Burkhard Heim

Burkard Heim (February 9 1925–January 14 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. He devoted a large portion of his life to the pursuit of his unified field theory. The inspiration for Heim theory is from general relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which were considered fundamental to a physical understanding of the universe. One of his childhood ambitions was to develop a method of space travel, which contributed to his motivation to find such a theory.

Posthumous results

Since Heim's death in 2001, the small group of scientists around him finished work on predicting the energy spectrum of particle ground and excited states. So far, the agreement with experiment achieves five to seven decimal places of accuracy, but is outside the error bar of the mass measurements for stable and long lived particles, where the measure accuracy is highest, see this table.

Related Topics:
Death - 2001 - Energy spectrum - Agreement - This table

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In some respects, Heim's theory is closer to being a Theory of Everything than the relatively more established standard model of particle physics and Superstring theory (see The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene) because it is able to infer particle masses, which the other theories are unable to do. However, theoretical physicists still need to work through the formidable mathematics before they can assess the validity of Heim's theory, and obtain reasonable confidence in the results.

Related Topics:
Standard model - Particle physics - Superstring theory - The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene - Theoretical physicists - Confidence

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A sign that the theory is perhaps undergoing a renewal of interest is a paper published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2005 authored by Droescher and Haeuser. The paper discusses potential aerospace applications of Heim theory. The Nuclear and Future Flight Propulsion Technical Committee of the AIAA decided to acknowledge the publication with a "best paper of the year" award in July 2005. The authors duly accepted their award in July 2005. This was widely reported on web-sites associated with the University of Braunschweig (e.g. http://www.erkenntnishorizont.de/aktuelles/artikel.c.php?verz=05&artnr=050301031&screen=800,

Related Topics:
Aerospace - AIAA

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

http://www.braunschweig.ihk.de/innovation_umwelt/innovationsberatung/?viewMeldung=meldung_1115878075.4,

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

http://cms.fh-wolfenbuettel.de/servlet/PageServlet/presse/home/index?selpage=aiaa_forschungspreis2004) and elsewhere. There are indications that the science press is also interested in reporting on the award and its relation to LQT.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~