[extropy-chat] "Hyperdrive Engine Could Let Us Reach Mars in 3 Hours"

[Russell Wallace]

Heim's theory of quantum gravity, of which there was a brief flurry of
discussion awhile back. I don't understand the theory itself of course -
apparently professional physicists don't understand it either - but the
following is what I picked up back then:

Apparently the theory predicts the masses of the fundamental particles and
this is its main claim to fame.
This strikes me as dubious on anthropic grounds for what that's worth.

Apparently it predicts a neutral electron. The neutrino could be regarded as
such, but I gather from context that this is supposed to have the same mass
as the electron and positron, and no such particle has been observed.

It's been claimed that the theory predicts the masses of the fundamental
particles to greater accuracy than would be allowed by the input data
available in Heim's time, which would indicate there was something fishy
going on.

Analysis is difficult because Heim used some strange nonstandard mathematics
that nobody can really follow.

There was talk about the possibility of testing the theory (which would
obviously be the ideal thing to do, if practical). I don't know what the
story is on that at the moment.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20060925/c18705ad/attachment.html>