Flat Spacers & Space-Time Twisters

"I looked through this stuff ... completely crackpot, as far as I can see," theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss told me in an e-mail early today. He said he found the New Scientist report "irresponsible in the extreme ... they did not interview any real particle physicists, nor talk about the fact that the theory appears to have no real quantum field theory in it."

Case Western Reserve University's Krauss is familiar with the frontiers of physics — and science fiction — as the author of books ranging from "The Physics of Star Trek" to "Hiding in the Mirror," his recently published page-turner on extra dimensions in cosmology and popular culture. Another book by Krauss, "Quintessence," is even among the works cited in one of the papers by Austrian theorist Walter Dröscher and German physicist Jochem Häuser.

In that paper, Dröscher and Häuser suggest that the theory they set forth, based on decades of work by the late German physicist Burkhard Heim, could be tested in the high-energy setting of Sandia National Laboratory's Z Machine. And indeed, New Scientist quotes Sandia researcher Roger Lenard as saying he might be "interested in getting Sandia interested if we could get a more perspicacious introduction to the mathematics behind the proposed experiment."

My efforts to contact Lenard on Friday were unsuccessful, but I know he's a guy willing to give more of a hearing to unorthodox ideas such as interstellar travel (and anti-Darwinism, but that's another story).

In any case, Sandia spokesman Neal Singer told me "it's unlikely that the Z Machine could play a part." Every high-energy "shot" from the federally funded Z Machine costs $100,000, and it might take 10 or 20 shots to build up enough data for an experiment, he said. Right now, it's not even clear how to design an experiment to test Heim quantum theory. "I don't think there's enough certainty to this" to justify the attention and expense, Singer said.

Lots of projects are competing for time on the Z Machine, with the top priority given to the federal government's nuclear-weapons simulations. Other Z Machine projects focus on inertial-confinement fusion energy and the physics of black holes and neutron stars. Thus, it's hard to imagine tests of Heim quantum theory moving to the front of the line.

It's more likely that findings from Europe's Large Hadron Collider, due to begin operation next year, could sort out the issues that Heim raised in particle physics. In fact, researchers hope that the LHC will help resolve a lot of the far-out ideas on the frontiers of physics...

Well, 2007's a little late but close enough to Titor's worldline for me.