Burkhard Heim
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Burkard Heim (February 9 1925–January 14 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. He spent a large portion of his life in the pursuit of understanding what he considered the fundamentals of the physical world, and in the process attempted to formulate a unified field theory. He also strove to attain Albert Einstein's goal of describing space and time ("spacetime") using a completely rigorous mathematical and geometrical description. His academic work and that of his colleagues is collectively known as Heim Theory.
Heim struggled with a debilitating handicap resulting from an explosion which left him essentially deaf, blind and without hands when he was 19. His behaviour was, at times, akin to that of an eccentric recluse. Soon after this event, he retreated into almost total seclusion, concentrating on developing and refining his theory of everything.
There is debate among physicists as to whether the ideas of Heim achieved his goals. Those who have collaborated with Heim generally believe that he may have succeeded. Most other physicists have not held the theory in as high a regard, primarily because a significant portion of Heim's work has not been published in rigorously peer reviewed journals. Other factors limiting the acceptance of Heim's theory include its complex mathematical formalism (such as its use of selector calculus), as well as its lengthy nature. In particular, the theory was initially published in German and had notations which were not in widespread use. For these reasons, Heim's theory has attracted a limited audience and appeal in today's theoretical physics community. As a result, he is not as well known now as most prominent physicists, though in the 1950s and 1960s he was prominent in the media and amongst distinguished physicists.
A few researchers today continue developing Heim's theory using a form of quantum gravity with the expectation that Heim may receive posthumous credit for finding a comprehensive framework for a Theory of Everything.
Early life
Heim was a precocious child. At age of 6 he knew the positions of the major planets and constellations. In school, he taught himself thousands of Chinese characters with which to write secret messages. He was already advanced far beyond his age in chemistry, so that when he devised an explosive booby trap on door knobs as a prank on unpopular teachers, he was not suspected of being the culprit as he seemed too young for such an advanced construction. At the age of 18, he did his 'Abitur' or high school diploma. In this year he also developed the idea for a 'clean' hydrogen bomb. In 1943 he met Heisenberg who was involved in German atom bomb research at that time and told him of his plan to use chemical implosion to facilitate an atomic explosion. Heisenberg, though impressed by the youth's knowledge, said he thought it impractical. However, this may have been because he was not really sympathetic to the Nazi war effort, as Heim's design was used 10 years later in the first such 'clean' H bomb. At that point Heim had to do military service in the airforce. He sent a paper on explosives to the Chemical-Technical 'Reichsanstalt' in Berlin, whereupon he was summoned to work there on the development of the proposed new explosives. It was here that he met with the accident that handicapped him for life.
Academic and work history
A large proportion of the 76 years of Heim's life was spent on theoretical physics and the formulation of his Heim theory.
1940s and 1950s
In 1946, Heim registered at the University of Goettingen to study physics. He fulfilled his academic degree requirements with the help of companions. Afterwards, he continued to study a variety of topics including medicine, psychology, electronics, history and theology.
In 1954 he began to study under Carl Frederich von Weizacker in Goettingen. He wrote his diploma thesis on physical processes in the Crab Nebula Supernova. After this, he began to work at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Goettingen. However, he soon found it extremely difficult to work in a team due to his handicaps. Von Weizacker also did not want to burden Heim with the development of a unified field theory. However, this was essentially the only thing that Heim was interested in.
1960s
Heim decided that it was best that he worked from home as a result of these circumstances. By the 1960s, he worked almost exclusively in isolation—obsessively, often unceasingly for days on end. The magazine le Figaro remarked (January 15 1969) that he was an "inhuman robot". Heim was very mindful of keeping his work from others and worried about plagiarism. In particular, he saw some colleagues as possible plagiarists, e.g., Anderson and Ahner (see [1] (http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v1/i2/p488_1?qid=cce4f97514f6368f&qseq=3&show=10) for a related paper by these authors with a higher dimensional theory reminiscent of Heim's). One other reason for his distrust of others was due to a colleague who embezzled donations from a society he founded in 1959. (The Institut für Kraftfeldphysik e.V. was intended to develop test models of his propulsion concepts.)
Some of his first publications were written during this period. This included a series of anticipated papers published in the Zeitschrift für Flugkörper (1959). Heim discussed "the principle of the dynamic Kontrabarie" in which he examined how a field drive would be more effective than the best chemical drive for rockets. These papers remained ambiguous on the fundamental concepts underlying his theory of the field drive, likely due to the necessity to complete the calculations on the extra fields of his field theory. These calculations were not performed until a few years later.
In the late '50s and early '60s there were a number of reports on Heim in magazines and tabloids such as Le Figaro, Bunte Illustrierte, Quick and Stern. Also the main German TV station, ARD, ran reports and interviews with Heim. It was widely publicised that Heim was likely to make a breakthrough, either in fundamental physics or propulsion theory.
The aerospace company Bölkow was prepared to finance Heim's effort to develop a field drive, but were unable to obtain adequate financing. The firm's chief executive Ludwig Bölkow suggested to Heim that he concentrate on deriving as many concrete predictions from his theory as possible.
With this suggestion, Heim decided to turn from an experimentalist back to a theorist. It would be almost 20 years before Heim's predictions materialised into anything concrete—in the end, part of this resulted in what is known today as his mass formula for elementary particles, the values of the fine structure constant, and the force coupling coefficients.
Heim was known to a few top physicists in the 1940s and 50s. He was known to Werner Heisenberg, who recognized his potential, and also to the relativist Pascual Jordan. Heim was also keenly aware of the theories of Einstein. In particular, his works reference the book The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein, published in 1950.
1970s
It would not be until the 1970s that Heim would publish his first work. He did not submit his work to scientific peer review. Instead, he chose to publish with a little known publishing house, resulting in errors in the presentation of his theory. Many of those errors are only now undergoing correction. His only peer reviewed paper was in 1977 in Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, a publication of the Max Planck Institute for physics. The publication of this paper followed on a visit to Hans-Peter Dürr, then director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics & Astrophysics near Munich and successor to Heisenberg. Duerr, after initial scepticism, became fascinated when he realised that Heim's was a structure theory leading to mass predictions from first principles. After an intense session of questioning over several hours, Duerr convinced Heim to break with his habit of non-publication. The resulting paper was schematic, as he had been asked to avoid too many equations. Nevertheless, it excited great interest in letters from physicists of all calibres eager to learn more of the theory (though it is not known if any actually referred to Heim's paper in a formal publication).
1980s
In 1982 Heim's mass formula was programmed on a computer at DESY at his discretion. The task was completed at this, the main centre for elementary particle research in Hamburg, Germany, with the assistance of some resident scientists.
The results were surprisingly accurate when compared with empirically measured values current at that time. It is important to observe that this was the first time a physics theory had achieved this—no other physics theory has reproduced a comparable result since. Although astonished at the accuracy, the DESY experimental physicists wanted to have corroboration from other theorists before publishing the results of the test.
Up to this point, Heim had not yet confided in other theoretical physicists on the details of the mass formula derivation. Hence, the DESY results were not widely published and disseminated for academic scrutiny. Fortuitously in the same year, Walter Droescher, a theorist at the Vienna Patent Office, began to work with Heim. The first result of their collaboration cumulated into the second volume of Heim's major work, appearing in 1984. It is almost error-free, in contrast to the first volume which was not reviewed to this extent.
1990s to 2001
Heim's life and health
Heim had to undergo a series of operations (at least 50 according to [2] (http://quanthomme.free.fr/energielibre/chercheurs/CHERCHEURS2.htm)) after the explosion which resulted in the loss of his arms. He found that intense concentration on the study of Einstein's relativity theory helped him control the pain in his arms mentally and physically.
The loss of his hands and serious diminution of his eyesight apparently resulted in Heim acquiring an eidetic, acoustic memory. He rarely forgot a formula if it was recited, and could learn a language in a matter of days. He married a former concert singer from Prague in 1950 named Gerda.
Legacy
The full delineation of his work covers about 2000 pages, and was written almost entirely in isolation from university life. The primary works which describe Heim's theory and its extensions span 4 volumes totalling around 1000 pages.
The lengthy nature of the work led many publishing houses to refuse printing, often citing economic concerns regarding profitability. His notation made representation of his work in technical journals substantially difficult to reproduce, and exacerbated the difficulty in getting his work published. All of this has made his work difficult to assess by the scientific community objectively even today.
His theory also left an impression on the new age community, particularly those groups interested in UFOs, "anomalous atmospheric phenomena", antigravity, "mind over matter", and material consciousness. Although a subset of these topics are studied from an academic perspective, the tendency of these groups to popularize and exaggerate Heim's claims have served as a double-edged sword for Heim today—it has spread the awareness of Heim, but at the expense of his academic credibility in the eyes of modern theoretical physicists.
Heim was indeed interested in such "mystic" things, but was mindful to separate his objective work from his subjective work. Nevertheless, his publications reflect a cross influence between these two topics and a tendency to unify the two. Hence, it is necessary to interpret Heim's work carefully, and in the context in which it was written. What remains fundamental, however, is that the serious work of Heim will require a substantial amount of rigorous critique and scrutiny before it will be accepted by the scientific community as a mainstream theory. His mass formula is perhaps currently the most celebrated result of his theory among his supporters, while it has been largely dismissed or neglected by a significant majority of physicists.
Support for his theory
A 1982 calculation based on Heim's theory was programmed on a computer at DESY in Hamburg, the main German centre for experimental particle physics. This particular set of calculations is based on Heim's "mass formula for sub-atomic particles", also known as the "mass formula".
The calculation gave the ground state masses for many fundamental particles to within a reasonable experimental error. No other theory of theoretical particles at present has achieved a comparable result. The scientists at DESY expressed reserved optimism for Heim's theory, and requested that more confirmation be given from theorists that the calculations were valid. As Heim's work had not undergone a rigorous peer review process, the request was difficult to fulfil—indeed, it is debatable even today whether the result has been verified sufficiently and without error. As a result, this has been interpreted by many observing the development of Heim's theory that it fundamentally lacks rigour and substance. Nevertheless, the people who have continued to develop the theory believe that these difficulties can be overcome, primarily by publishing in more established journals, which Heim circumvented either by choice or necessity.
In the years since the DESY activity, Heim worked on further refining his theory until he could also predict the lifetimes of particles and infer the stability of their excited states. These results are of greater interest to experimentalists at particle accelerators, as it allows them to target specific energies in which high energy particles can be created.
Posthumous results
Since Heim's death in 2001, the small group of scientists around him finished work on predicting the spectrum of particle ground and excited states. So far, the agreement with experiment achieves seven decimal places of accuracy.
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.
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 has decided to acknowledge the publication with a "best paper of the year" award in July 2005.
Scientific criticism
Heim Theory is unknown to a majority of scientists and theoretical physicists. Until fairly recently, most of Heim's works were only published in German. English papers are now becoming available primarily due to the efforts of a small group of scientists associated with the Heim Theory Group [[3] (http://www.heim-theory.com)]. For example, a paper on Heim theory and space propulsion will be published by the American Institute of Physics early in 2005, having undergone a formal peer review. There is debate on whether the publication represents an impartial support for Heim theory, because the complexities of the theory may obscure flaws which are not immediately apparent and hard to detect.
There is also criticism that in consideration of the small number of scientists who support the validity of Heim theory, groupthink may be the cause of the perceived strength of the theory, rather than its intrinsic theoretical and foundational considerations. Indeed, the removal of errors introduced by the first publication of Heim theory, and translation to more common notation will be paramount for wider acceptance of the theory. Bridging the language and intellectual barriers required to understand Heim theory are the main tasks of the group working on Heim theory (see external links).
An overview of Burkhard Heim's life targeting the general public has also been proposed. This will almost certainly be in German, from a member of the Heim-Theory group, and will be largely non-technical in nature. There are plans to write the publication in advance of wide dissemination of the theory among scientists who have the credentials to verify it. This has lead some observers to question Heim theory as it is, since the proposal appears contrary to traditional methods required for a theory to become accepted. The impression is that those proposing the publication for general audiences are more interested in generating publicity for Heim for reasons other than the dissemination of quality scientific thought for rigorous analysis and discussion.
Further limiting the ease of acceptance of Heim theory was the choice of Heim to publish initially with Resch Verlag of Austria, and to remain with it, as opposed to seeking a better-known and reputable science publisher. The publisher has been associated with "new age" type publications, and this association has resulted in a generally negative first impression of Heim theory. In addition, Heim himself was interested in mystic ideas [[4] (http://www.engon.de/protosimplex/px_heime.htm#Hilfe%20und)] such as the paranormal and alternative interpretations of reality. This has caused observers to question whether Heim himself was sufficiently impartial to separate these ideas from his comprehensive theory of everything. Indeed, Heim's later non-technical publications incorporate some notion of spirit. His rigorous main works such as those on quantum field theory do not contain such notions.
Supporters of Heim contend that too much emphasis has been placed on Heim's perceived associations, and that his theory should be evaluated independent of these contexts. Other notable scientists such as Isaac Newton were also interested in mysticism, and supporters of Heim contend that this association does not and should not necessarily incriminate the mathematical theory.
In the context and times in which Heim worked during the 1950s and 1960s, the pressure in academia to publish papers for recognition (such as tenure or job security) was considerably less than that of today. As Heim chose to work outside of the university environment and in isolation, he was not exposed to such pressures and minimized his risk of printing premature publications.
As a comparison, it is noteworthy to consider that Einstein went through a long period of 'incubation' before producing his revolutionary relativity theory. Heim's incubation period was approximately ten times longer. There are also similarities between Heim and Newton—the latter waited 20 years before going into print with the results of his year of wonders, during which interval many of his contemporaries dismissed him as an "alchemical dabbler". Also, due to staring at the sun Newton was nearly blind for a long time. Although these observations are largely coincidental, it should be noted that Heim indeed overcame substantial limitations to actually publish his works.
Heim in popular culture
After many years of arduous concentration on the development of his mathematical physics theory, largely in isolation from society, Heim thought it time to talk to audiences about his more accessible philosophical theories. As part of this, he began to describe the philosophical interpretation of the character of the extra dimensions in his theory; for example, that the 5th and 6th coordinates exercised an ordering influence on material systems. In popular culture, news of these ideas spread and were unfortunately unaccompanied by descriptions of the underlying rigorous mathematics. Thus for the majority of mathematically challenged people, the only aspects of Heim's theories that made sense were the more philosophical or mystical ones. See external links for details.
External Links
Theoretical links
- The Heim Theory. (http://www.heim-theory.com/)
- http://www.heim-theory.com/Contents/Introduction_to_Heim_s_Mass-Fo/introduction_to_heim_s_mass-fo.html
- http://www.heim-theory.com/Contents/Goals_of_the_Research_Group/goals_of_the_research_group.html
- http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/A_Abstract.pdf "Abstract" page
- http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/B_Remarks_on_the_Physicist_Heim.pdf
- http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads_pw/D_Zur_Herleitung_Der_Heimschen_Massenformel.pdf
- http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/E_Heims_Mass_Formula_1982.pdf "1982 Mass Formula" page
- http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/G_Selected_Results.pdf
- http://www.heim-theory.com/Inhalt/Einfuhrung_in_die_Heimsche_Mas/einfuhrung_in_die_heimsche_mas.html
Heim's colleagues and acquaintances
- http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascual_Jordan
- Werner Heisenberg
- http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_von_Weizs%C3%A4cker - Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Peter_D%FCrr or http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Peter_D%C3%BCrr - Hans Peter Duerr
Searches for neutral electrons
Conference proceedings
- http://proceedings.aip.org/proceedings/confproceed/746.jsp
- http://proceedings.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=APCPCS&Volume=746&Issue=1
Institutions researching fields in which Heim had an interest
Biographical information
Propulsion physics
- http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=406&gTable=Paper&gID=18840
- http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/
- http://www.mufon-ces.org/docs/heimphysics.pdf
- [5] (http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/index.html) Publications on space applications
- http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/aiaa2004-3700-letter.pdf
- http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/aiaa2003-4990-Talk_Huntsville.pdf
- http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/PrinciplesOfAdvancedSpacePropulsionAIAA-paper-2002-4094.pdf
Magazine articles
Homeopathy, spirit, UFOs, anomalous phenomena
- http://www.engon.de/
- http://www.engon.de/protosimplex/posdzech/px_g_steuerung_e.htm
- http://www.mufon-ces.org
Other theories
- http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/~hasselmann.klaus/metron.php - note: this is NOT Heim's Metron (though influenced by Heim) - just a 'coincidence': a soliton solution etc.
- http://www.pbs.org/safarchive/3_ask/archive/bio/82_hputhoff_bio.html
- http://www.p-i-a.com/Magazine/Ref/Puthoff.htm
Interpretation of citations
Workshops
Possible dead links
- Some additional theoretical work with emphasis on gravitational effects (http://www.cle.de/hpcc/)
- http://www.cle.de/hpcc/index.html
- http://www.cle.de/hpcc/publications/documents/heim_staif2005-letter.pdf
- http://www.datadiwan.org
- http://www.engon.de/protosimplex/index_e.htm Protosimplex
- http://www.Protosimplex.comes:Burkhard Heim
