Talk:Burkhard Heim/Archive 1

This is an archived talk page preserved verbatim the date range Nov. 2004 to Apr. 2005. The main talk page is located at Talk:Burkhard Heim. Please post new messages there for discussion, as this page is not being actively monitored. There is also a modified version of this page at Talk:Burkhard Heim/Archive1Modified. The modified page is an abbreviated and substantially edited version of this page.

If the necessity arises where a reference needs to be made to the first of the archived talk pages, this one here (Archive1, not Archive1Modified) should be used as the authoritative resource. The modified version of the old talk page is intended to be used as a quick, general reference for content and information, and not a reference for the thought processes and discussion which occured on this page originally. The intention is that the effort placed in editing the old talk page could result in some material which could be incorporated into the existing Burkhard Heim article. The editing has been done in what is felt to be good faith, and to the best of the ability of the editor(s).

Concerns about image in article
The Heim image was removed "due to a lack of a free license". I contacted Illobrand Von Ludwiger, who said we could use image on p. 51 of the 1st Telepolis print edition, as he took it himself at Spitzingsee in 1985 and already gave permission for it to be reproduced in Telepolis. I will thus try to embed this image - that's a first for me in Wikipedia, so I hope it's not too messy.--hughey 08:14, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

POV Concerns about initial article
At the very least, this article appears to be strongly biased toward one POV: at this point, a claim that someone had succeeded in devising a unified field theory that correctly predicts particle masses would be extraodinarily controversial. (Wikipedia is not a place to debate the merits of scientific theories, but having looked briefly at the external site mentioned in the article, I can confidently say that most physicists would be skeptical of a theory that claimed to predict the masses of protons and neutrons without any apparent attention to the nuclear forces or more than token attention to quarks, to name one of my many concerns.) Given that, some substantial cleanup to make it balanced is clearly needed.

However, I am curious to know the size of the community working on Heim's ideas. The article says that it is "small", and I can certainly attest that I had never heard of him before, nor heard of his particle mass predictions. That makes me suspect that this article falls under the "No original research" policy here on Wikipedia (the article is as much about the theory as its author, and Heim clearly wouldn't belong here if his work didn't). Namely (from that page): I have no idea how commonly followed these ideas are in Germany, but I see no evidence that they have gotten significant attention in the English-speaking world. If that attention increases and these ideas take the world by storm, great! But until that point, I don't think they belong on Wikipedia. (I'll wait a while for comment before doing anything drastic about it, though.)--Steuard 19:46, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
 * If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancilliary article), regardless if it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not.


 * "Burkhard Heim" generates 15,000 google hits, he's obviously notable enough to be included here. It does have a lot of his theories stuck in the article, but I strongly maintain that you can't really seperate a scientist from his theories, it's pretty much their lifeblood.  The only big problem I really see with the article is the POV, which I somewhat tried to get rid of in my cleanup.  I think that article just needs more cleanup than anything. - Lifefeed 20:04, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I must admit that I hadn't done a Google search, though I'm hesitant to set up Google as the arbiter of broad relevance (heck, searching for me gets 4,650 Google hits, and I'm pretty sure that I don't deserve an article here). Also, I note that if you limit the Google search for Heim to results in English, his hit count drops to just 211; I have no idea what the general policy is on such things, but might that make him a better candidate for the German edition of Wikipedia at this point? At any rate, as I indicated above, my main reason for suggesting that he might not be notable enough was my own moderate expertise in this field: folks in the high energy physics community simply don't talk about him, as far as I am aware. But if he has a reasonably broad following among non-experts, I agree that he probably does belong here; the article should be written to emphasize that perspective. (It should also by no means say that he discovered the theory of everything, or even a theory of everything: that would be a strong claim, and those 15,000 Google hits only say that he's known, not that he's right.)--Steuard 19:18, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Also, there are some aspects of the theory that raise suspicions in kookery, like claims that it can mean something towards the explanation of the nature of consciousness. Mikkalai 20:40, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Be careful, though: Wikipedia inclusion decisions are not made on the basis of whether someone is a crackpot or not (that would inevitably lead to accusations of censorship) but rather on the basis of overall notability. From the naive Google counts ("naive" because I've made no attempt to figure out if "Burkhard Heim" is a common name, for example), Heim is reasonably notable among German speakers (and essentially unknown among English speakers). Assuming that those naive results are right, he probably deserves to be mentioned here, but I do think that if he's generally considered to be a crackpot the article should make that abundantly clear. (Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury to spend sufficient professional time to build a convincing argument one way or the other.)--Steuard 21:27, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Discussion over the value of Heim's paper and books
Heim was known to some extent in the English speaking world in the 1950s - Werner von Braun, then prominent in the US space program, contacted Heim on the status of his theory then. Although He was eccentric in avoiding contact with the scientific community, preferring to work alone, he did publish at least once in a recognised physics journal: in the Max Planck Institue for elementary particles (Munich) publication "Zeitschrift fuer Naturforschung":

Heim; B; Vorschlag eines Weges zur einheitlichen Beschreibung der Elementarteilchen; Zeitschrift fuer Naturforschung; 32a; 1977; 233 - 243; Artikel;

There was a very positive response to this article, but unfortunately Heim could not be persuaded to follow it up. There is also a two-volumed book "Elementarstrukturen der Materie" (elementary structures of matter) which gives the theory, in German.

Heim; Burkhard; Elementarstrukturen der Materie; Einheitliche strukturelle Quantenfeldtheorie der Materie und Gravitation; Band 1; Resch Verlag; Innsbruck; 1989; 89: 2. erweiterte; x + 309; ISBN 3853820085;

Heim; Burkhard; Elementarstrukturen der Materie; Einheitliche strukturelle Quantenfeldtheorie der Materie und Gravitation; Band 2; Resch Verlag; Innsbruck; 1984; 96: 2; xii + 385; ISBN 3853820360;

Heim; Burkhard; Droescher, Walter; "Einfuehrung in Burkhard Heim: Elementarstrukturen der Materie; Mit Begriffs und Formelregister"; Resch Verlag; Innsbruck; 1985; 96: 2 verbessert; 149; ISBN 3853820387;

As for the theory omitting the strong force and quarks: this is not entirely true. The reason that Baryons are treated as elementary particles is that they are seen as complex processes with interactions sometimes leading to apparent condensations or thickenings which effect scattering experiments to give the impression of quarks. Thus in Heim theory, this explains why quarks are never seen in isolation - they are viewed as aspects of the internal processess of the Baryons. Remember that the fundamental element of Heim theory is the Metron, of dimension h*h, which makes it smaller than strings, so there is room for much internal structure in realtively large particles such as the baryons.

The community working on Heim theory is indeed rather small, as considerable mathematical experise is needed to make any headway on the theory. Thus at the moment there is a Catch 22 - to get more physicists involved, more publicity is needed. But without their involvement, it is hard to attain publicity. One of the problems with Heim is that he waited so long before showing any results in public. He worked closely with prominent theorists such as Pascual Jordan, but they are all dead now and the new generation of physicists knows essentially nothing about Heim. The effort of familiarisation with Heim's special notation and methods frightens off many physicists. Thus again there is a catch 22 - more recognition for the theory will be attained only when more physicists work on it, but they won't work on it until it is recognised. This catch-22 arises because he avoided the normal channels of publication. But there are comparable cases in the past of scientists sealing themselves from the world - think of Newton's Year of Miracles - in isolation due to plague, he occupied his time by inventing calculus, discovering the chromatic composition of light, and conceiving of the inverse-square law of universal gravitation.

hdeasy

--hughey 15:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)hdeasy


 * Using the SPIRES database of high energy physics publications to search for author Burkhard Heim, it looks like the paper that you mentioned above was in fact his only published journal article. Moreover, SPIRES indicates that no high energy physics paper has ever cited Heim's article (the database does not track citations of books, although it does list a few by him). Thus, if there was a "very positive response" to his article, it does not appear to have come from the physics community.


 * Regarding my comments about the nuclear forces being apparently absent, I appreciate your clarifications (they fit well with what I gleaned from my brief reading of the linked website earlier). The trouble is that the predictions of the standard model (which includes a detailed mechanism for the nuclear forces) have been verified to very high precision over the past twenty or thirty years. I am awfully confident that any "theory of everything" must reduce to the standard model in limits appropriate to current experiments, or be ruled out by experimental data. My brief look at Heim's work didn't turn up anything that looked like SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) nor any real hint of matter containing the top quark (for example), and while I didn't understand it entirely, it looked like it predicted a neutral partner of the electron (maybe even with the same mass?). Any of those problems, if they are really there, would essentially doom the theory, and that's just the first few things I could see. At best, it might fit Fermi's comment on one of Einstein's unification attempts (warning: I haven't been able to verify this): "Beautiful theory, wrong universe."--Steuard 22:07, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Challenges in following Heim's theory
Since Heim's theory is an extension of Einsteinian theory into the micro realm with modified Riemannian geometry, and since it uses a differencing method instead of calculus, familiarisation with the theory is difficult. Heim did in fact take recent developments in physics into account. However, his special notation made representation of his work in technical journals scarcely possible, as the full delineation covers about 2000 pages. In addition, Heim did not speak English. Translation of his specialist work would had been too costly for him as a private individual. It must be pointed out again that Heim was blind, nearly deaf and without hands, which is why he did not attend congresses or inteact in the normal way with the scientific community. Instead, he concentrated on coming up with results without losing much time in discussions over methods and mathematical inadequacies (which the Heim theory group have discovered and are now in the process of correcting).

The main result so far, confirmed by the DESY calculations, is the solution of the mass equations, which allows particle masses to be calculated to great precision, without need of a Higgs mechanism. What is still incomplete is a selection rule for the lifetimes of excited particle states, for which Heim indicated so far only the theoretically possible masses. The second large step, which still has to be taken, is the full description of particle interactions. This is perhaps where the analogies to the standard model with its symmetry groups will become apparent. But this requires much work by the international theoretical community. Theoreticians should realise that Heim theory completes the geometrisation begun by Einstein. Improving the interface with quantum theory is currently being investigated by Heim's colaborator Walter Droescher. But the work should be thrown open to the international community - only after that has been done can it 'take the world by storm'.--hughey 11:57, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads_pw/D_Zur_Herleitung_Der_Heimschen_Massenformel.pdf it is stated that the existence of neutral electrons has not been ruled out by CERN physicists. They would be difficult to detect due to low scattering cross section, though maybe they might still be found in cosmic rays. From http://www.heim-theory.com/Contents/Introduction_to_Heim_s_Mass-Fo/introduction_to_heim_s_mass-fo.html

"For further empirical tests Heim investigated proton-electron interaction in H-atoms. On this occasion a relation for the finestructure constant ± could be derived, in which a correction must be performed, which is required by the existence of R3-celles due to metrons, and which yields the numerical value: 1/± = 137,03603953 ... The theory predicts a new particle o+ (omicron), whose mass is about 1540 MeV/c². One of the resonances of the omicron is located at 2317.4 MeV/c², which is exactly the value for the particle DSJ*(2317), which recently was detected by the Barbar Collaboration experiment at SLAC (2003)." Of 14 particles for which Heim theory gives lifetimes, 12 are within the limits of experimental error.--192.171.3.126 11:46, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I really don't have the time to investigate or discuss this theory at length (and Wikipedia isn't the place for such discussions anyway, except as they relate to the content of the articles). But with reference to "neutral electrons", very general searches for such things have been carried out (see the relevant Particle Data Group report at for details and references). he current lower bound on the mass of an unknown neutral lepton is about 40 GeV at 95% confidence. Based on that, it sounds like a hypothetical neutral lepton with a mass five orders of magnitude lower (0.5 MeV) is absolutely ruled out. I'm sure that with sufficiently bizarre couplings to other matter such a particle could still be possible, but my understanding is that the current limits don't require very strong assumptions at all. Unless Heim's theory specifically predicts truly unexpected couplings for that particle, or can be modified so that the particle is not predicted to exist, it's ruled out.--Steuard 17:49, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

In http://www.heim-theory.com/Inhalt/Einfuhrung_in_die_Heimsche_Mas/einfuhrung_in_die_heimsche_mas.html the site http://pdg.lbl.gov is listed as a reference, so this was presumably taken into consideration in stating that CERN physicists say a neutral electron has not been excluded. I am seeking clarification from the Heim Theory group on the CERN statement on this issue. However, even if the theory had one or two defects, the accurate prediction of masses, fine structure constant etc. with only G, h and c as input parameters, indicate that it is on the right track.--hughey 11:57, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The neutral electron, with somewhat different mass than the normal charged electron (the field's mass is missing, and therefore the mass is slightly lower) does not contradict QED (which applies only to charged particles). A particle physicist of CERN (Dr. Dehm) had suggested an experiment approximately 20 years ago in order to prove that such a particle (with very small interaction cross-section) exists. At that time there was an essay (exact reference soon, hopefully) in ApJ, according to which astrophysicists had found a neutral particle during investigation of particle beams from areas with strong magnetic fields. As the discovered particle was not diverted by interstellar magnetic fields, it had to be neutral. But the well-known neutral particles have too short a life span, to be able to reach detectors on earth. Therefore the astrophysicists assumed at that time that there had to be a neutral particle with small mass and essentially infinitely long life span. A neutral electron therefore cannot be excluded! Dr. Dehm wanted to suggest an appropriate experiment with CERN. That would have been only reasonable, however, if Heim theory had been recognized in principle by the Mainstream. But that was - as we now know - unfortunately not yet possible. Walter Droescher further developed Heim theory in 8 dimensions, and showed that the internal fine structure of the particles could be interpreted as quarks and gluons. This theory is identical to the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) of the Standard Model. In the theory of Heim all possible particles, including neutrinos with finite masses, and lifetimes, are geometrodynamically given. Droeschers extended theory succeeds in additionally describing the interactions and interaction constants (very exactly). Therefore the strong and the electroweak forces are only indicated in Heim-Droescher theory. How one arrives at a neutral electron, is a result of the mass formula with its geometrically explained quantum numbers.

(answer from Heim-Theory member) --195.93.60.11 17:32, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * So, if I understand what you're saying here, the claim that a neutral electron (with slightly lower mass than the normal electron) is not excluded is based on a hypothesis in a twenty-year-old essay on astrophysics. That doesn't address my basic question about this particle, which is how it would evade the current experimental lower bound on neutral lepton masses of 40 GeV. As for an experiment to search for a long-lived, low mass neutral particle not happening, I'm not clear on how that would differ from the ongoing experiments that set that 40 GeV bound. But I would think that if the astrophysical arguments you mentioned continued to be taken seriously, the search would have been carried out on that basis alone, whether or not Heim's theory was widely accepted.--Steuard 21:13, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Requesting and disputing various "dirt"
More dirt please. I'm happy to learn the positive elements of Heim's work. But I only see one reason that his theories aren't accepted: "publishing with an obscure publishing house, resulting in errors in the presentation". Seriously, this is the only reason his theories aren't more well known? Sorry, but I don't buy that. This article seems a bit too positive about Heim. I'm ok with the positive aspects but some of these criticism should be added to this article to help balance the effusive treatment that Heim is given here. WpZurp 16:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Hmm, "obscure publishing house" ... is this code for vanity press? Just who is the publisher and what else did they publish? Can anyone confirm or deny the merits of the publisher? WpZurp 17:24, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Has "agreement with experiment achieves seven decimal places of accuracy" been independently confirmed? If so, this would give strong confirmation of his theories. If not ... well ... we all know about cold fusion and fraud with superconductors. WpZurp 17:31, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I've moderated the positive glow of this article. Hopefully, I haven't taken Be Bold too far. Personally, I believe my modifications have given Heim's work a more credible, scientific feel because of the balance I've introduced. However, I'm not a physicist, just a skeptic so I gladly accept correction from those more knowledgeable than me. WpZurp 17:41, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

One could write a long article on all the reasons that Heim sank into obscurity. The first was his handicap - blind, near deaf and minus hands, he was cut off from uni life. Disability allowance made him independent financially so he didn't have to work out of a university. This alone was sin enough against the stifling conformism of recent years. The publisher in question is Resch Verlag of Austria - associated occasionally with somewhat new-age type publications. Heim, like Newton, dabbled in mystic stuff and when it came to publish his scientific work unfortunately remained loyal to Resch instead of seeking a proper science publisher. So e.g. Hawking gave as his reason for not going through Heim's opus its non-science publisher. Aren't those reasons enough, apart from the difficult notation and maths/physics of the full derivations?

--195.93.60.11 22:00, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * First, an update to the Google search results mentioned above: if you search for "Burkhard Heim" together with at least one of "physics OR proton OR electron OR physikers OR weltbild OR Heimsche OR space OR theory", you get under 700 results, so that 15,000 figure is probably counting a lot of unrelated pages (even if I've left out a number of good German keywords). That's still a decent number, but it's far from passing my "more than me" test.  (And for the record, a Google search for "German Hawking" and "Heim" gives no results at all.)


 * In doing that search, I found another source of information about Heim at a site called "Protosimplex". It seems to have quite a bit of information translated to English from German (if only roughly), and it's pretty clearly written by a Heim supporter.  To someone moderately skeptical of Heim, I think the site could satisfy some of WpZurp's desire for "dirt".  A few quotes from various places there:
 * "Heim could write an evening-filling detective story about his experiences with criticism, fraud, theft, tried kidnapping on his own person, suspicious evaluation by small and large intriguers." (section "Support, envy, and ignorance")
 * "Heim extracts himself from adjustments of arms industry by turning for a while to paraphysical research... On one hand Burkhard Heim succeeds thereby in installing an image to be a kind of crank which discredits him in intended way to the management. On the other hand he made in this time experiences, which convinced him of the existence of rare paranormal phenomena." (same page and section)
 * "Also among his teachers there wasn't anybody who supported Heim." (same page and section)
 * A venture into evolutionary biology: Heim somehow analyzed the timing of the appearance of "ingenious" features in different species and concluded that "probabilities during mutation were controlled somehow in such a way that ingenious results developed with priority." (same page, previous section)
 * "A spirit-like process or "body" in not-material space G4 (x9... x12) is acting as a producer of an idea. The idea is generated by a projection into the space of ideas I2 (x7, x8)."
 * At least for me, these sorts of things don't inspire a lot of confidence. I become rather skeptical when someone claims to have found stunning new results in two very different scientific fields (physics and evolutionary biology, in this case).  I'm mildly skeptical in general about those who insist on the existence of paranormal phenomena.  And I'm incredibly skeptical when someone includes "ideas" and "spirit" in a theory of physics.  And it sounds like Heim's teachers did not accept his work (and they were presumably among the scientists most likely to give him a fair hearing).
 * At any rate, I think that I've looked into the theory as much as I care to, at least for now. I don't have the time to dig through Heim's apparently copious writings, even if they were available in English.  The concerns I have about the purely physical aspects his work based on experimental evidence (as stated in earlier comments) already make me doubt his claims, and for me, the asserted connections to evolution, mind, and spirituality pretty much seal the deal.  I suspect that most scientists would say the same (and probably less politely). --Steuard 23:38, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for all the great dirt. I'll shift some of it over to the article to add more balance to this "next Einstein". WpZurp 00:05, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rebuttal to collecting dirt
Ahh, Steuard, you disappoint me. I really think you belong to the sort of scientist who would have rejected Newton if he had just hit the scene today, as there would be 20,000 hits for +Newton +Alchemy, and only 6000 for +Newton +gravity. By focussing on Heim's more 'mystic' side, you seek to flee the debate on the hard maths-phsics front. For example, it matters not a jot if Heim believed that pigs could fly - if he successfully predicts the masses of the particles this result stands alone. His was a beautiful mind - apparently he could learn a language in a few hours (but not English, amusingly, as he had something against that language - many whould share that suspicion of the triumphal march of anglo-saxon) and had a perfectly edetic acoustic memory - he could recall equations 30 years after his wife had read them to him, verbatim, but only if they were read aloud - not if he read them with his poor residual eyesight. Again the analogy is to John Nash of the film "beautiful mind" - the latter produced nobel prize winning theories despite seeing non-existent entities and believing in paranoid conspiracies - you would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if you rejected his maths/economic theories just because he suffered from a dose of psychosis. I.e. stick to the knitting and don't go digging up dirt to justify the laziness of ignoring the theory. Also, rahter than quoting from the dilettantish protosimplex site, why not from Heim-theory. Let's see how our 'scientifically challenged' dirt-monger (what is the Wikipedia stance on mud-slinging?) deals with the following:

"In the beginning of the 1950s, Heim discovered the existence of a smallest area (the square of the Plancks length) as a natural constant, which requires calculations with area differences (called metrons) instead of the differential calculus in microscopic domains. Here we use selector calculus, which Heim employs exclusively in his books, only when its use is indispensable and maintain the general tensor calculus otherwise. For comparison with the work of Heim, in the introduction we discuss briefly the state of the art in the domains of elementary particles and in structure theory. Heim begins by adapting Einsteins field equations to the microscopic domain, where they become eigenvalue equations. The Ricci tensor in the microscopic domain corresponds to a scalar influence of a non-linear operator Cp on mixed variant tensor components of 3 rd degree &#981; p kl (corresponding to the Christoffel-symbols &#915; p kl in the macroscopic domain). In the microscopic domain the phenomenological part will become a scalar product of a vector consisting of the eigen values &#955; p(k,l) with mixed variant tensorial field-functions. These terms are energy densities proportional:--195.93.60.11 10:16, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Hi, 195.93.60.11, I see that you find that Heim's contributions have merit. I'm interesting in your point of view.


 * So far my experience with Heim has had two strands: (1) he's an amazing genius neglected by a cruel scientific community; (2) he's a crank that has pushed out a lot of dense material (sometimes veering into mysticism) that would takes years of (wasted) effort to understand. At present, I'm leaning more towards (2) because (1) is YACT (yet another conspiracy theory). Ideally, if Heim's work has merit, then both (1) and (2) should be discounted.


 * Where is the peer reviewed results of Heim's work? What are some hard results that the larger segments of the scientific community have found merit in? Has this "smallest area" discovery been accepted by physicists; do you have a reference that isn't from a Heim fan site?


 * Early versions of the article talked about Heim's "unconventional style" and a scientific community that spurned his results. But, after more discussion, I learned that Heim just hasn't put his work up to the criticism of other scientists. "Unconventional" is a term that masks Heim's lack of discipline that other scientists have to face with every publication.


 * It's exciting to believe that we've found the next overlooked Einstein. At first, I was rather impressed by early versions of this article until I noticed the effusive (non-encyclopedic) descriptions of Heim and until I started digging deeper. Then, I discovered a lack of vetting as with cold fusion and that superconductor scandal a few years back. I feel as if my open mindedness has been betrayed yet again


 * For every overlooked genius, there are 1000 cranks out there. There are many scientists out there considering a vast array of ideas. Anything with Heim's supposed merit would have been investigated long ago. There is simply too much competition in science to overlook such supposed breakthroughs. Where are third-party confirmations of Heim's claims from reputable sources? Or is the entire scientific community so biased that he has to deal with new age publishers?


 * By the way, when Newton dabbled in mysticism, it was the 1600s and witches were still being burned; Heim worked in the late 20th century with all advantages of centuries of scientific skcepticism.


 * WpZurp 16:02, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * To respond to some comments above (primarily those responding to me earlier):

(These are Steuard's points - I (Hughey) append my answers/comments prefixed with a (Hughey :) symbol and signed):
 * Good idea. I'll respond to your comments point by point in the same way.--Steuard 19:51, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * I would point out that my first stated concern about the theory was its "neutral electron" prediction, and I've consistently cited that as most important. That apparent experimental refutation of Heim's theory has not been effectively countered here.

(Hughey :) The main counterargument was that this particle cannot be utterly ruled out, and the successful mass predicitons are of greater interest and cannot be negated by obsessively concenttrating on the neutral electron.Although the neutral electron has not been detected in the CERN/Etc. experiments, I am still not convinced that a very low mass lepton with infinite lifespan would have been found by the experiments described. But again my earlier comments holds good - the accurate prediction of particle masses is not negated by one incorrect prediction -  set against this the neutrino mass prediction made 20 years ago and still consistent  with experiment - it is still a prediction: ( 0.00381 ev, 0.00537 Mev, 0.010752 Mev)  compared to current upper limit of (< 0.05 ev, .< 0.17 Mev, < 18.2 Mev) (if I read the units correctly in 'selected results') respectievly. More accurate experiments may ultimately vindicate these exact predicted values. Thus a mistake in the neutral electron calculation is not a refutation of Heim theory as a whole, and may be corrected later. Oh and it seems that every time I answer one of your crucial objections it is as if it never had been and the outstanding points become what was all along most important - thus although the lack of correspodence to the Standard model's group representation SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1)was of equal (at least) importance to the neutral electron, once I answered that Droescher's update on Heim's theory had this group structure in it, it became a non-issue and no 'brownie points' were scored for showing that Heim theory passed the major test of any TOE - i.e. agreement with the Standard Model. Could this desire to shoot down Heim have anything to do with Steuard being involved in String theory himself? Can Strings not tolerate a little competition? --hughey 10:11, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I know that you are not convinced that the proposed neutral electron does not exist, but I haven't heard you or Heim-theory.com explain why the experiments would have failed so seriously in this case. From my perspective, it seems that Heim's theory in its current form makes a definite experimental prediction, and that this prediction has been disproven beyond a reasonable doubt.  If someone modifies Heim's theory to remove this discrepancy (or presents a concrete mechanism by which the particle has avoided experimental notice), great, but until then the theory has been ruled out.  Lots of theories over time have had partial agreement with experiment and still ended up being wrong.  (But speaking of Heim's predictions, you earlier quoted the "Abstract" document from Heim-theory.com which states that "The theory predicts a new particle o+ (omicron), whose mass is about 1540 MeV/c²."  I find it troubling that the "Selected results" document lists the mass of this "o+" as about 1234.6MeV/c^2.  1235 doesn't strike me as at all close to 1540, but 1540 MeV is the approximate mass of an as-yet unexplained particle possibly seen in experiments.  A cynic might suggest that this "Abstract" document misstated the prediction to make Heim's theory sound more promising.)

(Hughey :) One of the professors (there are at least 5) working on Heim theory and its extensions has commented to me in an e-mail on some aspects of our discussion. First, he pointed out that there is still some uncertainty in the selection rules for particles in the mass spectrum of Heim theory, so that the neutral electron may still turn out to be forbidden in the theory. Then he pointed out that more important questions in Heim theory than e0 concern whether the condensor functions phi are tensor components, and whether the so-called eigenvalue equations actually are eigenvalue equations. Heim's theory, although as you point out, not in the language of modern physics, has all the ingredients for a TOE, as required by Einstein in his April 1950 SciAm paper. "50 years before Rovelli's book on quantum gravity, Heim introduced the concept of a quantized space, treating spacetime as a quantized field. In addition, he introduced a polymetric in a higher dimensional space, using this concept for the unification of physical interactions. In that sense, he accomplished the geometrization of physics, something Einstein tried to achieve by making his metric tensor unsymmetric (this theory was not correct). In that sense, I think it is justified to mention Heim in the Wikipedia Encyclopedia." In a paper to be published by the American Institute of Physics early next year (watch that space!), Haeuser & Droescher obtain, in an 8-dimensional space, a total of three gravitational interactions, predicting a repulsive gravitational force. Now admittedly this article was highly controversial among the reviewers, so that Heim theory is not yet to be seen as a mainstream physical theory. However, the potential benefits from the theory if it is right (Achievement of a TOE, revolutionary space propulsion methods etc.) are so great that they justify additional serious research. See http://www.cle.de/hpcc/ for some (English) publications by these authors on Heim.--hughey 11:37, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * As for the standard model gauge group issue, I didn't really know how to reply. You quoted a statement that in an extension of Heim's theory to eight dimensions, SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) appears, but no details were given.  I don't know how to judge that result: the extended theory doesn't seem to be discussed on Heim-theory.com, not even at the limited level that Heim's original theory is.  Rather than expressing unsupported doubts about an unsupported claim, I decided to stick to areas where Heim theory's predictions were made relatively clear.  (Brownie points would certainly be merited for showing the right gauge group structure.  Brownie points are not merited for claiming the right gauge group structure.)  And let's try to keep the personal comments out of this, okay?--Steuard 19:51, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * (Hughey ) Look in http://www.cle.de/hpcc/ "Droescher, W., Haeuser, J.

Physical Principles of Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Heim's Field Theory" for an indication of the relation with SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) and the Standard Model. E.g.

Vk in which the physical interaction takes place. (12) The hermetry forms can also be represented by the components of the metric tensor of the corresponding subspace Vk. The superscripts, ranging from 0 to 3, in the Ç quantities refer to the respective coordinate groups. H5=(Çi m (0 ) ,Çi m (1 ) ,Çi m (2 )) photons (13) It is reasoned that hermetry forms H10 and H11 are similar to the graviton field H12, since they are both caused by transcoordinates, and thus will have a small coupling constant. The important point is that in Heim's theory there are transformation operators, S1 or S2 (not to be confused with space S2), that, when applied to one hermetry form can transform it into another one. Mathematically, these operators transform the respective coordinate from a non Euclidean to a Euclidean one. For instance, S2 applied to hermetry form H11 will transform electromagnetic radiation into gravito-photons.

H1=H1 ( I 2 ,T 1) gluons H2=H2 ( I 2 ,T 1, R3) color charges H3=H3 ( I 2, S 2 ,T 1 , R3) W+_ bosons H4=H4 ( I 2, S 2 , R3) Z0 boson H5=H5 ( I 2, S 2 ,T 1) photons H6=H6 ( I 2 ,T 1)H7=H7 (S 2 ,T 1) weak charge H8=H8 (S 2 ,R3) neutral field (particle) with mass H9=H9 (S 2 ,T 1, R3) field (particle) with electric charge and mass H10=H10 ( I 2) probability field H11=H11 ( I 2, S 2) gravito-photon H12=H12 (S 2) graviton. H1=(Çi m (0 ) ,Çi m (3 )) gluons H2=(Çi m (0 ) ,Çi m (2 ) ,Çi m (3 )) color charges H3=(Çi m (0 ) ,Çi m (1 ) ,Çi m (2 ) ,Çi m (3 )) W+_ bosons H8=(Çi m (1 ) ,Çi m (3 )) neutral field (particle) with mass H10=(Çi m (0 )) probability field H11=(Çi m (0 ) ,Çi m (1 )) gravito-photon H12=(Çi m (1 )) graviton. H4=(Çi m (0 ) ,Çi m (1 ) ,Çi m (3 )) Z0 boson H6=H6(Çi m (0 ) ,Çi m (2 ))H7=H7(Çi m (1 ) ,Çi m (2 )) weak charge H9=(Çi m (1 ) ,Çi m (2 ) ,Çi m (3 )) field (particle) with electric charge and mass--hughey 13:51, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Comments on Heim's "mystic" side would be relevant to an article about him in any case, but it is my impression that aspects of this mysticism are actively incorporated into the current version of Heim's physical theory. Thus, this is not "fleeing the debate".

(Hughey :) As I understand it, the mystic aspects of Heim's theory are more a matter of interpretation than hard mathematical result, and as such can be left out of the hard physical arguments--hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * See my reply below.--Steuard
 * I agree that the success of the theory should be its ultimate test, but understanding its derivation is a part of that (because anyone could write down an ad hoc formula that "predicts" particle masses if they knew those masses in advance).

(Hughey :) Sure they could - which is why more physicists have to work through the theory and see if it is air-tight.--hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't know what sites about Heim are most respected; I looked at the "protosimplex" site for its attempt to explain the basis of Heim's theory in English (it looks like Heim-theory.com hasn't translated its "derivation" document yet).

(Hughey :) But the abstract, mass formulae and other sections are already in English - and contain much more hard physics than Protosimplex.com.--hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Those sections of Heim-theory.com certainly contain more equations than protosimplex.com, but I don't know that I'd agree that they contain a lot more physics. The documents don't say a whole lot about where the equations come from, and the real physics of a theory is in the "whys", not in the "whats".  I felt like the protosimplex site tried harder to explain how the theory worked, even if it didn't get as far as presenting its quantitative results.--Steuard 20:21, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * Here are a few comments after looking at Heim-theory.com in a bit more depth:
 * The "Goals" page at Heim-theory says that the two additional dimensions of Heim's theory "are not measurable by physical instruments and have an informational character, since they describe qualitative aspects (meanings) of material organisations." That seems to say that Heim's "mysticism" is directly connected to his physics.

(Hughey :) Though this is mentioned as a goal, the mystic side is nowhere to be seen in the hard equations of the other sections.--hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * But this "mystical" explanation is presented here as the reason that the two additional dimensions "are not measurable by physical instruments". (In the context of the page, this claim was made in contrast to the Kaluza-Klein mechanim, that is a likely reason that string theory's extra dimensions have not been seen in experiments.)  The discrepancy between the observed four dimensions and Heim theory's six dimensions has to be explained somehow, and this is the only explanation that I've found (it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the more equation-heavy documents).--Steuard 20:21, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * The "Remarks" page points out that "Heim's books contain some vagueness - beside the correct results". That may be understandable under the circumstances, but you can't expect a scientific theory to be taken seriously by the community until that vagueness is eliminated.  If that is part of the current mission of Heim-theory, I wish them well.
 * The "1982 Mass Formula" page includes a formula for Heim's calculation of the fine structure constant along with the numerical result for its inverse. The formula is not explained, but it is apparently exact, as it is simply a (messy) algebraic combination of integers and pi.  The numerical result stated there (137.0360085) differs from the current experimental value by just under 10^(-5), but the current experimental uncertainty is under 5*10^(-7).  That's a difference of a whopping 20 standard deviations, which corresponds to an essentially zero probability of agreement.

(Hughey :) The formulae used involving expressions of Pi are apparently approximations, as the 1992 version gave a better approximation than the 1982 formula, but there is probably yet another approximation (taking more terms in an expansion?) that would get even closer to the measured value. Has the Standard model produced such a compact formula for this fundamental constant? --hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * But the 1992 formula isn't given, nor is it made clear in what sense that formula is "better" (besides giving better agreement with the known answer). It's entirely possible that you're right and these are just successively better approximations to something, but I haven't found any place where the site actually says that.  Also, I don't see any sign of a "small parameter" in the formula that would define a series expansion of some sort: there's no indication of what the "something" being approximated would be.  As for the standard model, this constant is a parameter of that theory, not a testable result of it.  (That's one reason that we're looking for something "deeper".  I'll readily acknowledge that string theory is very far from making any sort of prediction here.)  But in the end, making a prediction is the make or break moment for a theory: experimental predictions are the way that theories put themselves on the line, to live or die by their success.  There aren't prizes for coming close.--Steuard 21:10, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * Worse yet, I calculated the result of the formula myself (using Mathematica), and found 1/alpha of 137.049188, which differs from the stated result (and the experimental value) by 0.013. That suggests to me that Heim-theory made a serious error in evaluating the formula (which happened to make their result look much closer to the actual value).  I invite others to evaluate the formula there themselves to confirm this result; it's on pages 3-4 of the PDF.

(Hughey :) The 1982 formula used by you here is not the one used to derive the value 137.0360085 - the latter is clearly stated to be from the 1992 improved approximation, which is not given on the Heim-theory web site, as far as I can see.--hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Very true. But the older 1982 result ostensibly obtained from the given equation is 137.03596147, which is very close to the 1992 result but even farther from the actual solution to the equation.  (I should have made that clear before, sorry.)--Steuard 21:10, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * The "Selected results" page includes a graph on p. 12 showing how the Heim-predicted masses change for different input values of the gravitational coupling G. The current best value of G is 6.6742+/-0.0010 *10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2, an uncertainty of 0.015%.  The graph says that the Heim Theory group uses a value of G = 6.6733082 (with the same units), which has three more digits of precision than seem at all justified.  More generally, I don't see how Heim theory's mass predictions could possibly agree with experiment to as many as seven decimal places (as claimed on the "Abstract" page) if its predictions depend on G as shown in this graph.  The uncertainty in G should limit the theoretical mass values to a similar precision.

(Hughey :) You forget that the mass depends on c, h and G - as the errors in c and h are miniscule compared to that in G they are not mentioned. But if the masses depend on G in a non-linear way with other terms depending on c and h or constants like Pi, then an error in mass prediction will not scale directly with G. It might even be rather insensitive thereto.--hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * As it happens, I did not "forget" those dependences, nor overlook the possibility of non-linear dependence on G. As you point out, the uncertainty in h is much smaller, so I would expect the uncertainty in G to dominate the result (as for c, you seem to forget that it is now defined as an exact number).  But more importantly, the graph that I mentioned shows how some of the mass predictions change for various values of G, and the changes are substantial.  (I mentioned that above: "...if its predictions depend on G as shown in this graph".)--Steuard 21:10, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * In my experience, serious physicists always, always list theoretical uncertainties with their predicted values. The "Selected results" page lists a great many numerical predictions, but never comments on theoretical uncertainty at all.

(Hughey :) The graphs in 'Selected Results' have error bars on the measured quantities. The fact that the calculated values are within the upper and lower boundary limits shows that their errors are not great. Also, by looking at the spread of mass values in these graphs for estimates using different values of G, one can relate differences in G to effective errors in the masses.--hughey 10:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, the graphs show experimental error bars, but neither the graphs nor the tables of predicted data list theoretical uncertainties. No serious physicist would omit them.  It's very dangerous to suggest that theoretical uncertainty can be deduced from the degree of agreement with experiment (I've never liked the term "error", because it encourages such misconceptions).  As we've both said, the spread of theoretical predictions on that graph gives an estimate of the theoretical uncertainty.  That uncertainty seems to be much greater than the "seven decimal place agreement" that Heim's supporters claim: it really feels like those who made these summary tables and who make the "seven decimal place" claim honestly do not understand the importance of uncertainty calculations.--Steuard 21:10, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * That's not an exhaustive commentary on the material at Heim-theory, and I'll readily admit that I approached the material with a critical eye. But at the very least, I am convinced that Heim's work would need a great deal of polishing and improvement before it could hope to be taken seriously as a theory of physics.  Until that point, the Wikipedia article should make its current state clear.--Steuard 00:33, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * That's not an exhaustive commentary on the material at Heim-theory, and I'll readily admit that I approached the material with a critical eye. But at the very least, I am convinced that Heim's work would need a great deal of polishing and improvement before it could hope to be taken seriously as a theory of physics.  Until that point, the Wikipedia article should make its current state clear.--Steuard 00:33, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Heim not crank and recent literature on cold fusion
Heim is not just any old crank. He worked with brilliant theoreticians like Pascual JOrdan ( see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascual_Jordan ). However, after this phase of involvement with the scientific community he withdrew from public life for such a long time that Jordan and the others who knew him simply died away, and he is no longer known to the top physicists of today. It's almost the opposite of what was said by, I think, Max Planck, i.e. A controversial theory will only be accepted when the old guard has died away. As for peer-reviewed work - there are 2 problems here - first, as Heim was not fighting for tenure he was under no pressure to publish. Secondly, if he really was a super-Einstein he was simply peerless: this was effectively the case as for a peer to review a paper by Heim he would have had to work through the basic theory with its thousands of pages. What journal is prepared to ask a referee to go away for a few years of study before being able to review a paper? The encouraging thing is, though, that those physicists who have worked their way through the theory have not found it wanting - apart from discovering some minor errors that they are now correcting and which didn't effect the mass calculations. Please don't refer to this Heim-theory group as 'Heim fans' - that is an absurd description of physicists working hard to come to grips with a difficult theory. Again when you say 'Heim just hasn't put his work up to the criticism of other scientists' you assume he was a normal able bodied, ambitious academic. In fact he did put his theory to some physicists, but only those he knew personally, which had shrunk to a small circle through death as mentioned above. The Heim-theory web site has enough background to be of interest to serious physicists - those behind it have also gone to the effort of converting as much as possible from selector calculus to the normal form. As yet, the additional step of translating the bulk to English has not been carried through. But that too will be corrected soon. As they say there, it was thought appropriate to publish on the web, as the theory is no longer original.

On the question of why more physicists haven't investigated Heim yet, or as you put it: "Anything with Heim's supposed merit would have been investigated long ago" remember that String theory was out in the wilderness for many years - 30, 40 or 50 depending on what you consider the origins. The string people then were convinced of its merit, but couldn't get more than a tiny group to look at it. Shades of Heim.

Finally, on cold fusion, don't loose hope just yet - the DOE has given it a new lease of life: in the news section of your link on CF: Cold Fusion Back From the Dead ( http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep04/0904nfus.html ) Spectrum IEEE Sep 2004 Cold Fusion Breakthrough? (http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/18580/1.html ) Telepolis Germany - Oct. 17, 2004 ICCF-11 Overview With Links to Presentations ( http://www.iscmns.org/iccf11/iccf11.htm ) International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science www.iscmns.org Nov 2004 Warming Up to Cold Fusion ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54964-2004Nov16.html ) Washington Post - Nov. 21, 2004

So if the CF brigade is now vindicated the campaign against them in the early 90s may begin to resemble the witch hunts of Newton's time. Does anything really ever change?

--195.93.60.11 18:27, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I consider your response to be reasonable and has given me something to think about. As a skeptic, I still sense something is a bit fishy but I'm going to let things stew in my mind for a while. In particular, Einstein's work deserves respect precisely because its undergone the kind of unrelenting attack that Heim's work has yet to undergo.


 * By the way, the NPOV "witchhunt" comment doesn't really belong in Burkhard Heim but, instead, in Talk:Burkhard Heim. Also, I encourage you to get an account; I confess that talking to a number also tweaks my skepticism.


 * WpZurp 19:05, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Hughey here - sorry, I've 3 different IP addresses from which I access Internet: only one of them recognises my Wikipedia ID and in the others I can't see how to log-in. Thus IPs 195.93.60.11 and 131.176.86.2 are both synonyms of yours truly - --hughey 08:40, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * (Steuard here:) This talk page has gotten long enough that Wikipedia's software is now giving warnings about it. At some point, I think we'll need to move some of the discussion to an archive page.


 * Personally, I'm fascinated by this back-and-forth discussion. To help with the archiving (and maybe delay it), I have broken up this lengthening discussion into a few sections which, I hope, have NPOV section titles. WpZurp 16:27, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the sectioning; it will help a lot (and I've used them to make it clearer where my latest comments belonged in the grand scheme of things). My one concern about this discussion is that I don't think Wikipedia talk pages are really intended for in-depth discussions like this.  My personal justification for doing so anyway is that I don't think there's any real discussion of Heim's theory by non-supporters elsewhere on the web, and I want this entry to be "balanced" as much as possible.  (I'm tempted to attempt a thorough rewrite of the article, but I wouldn't have the time for quite a while, and I suspect that Heim's supporters wouldn't see me as impartial at this point.)--Steuard 18:01, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)


 * Personally, I believe the Wikipedia talk pages are great for this kind of stuff. I imagine researchers in the future poring over these talk pages to understand the process of collaberative creation. (By researchers, I mean of the social sciences, not physicists.) I also consider Wikipedia to be an important document and I like to see the process of creation which demystifies the creation of media. WpZurp 18:36, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(N)POV in the current article
Hdeasy recently made some changes to the main article with the edit summary "More toning down of sceptical POV in the light of new theoretical work." I'd just like to make it clear that in my opinion, the current article would require extensive work to be considered NPOV. I hope that I'll be able to do some of that rewriting myself eventually, but it will be a while before I have the large block of time that would be necessary to do it right. (I'm not willing to put my name on incremental updates of the article as it currently stands.)

Finally, a note on the "skeptical POV" that is currently somewhat represented in the article (and on this talk page): I believe that the vast majority of physicists would not subscribe to the skeptical POV that I have taken here, but to a sort of "dismiss out of hand" POV. Some would be polite about it (as Hawking apparently was, based on your comments above) and some would be downright rude or mocking. The fraction of physicists who would take even as much time as I have to look into the theory is probably quite small. Based on what I've seen thus far, I would guess that the number of people out there who firmly believe that Heim was on the right track numbers in the dozens or perhaps the hundreds (feel free to correct me on that if you've got a better estimate), and it sounds like the number of professional scientists who feel that way is roughly six. A fully NPOV article should probably give some sense of those proportions, and be balanced accordingly.--Steuard 17:41, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * I am trying to get a better estimate of total nr. of professional scientists who believe that there is something to Heim - in the Heim-theory site it is stated that 8 physicists belong to the group, of which 5 are professors. At least one other professor and maybe two state elsewhere that they are deeply intersted in Heim theory but are not associated with the Heim-theory group. Add people like me, with a degree in physics and post-grad in astrophysics and we are maybe talking of up to 100 interested. My attitude is that Heim was not a trickster, worked with Jordan, Heisenberg et al. and so if his theory appeared to predict masses with the stated accuracy then it is certainly woth looking into. Droescher's 8-d version of the theory has what looks like quintessence in it, which might be another predictive aspect. The current (Jan 2005) print issue of the popular on-line German magazine Telepolos http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/buch/default_1.html has an article on Heim, his theory and space propulsion - this has aroused a lot of interest in Germany, so maybe amongst those now increasingly accessing www.Heim-theory.com after being directed there by the magazine article are some interested physicists.--hughey 09:56, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Splitup and misc
Despite I myself changed the recent attempt to create a separate Heim-Theory article into shortcut, it was only because of its inadequate content.

Let me suggest to try again. Burkhard Heim should be a standard biography article and Heim-Theory should give a brief overview of theory and criticism. If we try hard enough, it should be easy to get rid of neutrality warnings for both articles, but at least the biography should be easily NPOVed.

To start this, I'll suggest to drop the "German Hawking" sentence. It's not that widely in use, and a very restricted use isn't relevant for an encyclopedic article. Also, encyclopedic style should value facts over summary labels, especially if these are disputed.

And to make it a good biography, some facts about early Heim should be researched and incluedd: Formal education, his involvement in explosives research. If someone can just verify the german version de:Burkhard Heim, I can translate.

Pjacobi 12:24, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Well, as suggested, I removed the Hawking reference as it was frowned upon by so many. Now the German Wikipedia page is correct in so far as it goes, but it is in fact extraordinarily limited and selective - all the information therein and more is contained in Von Ludwiger's excellent 'Nachruf' in http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/nachruf.pdf. Also, as you seem to be based in Hamburg, maybe you were able to buy the first print edition of the Telepolis magazine, concerning space travel and SETI. This has also reasonable biographical material on Heim in one article. And should Heim-theory be expanded it should cover the excellent work currently underway by Haeuser and Droescher - see the Pubications section on www.cle.de/hpcc (e.g. first on the list, GUIDELINES FOR A SPACE PROPULSION DEVICE BASED ON HEIM'S QUANTUM THEORY ). --hughey 08:54, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Can you just clarify some more points:
 * There are papers on "metron theory" which doesn't mention Heim, by K Hasselmann MPI Meteorolgy Hamburg. What's the connection?
 * Do you consider the von Ludwiger paper http://www.mufon-ces.org/docs/heimphysics.pdf a valid representation of the theory?
 * Heim seems to have some fans (sorry) in the ufologists camp (http://www.mufon-ces.org), as as well as in esotoric/alternative medicin circles (see http://www.datadiwan.org and http://www.engon.de/). How much does this reflect his own POV?
 * Pjacobi 11:34, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)


 * Good question on "metron theory" by Hasselmann  - although there seems to be a link, it is curious that no mention of Heim is made - it could be coincidence that the name Metron is chosen.  Ah yes! - I see from http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/~hasselmann.klaus/metron.php that in this case Metron comes from 'metric soliton' solutions to Einsteins vacuum gravitational equations, which is not related to the quantum of area in Heim's theory. Just a coincidence, then.


 * Yes, in the same way as Haeuser and Droescher's presentations to the AIAA are valid scientifically (the associated paper will be published in a peer reviewed American Institute of Physics journal this year), so is Von Ludwiger's presentation to the First European Workshop on Field Propulsion, January 20-22, 2001 at the University of Sussex, even if it is, perhaps unfortunately, published on a site normally used for discussions of aerial anomalies. However, look also at http://www.workshop.cwc.net/ for the worksop web site (Von Ludwiger's talk is listed next to ones by such luminaries as Hal Puthoff in the Agenda ( http://www.workshop.cwc.net/agendax.htm ) and the associated NASA site http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/ to see that this is indeed a recognised field of research.

too are standard physicists with an interest in 'anomalies'. But by the same Newton/alchemy token, as long as their Heim work is mathematically and physically impeccable, it behoves us to set aside their other interests whilst discussing Heim-theory. --hughey 10:22, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Heim and fans  in the esoteric or alt-medicine or ufologist camps... We have dealt with this sort of question before.See above where I compare Newton, whose alchemical research must be viewed apart from his groundbreaking physics research.Would you throw Newton out because his 'POV' seemed to include alchemy? Similarly,  Heim also had an interest in 'anomalies', which unfortunately had the effect of drawing all sorts of irrelevant (to the physics) comments from esoteric 'fans' who knew nothing of the physics. Thank God Newton was not around in this era of poltitical correctness witch-hunts - the web would have been swamped with his alchemical theories and he would then have been dismissed out of hand, with no-one bothering to check out his physics. Von Ludwiger and Droescher are exceptions to the unknowing esoteric fan syndrome, as they


 * Re: esoteric or alt-medicine or ufologist camps. I'm not up for a witch hunt here, this was only a factual question, whether the linkage to these disputed areas has been started by Heim himself or was brought upon him. If you can just shed light on this question? In the moment, I read your answer as somewhere in between: Yes he had some interest in this direction, but he would not have agreed to everything which is now connected to his name on http://www.mufon-ces.org, http://www.datadiwan.org, http://www.engon.de/
 * Re: http://www.mufon-ces.org/docs/heimphysics.pdf - can you comment on equatations 40 and 42? At first sight, they look like  "nice" formulas, only containing small natural number, e and &pi; - but only until you realize that E stands for 1 meter. Heck, what's the idea with this? What's special about the meter, that the equations look exact in SI units, but would have strange factors when mesuring in feet?
 * Please also have a look at Talk:Heim-Theory
 * Pjacobi 22:19, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)


 * I'm glad to see this paper by von Ludwiger, as it goes through the mathematics of Heim's theory in a bit more detail than the websites previously mentioned here. Or at least, it looks like it does; I'll admit that in my brief skimming of the paper I've had trouble making sense of some of it.  (If nothing else, the author's perspective on Riemannian geometry is really weird.)  A couple of initial observations:
 * First, as far as I can tell, the "fifth and sixth dimensions" in Heim's theory would appear in the equations of general relativity precisely as extra time coordinates. The paper says that they look like time but "have to be something different, because more than one single time dimension leads to unphysical results".  That's very true... but in relativity, a negative sign in the metric is the definition of a "timelike" dimension.  Heim's theory apparently has three of them, and nothing that I've seen so far suggests otherwise, no matter what supporters of the theory might hope or what alternate meanings they try to assign to them.
 * Second, section 3 on "Cosmology" begins by stating an (approximate) relationship between the "cosmic diameter" (undefined) and the "metronic area" (essentially the quantum of area in Heim's theory) which holds for all time even as those values change. That equation includes the constant area "E := 1 m^2" raised to the power 7/3 to make the dimensions match up.  But absolutely no justification for the choice of "meters" is given!  This isn't just a choice of units: that "1 m^2" appears in a fundamental way, and choosing "1 cm^2" would lead to physically different results.  (The real, non-approximate formula isn't given, but if this "1 meter" was inserted by hand there, too, then it's no "surprise" at all that the solutions when "tau = pi D^2" give D of about that size.)  At least as far as this paper is concerned, this looks like a very fundamental blunder in Heim's physics (one that I would expect any person with a physics degree to recognize at once).
 * I also think that there is a serious flaw in your analogy between Newton's work in alchemy and Heim's belief in parapsychology, UFOs, the "spiritual" aspects of his equations, and the like. When Newton was alive, alchemy was considered serious science, and serious scientists believed that its claims and goals were worth pursuing.  That attitude is now very different (for good scientific reasons!), and we would justifiably have serious doubts about the scientific judgement of anyone who claimed to believe in alchemy today.  The thing is, serious scientists of Heim's time did not consider parapsychology or UFOs to be grounded in good science, either.  So I think that people are probably somewhat justified in choosing not to invest the time to study Heim's physical theory for that reason: those beliefs have already given them good reason to doubt his scientific credibility.


 * Incidentally, in what sense is Hal Puthoff a "luminary"? I've never heard of him before, but as far as I can tell from the web, he seems to be known primarily for work in parapsychology and for what sounds like a dubious project to harness quantum zero point energy as a power source.  This isn't a typical mainstream physicist that you're talking about, at the very least, so I'm not sure that comparing von Ludwiger to him accomplishes what you're hoping for. --Steuard 23:48, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

Hal Puthoff is director of the Institue of Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas. Look at http://www.pbs.org/safarchive/3_ask/archive/bio/82_hputhoff_bio.html or http://www.p-i-a.com/Magazine/Ref/Puthoff.htm or http://www.earthtech.org/iasa/ for a description of his academic record. As for the extra dimensions in Heim theory, again they come out of the equations and all the rest is interpretation - just as in String theory, where the extra dimensions have to be interpreted somehow. Even if x5 and x6 do not have the meaning assigned to them by Heim (organisational or ordering influence), one could imagine other plausible scenarios. E.g. just as a particle in 3 space moves in a trajectory whose vector direction at any time is a linear combination of the unit vectors of the space axes, so too might we be following a timelike trajectory in a 3 dimensional time space where the actual direction is never purely along one time axis. In a way there is greater symmetry in this picture. One can thus play the interpretation game forever, but in the end what counts is results, and string theory doesn't have the mass equation that pops out of 6-d Heim theory with it remarkable accuracy compared with anything achieved in QCD or string theory to date.

On the question of the 1m inserted seemingly by hand, I have forwarded the question to Von L directly. Whilst waiting for an answer, I could speculate that the value of 1 metre may be related to the fact that in Heim theory, at the beginning of time, the relation between D and Tau is more complex and depends on a seventh order algebraic equation. The three different values of D that are solutions of this equation at the beginning of time correpsond to a trinity of spheres, with diameters all approximately 1m (see eq 41 of the document you are citing) The strange coincidence that the size of the universe at the start, is close to 1 m may influence the choice of 1m for E for later stages of the universe.

As for the paranormal connection, I still think it is irrelevant to the physics - just because Alchemy was not totally frowned on in Newton's day does not negate my argument as it is veracity in absolute terms which is at issue - not one that depends on the social structures described by Thomas Kuhn in his theory of scientific revolutions. Finally some other scientists of note in the 20th centruy were into the paranormal - e.g. Freud, Crookes (of the tube), Josephson (of the junction), etc. So I suppose you repudiate the Josephson junction and the TV screen? Science would never have gotten anywhere if it was just depending on a bunch of stuffed shirts! --hughey 15:19, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * You say that those extra dimensions "come out of the equations and all the rest is interpretation - just as in String theory, where the extra dimensions have to be interpreted somehow." That's absolutely true.  But the basis of that interpretation has to be the implications of the equations themselves, and the equations apparently say that Heim's model has three "timelike" directions.  As I quoted above, this article itself points out that theories with more than one time(like) dimension lead to unphysical results.  Together, that means that Heim's theory is unphysical, no matter what names or "interpretations" one assigns to the extra directions.  As for string theory, yes, its extra dimensions have to be understood, but step one in that process is choosing a model in which the equations explain why the extra dimensions aren't seen (whether by Kaluza-Klein, brane worlds, or something else).  We don't just get to say "Oh, x5 is the dimension of happiness, so we can't see it", we have to show using the equations why we can't move in the x5 direction ourselves.  I have seen absolutely no indication that Heim's theory provides such an explanation, and as I mentioned somewhere above, the phrasing of some of these documents actively suggests that it doesn't.  What counts is results, as you say, and if it has three timelike dimensions, Heim's theory's results are fundamentally wrong no matter what else it might get right.


 * You comment that Heim's mass formula has "remarkable accuracy", but I honestly don't think Heim's supporters have the right to say that until they provide theoretical uncertainties for their predicted masses. In real physics, a measureable quantity stated without an uncertainty is essentially meaningless (and nobody doing particle phenomenology who does not understand that deserves to be taken seriously).  Yes, the many digits of agreement that Heim-theory claims look pretty, but for all we know their uncertainty could be three orders of magnitude and the numerical match a mere coincidence.  (And given that their documents indicate that they used an inaccurate and over-precise value for the gravitational constant in their calculations as mentioned above, I'm even more hesitant to put much faith in that agreement.)


 * Regarding the "1 meter" issue, the process of taking a limit simply cannot introduce a dimensionful parameter out of nowhere.  If this dimensionful parameter "E = 1 m^2" appears in the limit, then it (or some related parameter) must appear in the original.  For that matter, the simple fact that solving the original equation for D gives answers with units shows that the original equation must have contained some parameter with units (solve "x-2=0" for x and you'll get "x=2", not "x=2 meters").  If "1 m^2" was a choice, then that choice must be justified, and it is physically significant.  This document gives no indication of why "1 meter" would appear in a fundamental theory (except for a statement that it makes calculations easier).


 * Finally, I do agree that in an ideal world, every idea and theory should be carefully evaluated on its own merits. However, there are a lot of people out there claiming to have found the one true theory of everything (I've seen someone propound the "Pyramid Jesus Unified Field Equation", I kid you not), and scientists simply don't have the time to go through them all in the depth required to judge them completely.  When one of those people is also known to believe in paranormal events despite the scientific evidence against them, there's a strong correlation suggesting that their theory of everything is flawed as well.  It's not proof by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think you can blame people too much for using that as a factor when budgeting their time.--Steuard 19:50, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Von L's answer is that E is necessary, in order to balance dimensions. It is purely a function of the system of units in use. Thus in the paper you quote the 1 metre value comes from the fact that Heim operated in the mks - system. If he had used the cgs system, then E would have the dimension 1 cm. There is thus no secret behind the choice of dimension.

Your point about accuracy is even more obviously false. To suggest that the results of the mass formula give a numerical match that is mere coincidence can be rather easily shown to be outlandish. Taking the 'Selected Results' on heim-theory.com as shown in the famous diagram of delta-m/m values for 16 particles, we see that the mean relative error is less than 10**-4. But the probability of getting a mass to 4 decimal place accuracy is 1 in 10000. Thus for all 16 values to be coincidental we have a probability of 1 in (10000)**16 =  1/10**64 - i.e. an astronomically minuscule probability. So the formula is incredibly accurate, considering that failure of QCD and string theory to give accurate predictions.

So we have a theory by a colleague of Heisenberg that produces mass values of phenomenal accuracy. If there are other open questions in the theory then the instinct of any healthy physicist should be 'we have these wonderful results on mass - so let's work toward a better understanding of the theory to see where it leads.' If that means finding a better interpretation for the 3 time-like dimensions and other unusual aspects of the theory, then the attitude should be to investigate and not use any apparent current blemish to paint the entire theory black. It is the sign of a rather unhealthy attitude to want to throw out the baby with the bath-water in this manner.

I agree that if any old claimant to a Theory of Everything was also known for an interest in the occult or other 'anomalies', then one would tend to rule him or her out a-priori. But as I made plain with the examples of Crooks and Josephson, if we know that these are basically good scientists, then we give them the benefit of the doubt, that whatever they look at in their spare time is their own business and does not impinge on the hard core physics of their theory. This latter reasoning in appropriate in the case of Heim as he worked with famous physicists and was acknowledged to be some sort of genius - also, he had been known as a child prodigy. Thus, again I would say that Heim's credentials are impeccable.--hughey 10:42, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, the answer on the 1 m^2 issue is completely unsatisfactory, as eq. 40 and eq. 42 will give different results, if you insert other values for E, like 1 cm^2 or 1 sqft. --Pjacobi 10:53, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)


 * If von Ludwiger believes that the appearance of "1 meter^2" is pure convention, then he's wrong. (It's rare that one can be so certain when discussing science, but this case seems to qualify.)  As Pjacobi and I have pointed out, changing that value to "1 cm^2" or "1 light-year^2" would clearly also change the "initial size of the universe" results that come from it.  This is flawed physics, plain and simple, and the fact that active Heim-theory researchers explicitly don't recognize that seals the lid on the theory's coffin for me.


 * As for my concerns about the asserted accuracy of Heim-theory's mass results, it's precisely that "astronomically minuscule probability" that makes me doubt the Heim-theory group's claims (and their scientific method). They don't state their uncertainties, but the dependence of those masses on the value of G can be estimated by looking at the graph of various Heim-based predictions (for different G's).  The spread of those values is substantial, even for values of G that differ only by one standard deviation of current experimental uncertainty.  I agree that Heim-theory's many digits of agreement with the observed masses is too close to be a coincidence, but it also seems awfully clear that that agreement is too close to be experimentally justified.  So either Heim-theory was unaccountably lucky in finding a value of G that is accurate beyond all reasonable expectation, or they've somehow fudged the numbers to make the results come out right, whether they thought of it that way or not.  (I guess it's also possible that they're fitting a value of G to the observed mass data, but that's certainly not what I've seen them describe.  An approach like that would require a rather different presentation of results, which is why I've doubted that it's what they've done.)  Based on what I've seen so far, I'm leaning pretty strongly to the "fudged the numbers (possibly without realizing it)" answer.


 * In short, what we have is a theory that produces mass values so phenomenally accurate that even a perfect theory (with similar G dependence) could not hope to come close to them given current experimental data. The theory was created by a "colleague of Heisenberg" whom virtually no current physicists have heard of, who believed in a range of paranormal phenomena despite scientific evidence to the contrary, and whose current advocates apparently don't even understand the significance of dimensionful constants in physical laws.  The basic foundation of the theory is broadly recognized as being essentially unphysical, and it predicts a wide range of new particles which should have been observed by now if they existed.


 * Now, what in all this is supposed to inspire scientists to give Heim-theory "the benefit of the doubt"?--Steuard 20:42, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

One misses the point to a large extent by concentrating on E - when there is a probability of 10**-64 of finding the right mass spectrum, it is plain to see that even if we are free to tune E to any arbitrary value, and then if the masses actually depended on this choice, tuning of E alone would be insufficient to tune all 16 masses simultaneously. In particular, using 1.0 would not be a very wise choice for a tuned parameter. However, I hope that I will soon have an answer from someone in the Heim theory group as to the origin of E and its significance. So it is a bit early to consign the theory to the dustbin, before we hear this expalanation. So really it again all boils down to the phenomenal accuracy of the mass estimates. Now you imply that the only way they could have got this vanishingly small probability of being wrong was by a (perhaps inadvertant!) fudge of the calculations. But this won't do, as in fact several different groups have estimated the masses and come to the same low-probability ball park. Amongst these are the group at DESY in the 1980's who had no connection with the current Heim-theory group. And when you talk about the values being sensitive to different values of G you forget that the 'wild' variations got from using different G estimates all remain comfortably within the p < 10**-64 domain. Certainly, it would be nice to see proper error bars on these plots, and presumably these will eventually be produced, once more researchers get on the job of slogging through the calculations.

The fact that most modern physicists have never heard of a colleague of Heisenberg and Jordan once featured on the cover of major magazines such as Stern and courted by Von Braun is simply a reflection of the ignorance of the history of science amongst most physicists - this is regrettable, but perhaps a further manifestation of the 'two cultures' syndrome, where history of any form is perceived as being in the province of the humanities. Sad, though, that physics in this way resembles collectively those unfortunate cases of cognitive deficits which restrict memory to the short term.

Your last missive is characterised by an unusual level of vitriol with little relevance to the facts. E.g.the insulting phrase 'The basic foundation of the theory is broadly recognized as being essentially unphysical' is utter rubbish, as it is based on Einstein's General Relativity and quantum theory, which are hardly 'unphysical'. And most of the new particles predicted by the early theory are excluded by their more recently estimated short lifetimes. No such exclusion has been proferred for the non-existence of super-symmetric particles predicted by string theory. --hughey 08:16, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I have never meant to suggest that the arbitrary choice of the constant "E" was related to the possible hand-tuning of the particle masses. My point is simply that making that arbitrary choice is bad physics, and that most physicists will justifiably have little to no confidence in the work of those who make such errors.  If Heim's theory gets one of its "astonishing results" from a fundamental misunderstanding like this, then it's not unreasonable to wonder if some of its other astonishing claims have similarly flawed derivations.  (And I thought you had already given us a comment on E from someone in the Heim theory group!  Or is von Ludwiger independent of them?)


 * As for the mass estimates, one explanation for multiple groups getting similar results could be that some or all of the "hand tuning" involved was in Heim's original equations, or in the methodology tht he introduced. (My impression about that DESY group, for instance, was that they simply agreed to use their computer resources to solve the equations that Heim sent them.)  As I said above, the stated Heim-theory mass results simply apper too close to experimental values to be believed when compared to their apparent dependence on G.


 * And while I don't feel like my final paragraph above was really "vitriolic", I'll admit that it reflected a fair bit of impatience. You have argued repeatedly that we should give Heim's theory the benefit of the doubt because he was basically a good scientist, and I was trying to point out (once again) that I don't see the evidence for that claim.  Practically everywhere I've looked in discussions of Heim's theory, I've seen dubious results (like the unobserved particles or three time dimensions) or bad science (like the missing uncertainties or "E = 1 m^2").  Every indication except the particle masses points to the theory being fundamentally flawed, and the derivation of the mass formulas is only available to those who find Heim's books, read German, and spend the extensive time necessary to puzzle out his mathematical techniques.  And even then we're told that "Heim's books contain some vagueness", which isn't a phrase you often see applied to great science and which casts a bit of doubt on those results.  So again, why is it unreasonable for me to guess on the basis of what I've seen that the rest of the theory is of similarly poor quality?


 * I should also apologize for being unclear when speaking of "the basic foundation of the theory" above. I was trying to refer to the specific class of spacetimes within GR that Heim had chosen, and to their three timelike directions in particular.  That was the context in which I (and von Ludwiger) had used the word "unphysical" before, but I'll admit the reference was unclear.  As for particle lifetimes, experimental particle physicists spend their careers finding evidence for particles with very short lifetimes: there are established techniques for measuring the mass of a particle even if it does not last long enough to be seen directly.  Heim's neutral electron seems to be ruled out by their work no matter what its lifetime, while there's plenty of room in supersymmetric theories for those particles to be more massive than the current experimental limits (too much room, some might say :) ).--Steuard 15:50, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it looks as if you see what you want to see and I see what I want to see and ne'er the twain shall meet. On the presence of errors in the books - Von L and others in the Heim Theory group have often pointed out that of the 2 volumes of Heim's Magnum Opus, vol. 1 was written without being cross checked while vol 2 was checked more thoroughly. The result, it is agreed, is that vol 1 is in need of correction in several places whilst vol. 2, which contains the mass equation derivation, is essentially error-free. Thus the excellent agreement of predicted masses with observed values can be taken as a good indication that the theory is basically sound. As for evidence that Heim was smarter than the average bear, how's this - from the autobiographical info on heim-theory.com:


 * In school he booby-trapped some doors with a chemical explosive of his own devising. He wasn't punished for this as the teachers couldn't believe that a 12 year old could have managed that.


 * When he was 17, he presented a plan to Heisenberg, for the ignition of tritium by a shaped-charge of explosives. Heisenberg was impressed by the knowledge of the young man, but couldn't believe that the chemical ignition of the nuclear fusion was viable  (10 years later this procedure was shown to work and became known as the  ' clean ignition of the H-bomb' ). That was the first example of him being ahead of his time - just as well for the allies!


 * In the war as an 18 yr old conscript, a German ministry heard of his plans for a super-bomb and a lab was put at his disposal - that was where a colleague caused the explosion that blew off his hands and badly injured eyes and ears.


 * In his blindness, he developed an auditory edetic memory that allowed him to learn Italian and Spanish both in 8 days, but took all of 14 days to learn Turkish.  In 1957 Von Ludwiger became his friend after being falsely arrested for purloining a recording of a Heim lecture. Over the years, he was impressed by how Heim could recall authors that he himself had forgotten, or repeat verbatim formulae read to him 20 years before by his wife.


 * In the magazines 'Stern', 'Bunte', 'Quick' and in many other newspapers, as well as on the main German TV station ARD, interviews and reports were published about Heim's new physics.


 * American and Russian scientists of that time trusted in the fact that a physicist, formerly at the Max-Planck Institute for astrophysics in Goettingen under Carl Friedrich Von Weizsaecker, was not stupid (you seem to be superior to them - wow!). Werner Von Braun inquired of Heim as to whether he would soon perfect a method of propulsion for a moon shot - but Heim had to admit that for this it was a bit premature: However, in the last 2 years papers presented at propulsion workshops on both sides of the Atlantic imply that the time might be ripe to try out some of those ideas.

Now everything seemed to be going well in his scientific career up to then. Von Weisacker, Heisenberg, Jordan etc. were convinced that the young Heim was a prodigy, so there was every reason to hope that his work on a unified field theory and field drives for space travel would soon come to fruition. However, this is when he shut himself away to work obsessively on the TOE, trusting no-one but a small circle of friends and colleagues who over a period of 40 years simply died off, so that when he finally had the mass formula there was a new generation of scientists who never heard of him and couldn't believe that this guy, coming seemingly out of nowhere, could have come up with the unified field theory.

Now does that sound like the sort of person who would slip in wobbly into his mass formula? The time of his schoolboy pranks was long since past. Thus I would say there were more than adequate grounds for giving the theory the benefit of the doubt until it's checked out properly. --hughey 09:20, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On "E"
@hdeasy: Please keep cool, even if the critique becomes vitriolic. See, you may have reached Level 1 on the acceptance scale: Level 0 meaning completely ignoring, not looking into the papers. Now we have started looking into the papers, so please don't be surprised, if we point out errors.

I agree, that 1m² doesn't look like fine-tuning to get the mass rights. But perhaps the complete section in the paper should be reworded: At this stage, neither the initial universe size nor the time quantum can be fixed, we have to introduce an arbitrary scale factor E of dimension L².

Of course, this would kill the astonishing result that the initial universe size is about 1m, as this is an input, not an output of the theory.

Pjacobi 13:39, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

I haven't had a reply yet from the Heim-theory group on this issue, but already in the paper "Future Space Propulsion based on Heim's Field Theory a4  letter (1.3 MB) Talk at AIAA Space Propulsion Conference, von Braun Center, Huntsville Alabama" on the publications section of http://www.cle.de/hpcc/index.html, Haueser & Droescher have E in their eq. 26 and state it as follows: "e and E being the basis of the natural logarithm and a unit surface, respectively." That seems to be it, pure and simple - E is just a unit surface area, so that if you had an equation for pressure involving Force/E, then as long as the force is simply that through E, then you get pressure where E is 1.0. No mystery. I'm pretty sure that's what's involved and will be the explanation - otherwise this 'error' whould not be repeated so blatantly at conferences.--hughey 11:28, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but by now I must question your ability on reading equations. If you use different values of E (which is of course not 1.0, but 1.0m² in the paper), you will get different values for the initial universe size and the time quantum respectively, when putting these values in eq. 40 and eq. 42. As an exercise you can go through the calculations for E=1 cm² and E=1 lightyear².
 * Regarding the slides you mentioned: In a talk which among other things, shows how to achieve FTL space travel, non-reaction space drive and gives a modification of Newton's law to give gravitative attraction, a little unexplained "E" wouldn't get much attention.
 * Pjacobi 11:56, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)

Keep YOUR cool! It is I who must question your ability to read equations, as I now have von Ludwiger's initial answer. First my translation to English: The unit area E enters in Heim's theory in a projection process of the spatially distributed Gravitational potential on a surface area. Heim examines the elementary gravitational field, which proceeds from a smallest inertial mass mo = m(ro) as source of the field. From the computation of the distance-dependent mass m = m(r) come two 'reality barriers' and/or distance extrema : R_ = s and R+ = R. In addition, there  exists a gravitation border for the attractive gravitational field x² = s R = e A R with A = 3 G mo/(16 c²) = Pi/2 L where mo may be replaced by: mo = Eo/c² = C h/(L c³) (where G = gravitational constant, L = compton-Wavelength, C = speed of light, x = h²/(Gm³), e = 2.71..., n = number of Metrons, * = power).

With the elementary surface (Metron) t = h G/c³ is defined a maximum volume for the elementary Gravitational potenzial: 2 x² L = e R t With the projective lattice selector C = (b t*(1/2));n ,  the volume 2 x² L can be projected into a Meridian plane of the gravitative level surface of mo, where b is a projection factor.

Let F be a unit area, which is limited after a projection of all spatial potential surfaces of the field structure in the level R2 by a contour: 2 x² L = b n F t*(1/2)

For the projection factor b the following applies : b² = so/F*(1/2) with so = 1 [ m ]

For a spherical surface area: F = pi so² = pi E with E = so² = 1 [ m² ], the surface of the unit circle. The projection factor is thus b = so*(1/2)/F*(1/4) = Pi*(1/4).

Everything else is in the text. I hope these hints suffice - best regards, I von L.

The original German version is (check my translation:)

Ich gebe nochmals die Herleitung der Einheitsfläche E = so² = 1 [m²] an: Die Einheitsfläche E kommt bei Heim durch einen Projektionsprozess des räumlich verteilten Gravitationspotenzials auf eine Niveaufläche zustande. Heim untersucht das elementare Gravitationsfeld, welches von einer kleinsten Trägheitsmasse mo = m(ro) als Feldquelle ausgeht. Aus der Berechnung der entfernungsabhängigen Masse m = m(r) ergeben sich zwei Realitätsschranken bzw. Distanzextrema R_= s und R+ = R. Ausserdem existiert eine Gravitationsgrenze für das attrektive Gravitationsfeld x² = s R = e A R  mit A = 3 G mo/(16 c²)= Pi/2 L worin mo ersetzt werden kann durch: mo = Eo/c² = c h/(L c³) (G = Gravitationskonstante, L = Compton-Wellenlänge, c = Lichtgeschwindigkeit, x = h²/(Gm³), e = 2,71..., n = Anzahl Metronen, * = Potenz).

Mit der Elementarfläche (Metron) t = h G/c³ wird ein maximales Volumen für das elementare Gravitationspotenzial definiert: 2 x² L = e R t Mit dem projektiven Gitterselektor C = (b t*(1/2));n kann das Volumen  2 x² L  in eine Meridianebene der gravitativen Niveauflächen von mo projiziert werden, wenn b ein Projektionsfaktor bedeutet. F sei eine Einheitsfläche, die nach einer Projektion aller räumlichen Potenzialflächen der Feldstruktur in der Ebene R2 von einer Höhenlinie begrenzt wird: 2 x² L = b n F t*(1/2)

Für den Projektionsfaktor b gilt: b² = so/F*(1/2)     mit   so = 1 [m] Bei einer sphärischen Niveaufläche ist F = Pi so² = Pi E   mit   E = so² = 1 [m²], die Fläche des Einheitskreises. Der Projektionsfaktor ist somit b = so*(1/2)/F*(1/4) = Pi*(-1/4).

Alles weitere ist dann wie im Text. Vielleicht reichen diese Hinweise aus. Herzliche Grüsse

I.v.Ludwiger --hughey 12:35, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * To many words, to few actual calculations. Take eq. 42, which should calculate the chronon &delta; from the metron &tau;. Contracting all numerical constants, this formula gives the following simple form for the chronon measured in length units:
 * &delta; c = 1.2154 &tau;5/6 / E1/3
 * Using the metron size of 6.15*10-70 mentioned in the paper, we get the following chronon sizes in length units:
 * E=1 m²
 * &delta; c = 2.5632*10-58 m
 * E=1 cm²
 * &delta; c = 5.5223*10-57 m
 * '''E=1 lightyear²
 * &delta; c = 5.7302*10-69 m

Care to explain?
 * Pjacobi 13:12, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)

You would seem to be right at first glance insofar as a substitution of cm for m alone gives a different answer for eq. (42). But according to Heim, it is not allowed to simply multiply E by 100 to get cm. Heim defines the product b t = 1 m² = E, where b gives the number of metrons. Thus for E = 1 cm² instead of 1 m² another value for b, call it b', must be taken. In Vol.2 of Heim's 'Elementarteilchen...' this is explained on page 27. Von Ludwiger has now had some time to assess the impact on eq. (42). He has re-done the calculation and determined the value again using [ cm ] instead of [ m ], which showed up your error:  He says you forgot to divide the result by the cubed root of E, which in the case of [cm] gives 21.544 (10000**1/3). Dividing your [cm] value by this factor, one obtains exactly your [m] value. You probably made the same error, using [light-years], but Ivl thought it superfluous to check that as well, as he had re-checked his [cm] value several times. So he is sure that this is your error and hopes that future challenges to the theory will be properly checked against Heim's books before being put forward as possible errors. --hughey 12:42, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Please clarify: Do you suggest an error in eq 42 of cited reference or an error in my calculation? --Pjacobi 13:14, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)
 * Do you disagree, that eq 42 reduces to &delta; c = 1.2154 &tau;5/6 / E1/3 after inserting all numerical constants? BTW, I just saw, that the paper has been pulled from its former URL. So, I assume you stop claiming it to be a valid presentation of the theory?
 * Uh, and another point: Of course if you keep the value of E = 1m², the result stays the same if you evaluate the equatation in units of [cm]. But then the question arises, how a "nature constant" of exactly 1m² pops up.
 * --Pjacobi 13:32, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)

Well, the reason that the paper was withdrawn from that web-site was this: when I first approached IvL with the queries that arose here on E, and made it clear which web-site was in question, he was surprised and annoyed, as it seems he never intended this paper for on-line publication. Now he has withdrawn it and refuses to spend any more time on answering questions on it as he says the policy of the Heim-theory group is to concentrate on the material on their web-site, especially the derivation of the mass formula (yes I know, it's in German only so far). It seems they have enough to do to iron out inconsistencies in that presentation without branching into cosmology. A pity - I suspect that the answer is that b,t, E and maybe even the coefficient of eq. (42) may vary independently with change of system of units, thus allowing &tau to vary just enough to balance variations in E and/or the coefficient and so hold &delta; c constant. But without a deeper insight into vol. 2 of Heim's magnum opus, it is impossible to confirm this. --hughey 10:30, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Final comments on E
I agree to go on from E. Ironically, I finally got hold of a copy of "Elementarteilchen" vol.2 (ordered from Resch) which actually puts me in a better position to do a write-up on Heim Theory - so yes, when I find some time I hope to put together something, warts and all, so as to avoid a yes-man POV. But before we leave it, let me just give the answer for E on p. 27, (IvL said it was there, only  didn't spell it out). The full expression for the Chronon, combining eqs. 35 and 35a of Element-vol-2 is:

&delta; = (3 e / 4 &pi; 1/4 2 1/3 c)&tau; 5/6 / E1/3 = (1.2154/c) &tau;5/6 / E1/3

which is just eq. (42) op.cit. Your error seems to have been to omit c. With c in there explicitly the dimensions balance, so going from m to cm implies:

E --> 10000 E, &tau; -> 10000 &tau; and c  -> 100 c, so one sees that the factor to multiply by is (10000)5/6 / (100 (10000)1/3) = 1.0. I think the confusion arises as E is really unneccessary and a quirk of Heim's way of doing things - most people would have subsumed it into another quantity, just as pressure subsumes 1 m2 into its dimensions.--hughey 08:52, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't think you've understood what our objection was. We all agree that the dimensions do balance out on the two sides of the equation, so if you uniformly change meters to centimeters throughout, of course nothing will change.  Our objection was to the choice of E's physical value, the choice that E = 1 m2 = 104 cm2 = 106 mm2.  If instead we had chosen a different physical value, such as E = 1 mm2 (rather than just writing the same physical value in different units), then the "smallest time interval" &delta; suddenly gets a hundred times bigger!


 * By an appropriate choice of E, I can make that "smallest time interval" anything I want. So in what sense is it "smallest"?  You say that "most people would have subsumed it into another quantity", but if the physical value of E is arbitrary (not just its numerical value, which as you point out is dependent on units) then whatever quantity subsumed it would become equally arbitrary.  And if the value of E is not arbitrary but intrinsically determined by the theory, I find it hard to believe that the answer would turn out to be exactly 1 m2.  Anyway, I think that's the last I'll say about E, unless you find something fundamentally new that addresses the comments I've made here.--Steuard 17:41, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, there is a bit of subtlety not explicit in the formula involving E - you need to allow for nondimensionalization and scaling. HappyCamper 15:52, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Can you expand on that a bit? Because I don't see what you're getting at here.  As far as I can tell, this E is a totally arbitrary parameter, and any sort of nondimensionalization procedure would just transfer that "infection" of arbitraryness to other variables.  And any scaling of E would change physical predictions of the theory.--Steuard 16:48, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * Based on the discussion here only, my interpretation of E is that it is the quantity with units which normalizes the units &tau; - the metron. &tau; has units of area, and if SI units are used, it has units of m2. Hence, E is chosen to be conveniently 1 m2. There was concern over what would happen if E were say, 1 mm2. This does not pose a problem, because the units of &tau; would also have to change to mm2 in order for the equation to make sense. If we choose not to change the units of &tau;, then it will be necessary to insert conversion factors into the equation. However, both of these approaches still keep the equation consistent. So, yes, my opinion is that E is arbitrary because we can choose E to be anything. However, it's necessary to remember that some of the other quantities used in the formula for the chronon also carry units, and these need to be dealt with appropriately as well. My interpretation of the formulas given on this page was that this was the primary source of ambiguity over E. This was why I made the comment about nondimensionalization above. In this case, scaling does not invalidate the predictions of the theory - it is just a tool that can help avoid having to deal with units explicitly, as the case here demonstrated. Please let me know if you would like me to elaborate on this further - I thought no one was interested in this anymore! HappyCamper 19:21, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * First, a general question: do you have a copy of the paper that inspired this discussion on E in the first place? It used to be available at, but the text there was withdrawn after hughey asked the author to comment on our discussion of the E issue here.  If you don't have a copy, I'd be happy to send you one by private email (I think that would be reasonable as "fair use" of this academic publication).


 * In case you don't have a copy of the paper, Eq. (40) read as follows (with all purely numerical constants represented by "#"): "D = # (#)^(4/3) E^(7/3) / tau^(11/6)". Here, D is the "cosmic diameter" (a length) and tau is the "metron size" (an area).  The paper says that "In this equation E = 1 m^2 for dimensional reasons."  Based on that definition and the form of the equation, it seems clear that D and tau have units of length and area (rather than some nondimensionalized rescaling).  If that's not clear enough, Eq. (41) lists three solutions for D after imposing "tau = pi D^2" in Eq. (40); all of them give D with units in meters, and numerically, all of those answers are of order one: "D ~ 1 m".  (The formula for the "chronon" delta in Eq. (42) has similar structure: "delta = # tau^(5/6) / (E^(1/3) c)".  But I won't focus on it here.)


 * I think that if you look back over the foregoing discussion with that equation in hand, you will see that I (and Pjacobi) do have a clear understanding of dimensional analysis. Although hughey's counter-arguments (including those passed on from the Heim-Theory group) sound exactly like attempts to explain dimensional analysis to those who don't understand it, I am quite certain that they are fundamentally flawed when applied to this equation.  In particular, the specific value of E that is chosen affects the physical meaning of the equation.  If we chose "E = 100 m^2" instead of "E = 1 m^2", the physical relationship between D and tau would change.  (For example, those three solutions for D after imposing "tau = pi D^2" would all be increased by a factor of ten, so "D ~ 10 m" in Eq. (41).  Again, that's very much a physical difference!)  Thus, E is arbitrary, but it is not just equivalent to some choice of units.


 * Of course, you're welcome to insist that changes to E must be accompanied by changes to D and tau that keep the ratios D/sqrt(E) and tau/E constant. But that elevates the physical value of E to a fundamental parameter of the theory: you're stuck having to explain why E has the singularly convenient value "1 m^2" when using MKS units.--Steuard 21:22, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, if you could send me a copy of the paper that would be great. I have not read it, hence the reason why I included the word "only" in italics in my previous response. [As an aside, I feel that there was very likely some offence taken in my first post here. Please excuse it if any was taken - none of it was intentional. There is no doubt in my mind that you and Pjacobi understand dimensional analysis thoroughly.] HappyCamper 00:01, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Going ahead
Let's put aside the "E" issue and concentrate on advancing the articles. Do you still volunteer to put more about the Heim-Theory into Wikipedia, or do have to wait for another editor? As said there, the more biographically related material should be go to Burkhard Heim but "Heim theory" needs a lot of clarifications, some formulas, tables etc. For a start the different dimensionalities (6, 8, 12, other?) should be clarified.

As you may have guessed I'm still very skeptical about the theory, but I will concede relevance.

You should also put in some things, which speak against the theory. The best approach to NPOV isn't that the supportes contribute all the "Pro" and wait for counters, but writing for the enemy. So, ideally, you should write the negative sides and Lumidek the positive side, but I fear, he wouldn't volunteer.

I can try to put in some more biographical detail here, but the Telepolis article was a disappointment. I read it at the news stand and decided, it's not worth buying.

Pjacobi 13:59, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)


 * I don't know that strict "writing for the enemy" as you've described it is really necessary, and I think it can lead to misrepresentation of opposing arguments (whether intentionally or not). But I certainly agree that it's important to include all significant positions on an issue when writing about it here (or elsewhere, really).  I honestly have contemplated trying to write what I would consider an NPOV discussion of Heim's ideas, but I simply haven't been able to find the time.  And also, I don't feel like I understand his theory well enough to be able to explain it well from scratch; I'd be more comfortable with an existing Heim-theory article to base it on.  I'd also be more willing to make incremental improvements to an existing article if it were closer to NPOV to start with.  (By the way, who is Lumidek?  Has he/she been involved with this Heim-theory discussion somewhere?)--Steuard 16:09, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)


 * User:Lumidek is Lubos Motl. See his edit summary: . --Pjacobi 16:32, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I hadn't made that connection at all; I wasn't even aware that he was active here, though I'm not surprised.  But yeah, I agree, it would probably be hard to talk him into spending much time on Heim.--Steuard 17:10, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Just an update - the article by Droescher and Haeuser has been published February 2005 and the reference is: ISBN 0-7354-0230-2 One Volume, Print; 1495 pages; 8.5 X 11 inches, single column; Hardcover; $320.00 CD-ROM VERSION (sold separately): ISBN 0-7354-0231-0; $145.00 Details in http://proceedings.aip.org/proceedings/confproceed/746.jsp and the contents of the volume with reference to the Heim article in http://proceedings.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=APCPCS&Volume=746&Issue=1. See also complete text in http://www.cle.de/hpcc/publications/documents/heim_staif2005-letter.pdf. The paper's title is "Heim Quantum Theory for Space Propulsion Physics". Note also, that after reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson I note more striking parallels between Heim and Newton - the latter actualy waited 20 years before going into print with the results of his year of wonders, and due to staring at the sun was nearly blind for a long time - like Heim! --hughey 16:29, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes indeed, I followed the link to that publication when it appeared on the Heim-Theory page. (For what it's worth, databases like SPIRES generally don't count papers in conference proceedings as "published", whatever that label may mean.)  I haven't read anywhere close to the whole thing (not yet, at least), but this paper already starts sounding highly dubious at the top of the second page:


 * "the spontaneous order that has been observed in the universe is opposite to the laws of thermodynamics, predicting the increase of disorder or greater entropy (Strogatz 2003). Everywhere highly evolved structures can be seen, which is an enigma for the science of today."


 * The first question that comes to my mind is why the Heim theory authors chose to cite a book for general audiences about synchrony and spontaneous order as their reference on thermodynamics, but that's a side point. Much more significant is that these statements are in the paper in the first place: there's no thermodynamic "enigma" about the presence of "highly evolved" structures at all.  A great many processes are known to produce locally increasing order (even though disorder increases in the universe as a whole), and they all work using known physics, with no extra "information-carrying" or "entropy-resisting" dimensions required.  It's hard to take seriously scientific claims by authors who begin their paper by misstating science that was considered basic a hundred years ago.--Steuard 19:33, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Complexity theory still is by and large a mystery to the science of today - despite sterling efforts by the Santa Fe institute, Gell-Man etc., complex systems like the brain/mind are still a mystery wrapped in an enigma - yes, cognitive scientists have made a fist of pointing out various modules - but the ineraction and bacground dependence of the associated brain states are still too nightmarish for the current models. Whatever: I actually agree that that negative entropy reference was out of place in the Heim paper - I squirmed when I saw it. But maybe that was just a sop to one of the waffling 'philosophical' interpretation of the theory. It has nothing to do with the actual maths. Coincidentally, I was watching a philosophical discussion on Delta last night on the German-Swiss-Austrian channel 3-Sat: not bad – nothing better at getting my daughters to sleep and papa wide awake than a deep discussion on religion with Dürr expounding on the interconnectedness of things when the non-local implications of quantum mechanics are considered. Thought Dürr sounded familiar – then leafed through my Heim notes and sure enough it was he who was Heisenberg’s Max Planck successor when Burkhard Heim came around to explain his recently developed mass formula – after first being given the cold shoulder by D, the latter gradually got interested when it was made clear that the mass formula was a structure theory. There ensued an intense question and answer session of a few hours after which D convinced H to publish in the Max Planck journal. We know that that DID show up in SPIRES. Dürr is still very prominent - was recently awarded a decoration (Bundesverdienstkreuz?) by German minister of the interior Schilly.--hughey 09:35, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The article by Haeuser and Droescher (see above) has now won a prize for the best paper received in 2004 by the AIAA Nuclear and Future Flight Technical Committee !! This prize of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics will be presented to Prof. Haeuser on the 13th of July 2005 on the occasion of the Joint Propulsion Conference in Tucson. Other news from the Heim-Theory group: Prof. Droescher has completed some mathematically rigorous derivations of some of the Heim-theory results and this will soon be added to the web-site. So: 2005 looks ever more like the year of Heim :-).--hughey 11:20, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)