terms and assuming ALL forces result from some gravitational force (this is what we want in a Grand Unified Theory) seems like an obvious thing to do, i was more surprised people hadn't tried this before.

I don't think hyperspace travel is any more possible than getting a moving picture in a box, or the world being round! Thanks to star trek we now have a generation of physicists with some REALLY ambitious goals, don't forget we already have some teleportation technology!

As for Heim theory being 'crackpot'. Maybe a little, but no-one understood relativity for many, many years. The chances of any theory getting an accurate prediction for masses by luck is 1 in 1000(with 61 more 0's). Now i don't believe in coincidence, and i've never won the 1 in 14mill lottery!

According to one scientific magazine (i think physics world) a good theory should be able to explain results from the field, be testable, and IDEALLY make predictions which can be tested. This is Heim theory, it IS a good theory, and needs to be tested. If it fails then oh well, back to the whiteboard, we've lost nothing. But if it suceeds it will be the biggest technological and scientific breakthrough of the human race so far. This explains why people could be scared of it.

No experiment has been conducted, from what i've read, i am led to believe that there is one devised but no-one is funding it. But with Heim theory getting a LOT of attention recently, i think the science community is going to be looking at and testing it soon. Well, they should!

[TheFaithfulStone]

Originally Posted by styryx

I don't think hyperspace travel is any more possible than getting a moving picture in a box, or the world being round! Thanks to star trek we now

I assume you meant "impossible?"

Heim Theory strikes me as conceptually similar to M-Theory, with the added bonus of not requiring a Higgs Boson, and explainting "dark energy", quintessence, whatever. (But it also requires a neutral electron and posits something that is frankly, to good to be true.(Graviphotons and hyperspace.))

What does it say about my view of science that any science that may mean we're not all doomed to die and stuck here for eternity is obviously false?

TFS

[styryx]

I did mean possible, it was in the context of previous 'impossible' scientific theories. And also a lil bit ironic

"But it also requires a neutral electron"
This may not be true, Heim theory altough having been around for like 50 years is still in it's infancy, as far as a theory can be considered. The selection rules for the predicted particles are not yet fully complete, the completed theory may not allow for a neutral electron.

I think the theory is fascinating, and bloody well deserves at least a shot. No need to penalise (haha) an alternative, unconventional and testable theory in my opinion. After all, M theory was accidentally found to give a result which could be the graviton, Heim predicts gravitons and a shed load of known particle masses. I am a scientist and a sceptic, but prima facie Heim theory makes more sense than string theory, i think the two could almost be analogous in many ways.

I have yet to hear anything of antiparticle allowances, anyone know anything about this?

[Total]

I agree with The Faithful Stone, it looks like typical inertia behind the slow up-take of interest in this Heim theory business. Perhaps because I might be less educated than you folks (a mere technology journalist) I feel I've got more questions than I know how to ask... Does Heim-Droscher space (8D) make up for failings in Heim theory (6D), or does it take things further? And does the accuracy of prediction of particle masses in ground or excited states blow Heisenberg's uncertainty principle out of the water?

I have to admit, the BS alarm went off big time at the prospect of being mysteriously 'propelled into a multidimensional hyperspace'. 'Hazy about the details'???

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by infamous

By no means do my credentials demand the undivided attention of present scientific authority. ...to suggest that; If it is imaginable to find a finite limit for mass and energy and also time, is it not also possible that the very strutcture of space is also finite in nature? ...

When I wuz a wet-behind-the-ears engineer in 1973, I visited the Texas Instruments library and found a book on particle physics that I just "had" to read. It spoke of a particular meson as the shortest lived phenomenon as yet measured, and gave a "lifetime" of ... (very short!!!). Later, it talked about the electron and said that if it had any material size at all (that was interesting!!!) then its diameter was the smallest "distance" ever measured and could be no larger than ... (very small!!!).

Idly, I divided the smallest distance by the smallest lifetime and got the Speed of Light to three decimal places.

(Hugely interesting!!!) In later years I was to discover the Plank Distance and the Plank Time, which were very close to the those measurements made above, and which when divided by each other, yield c exactly. By then I had already become a firm believer that Space and Time are quantized.

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