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NewScientist.com

Take a leap into hyperspace

* 05 January 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition
* Haiko Lietz

EVERY year, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
awards prizes for the best papers presented at its annual
conference. Last year's winner in the nuclear and future flight
category went to a paper calling for experimental tests of an
astonishing new type of engine. According to the paper, this
hyperdrive motor would propel a craft through another dimension at
enormous speeds. It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon
in time for dinner. There's just one catch: the idea relies on an
obscure and largely unrecognised kind of physics. Can they possibly be
serious?
.. . .
But can the hyperdrive really get off the ground?

The answer to that question hinges on the work of a little-known
German physicist. Burkhard Heim began to explore the hyperdrive
propulsion concept in the 1950s as a spin-off from his attempts to
heal the biggest divide in physics: the rift between quantum mechanics
and Einstein's general theory of relativity.
.. . .