Superluminal

I was reading the AAS updates at the Bad Astronomy blog and came across this entry on Heim Quantum Theory for propulsion. I haven't read the paper yet, so I can't comment a curosry glance makes me highly skeptical.

Red Flags:
violates conventional conservation of momentum
proposes "new physics" which has not been observed yet
brings 2 new concepts in one paper (as opposed to the more traditional way of one breakthrough per paper)
new terms for new physics
renames existing terms or older physics
posits existance of parallel universe with covarient physics (2 assumptions there)


Ideas to which I am sympathetic:
quantized space

The basic idea is to create a vaccum pair with one partner having an interaction with baryonic matter and the other having a vanishingly small cross section for itneraction. This would have the net effect of transfering momentum to the baryons but leaving overall universal momentum seemingly conserved. It's a clever variation of Hawking Radiation, but it's not clear that any gravitophoton pair product would actually have this property. If it were true, I would expect to see something similar at higher energy with axion production which has not (to my knowledge) been observed.

Still, it's clever.


Update: I've read it twice now. A lot of the bits are correct on their own, I just don't know that they form a coherent framework. It's like a wall where each brick is solid, but upon closer inspection the wall is held together by vanilla frosting instead of mortor. There are a number of leaps between various ideas here, but I don't think it's overall correct.

It could be:
a) a sophisticated joke
b) a troll
c) the legitimate end product of a creative but slightly flawed piece of reasoning, each step moving a little further out on the branch of implausibilty
d) a paper written by a brilliant couple of guys at the end of a truely legendary bender.

Don't know. I'll read it again. I happen to have most of their references in my library and can check up on some of the middle pieces.

My hat's off to these boys. I may steal this bit for the propulsion mechanism in Looking Backwards. My ideas were a little along these lines, but nowhere near this detailed.