[extropy-chat] New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century

[Robert Bradbury]

On 2/11/06, Jonathan Despres <jonano at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What a great news! Oh la la !


No its not...

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.
>
> http://www.physorg.com/news10789.html


The relevant papers in ArXiv are:
gr-qc/0505099<http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0505099>and
gr-qc/0505098 <http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0505098>

[Disclaimer: most of the math in the papers is beyond my capabilities.]

However, it appears that even in the physorg article they point out that you
have to have the mass performing the acceleration going at 57.7% (the 3^-1/2
number in the abstracts) of the speed of light to get the repulsive
acceleration.  The mass being accelerated also has to be in a relatively
narrow acceleration cone in front of the mass performing the acceleration
(think of it as surfing on a wave).

Now, yes, in particle accelerators we probably have particles going at
57.7%the speed of light and the theory could be tested in them.  But
nowhere do I
see anything addressing how to get a relatively large mass up to 57.7% the
speed of light and I presume that a proton or electron beam hardly has the
mass sufficient to generate a field which could accelerate something like a
human body (or even a small (few kg) interstellar probe).

So as far as I can tell its a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing from
a practical standpoint.  The news releases on this seem to contain a large
component of hype and relatively little understanding of the physics.

Robert
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