"Where shall wisdom be found?" (Job?)

"The greatest ideas are the greatest events." Nietzsche (via Yale's Harold Bloom)

OK I cannot recall off-hand the German who AIAA gave an award to for exotic propulsion. It created a minor scandal as it seemed to be "crackpot." But perhaps it deserved a second look? As I recall he also had a ++++-- signature group theory and he claimed to compute elementary particle masses. Now is this basically the same idea Tony Smith has been talking about?

As to my epiphany on waking from the dream a few hours ago on the Ibison-Davis claims. My idea still seems good to me. Again for the record (listening to Haydn's String Quartet in D Major):

Noether's theorem 1918 post Einstein's 1916 GR is that

1a. RIGID Lie group G symmetries of the GLOBAL action S(Psi(x)) of a field Psi(x) imply conserved GLOBAL Lie algebra "charges" Q^a that are conserved in "time"

dQa/dt = 0

[Qa,Qb] = f^cabQc

f^cab = structure constants of the Lie algebra

a,b,c = 1,2, ... n = number of group parameters

RIGID means the group parameters are constant and uniform, i.e. the same independent of local coordinate charts {x} in the neighborhoods of events p that are Einstein's "local coincidences" in the sense of the "Einstein hole paradox" of 1917.

1b. Noether's theorem (not in it's most general form only for 3D+1) presupposed the absolute arena of 1905 gravity-free GLOBALLY flat Minkowski spacetime in which not only is the action S invariant under G, but is also invariant under the 10-parameter Poincare group

P10 = T4xO(1,3) = semi-direct product of 4-parameter space-time translation group T4 and 6-parameter space-time rotation Lorentz group O(1,3). I leave a lot of unimportant well-known details here for the Elmer Fuddy Duddies suffering "rigor mortis" (Feynman) who are ready to pounce as they are not important for the essential physical ideas relevant to the new point I am trying to make.

1c. Einstein's 1916 GR is a self-referential case where RIGID G = T4 and we locally gauge T4 to T4(x) whose gauge transformations are the GCTs

x^u(p) -> x^u(x^u'(p))

to get the non-trivial compensating gauge connection tetrad potential Cartan 1-forms A^a.

The Einstein-Cartan tetrad 1-forms are spin 1 vector fields (if quantized)

e^a = I^a + @A^a

where @ is a dimensionless coupling constant. More on that later. @ is determined by the world hologram ansatz that that h -> 0, c -> infinity switches off warps in addition to G -> 0 plus dark energy /\zpf broken super symmetry defining the area of a future deSitter horizon for our pocket universe on the cosmic landscape of the megaverse of parallel worlds. In short @ = (Lp^2/\zpf)^1/3 ~ 10^-41 if /\zpf ~ (10^-3ev)^4, Lp^2 = hG/c^3.

What is I^a? It is the trivial tetrad for globally flat Minkowski spacetime with RIGID P10.

I^a = I^audx^u

In Minkowski geodesic Global Inertial Frames (GIFs) I^au = Kronecker Delta^au. However, in non-geodesic GNIFs I^au is a general curvilinear function describing observer detector g-forces without intrinsic conformal tensor curvature in the classical vacuum.

ds^2 = e^aea = guvdx^udx^v

Spin 2 level connection field = e^uae^av,w

,w is flat ordinary partial derivative.

In the zero torsion field T^a 2-form limit

T^a = De^a = de^a + S^ac/\ec = T^auvdx^u/\dx^v = 0

The spin connection 1-forms

S^a^b = - S^b^a = S^a^budx^u

are partially determined by the A^a with an 8-fold Higgs-Goldstone phase gauge freedom of the post-inflation field because there are 16 independent e^au and 24 independent S^a^bu.

The curvature 2-form field is

R^a^b = - R^b^c = R^a^buvdx^u/\dx^v = DS^a^b = dS^a^b + S^ac/\S^c^b

The Einstein-Hilbert action density 0-form integrated over a 4D region with (detguv)^1/2d^4x is

R = {abcd}R^a^b/\e^c/\e^d

{abcd} is the completely antisymmetric tensor of Minkowski spacetime.

R = 0 in classical vacuum of course without any dark energy density ~ (c^4/G)/\zpf.

However, in my theory we need /\zpf =/= 0 to get gravity in the first place.

2. The Ibison-Davis thesis
As far as I can understand their claim, they say a "propellant" is needed in any warp drive. I do not think so. They do not specify what their propellant actually is or even what it could be. However, their argument, which tentatively I classify as "not even wrong" (W. Pauli) pending their promised detailed math "paper" - so far I have only seen sketchy mostly ambiguous plain language hand-waving from Ibison so I cannot really get what he is driving at. What I do get is that he imagines a flat gravity-free absolute background Minkowski spacetime with a very tiny warp bubble with the space ship inside. That is, the thing is observed by the outside Asymptotically Flat Observers (AFOs) with EM signals whose wavelengths are much larger than the scale of the warp bubble. What their ghostly propellant is I cannot imagine. However, their fragment of a vague idea did lead me to some interesting ideas in which propellants need not apply.

OK we have a tiny "particle" geodesic warp bubble. Warp means that GR applies on the bubble shell. Note the ship itself must be in a flat interior to avoid tidal stretch-squeeze curvature. GR is T4(x) local group not RIGID T4 of SR. Therefore, the world line of the "tiny" warp bubble with USS electron inside it as a Bohm hidden variable is locally geodesic but is globally relative to the AFOs anything! It can be a tachyon and even turn around in "time" exactly like in Feynman's path integral quantum mechanics! This is because relative to RIGID T4 1905 SR the warp bubble worldline is a SINGULARITY where the SR rules break down and the GR rules take over! Therefore the WARP BUBBLE may be a way of describing the Bohm quantum potential Q in SR. It is known that the Bohm quantum potential Q for the spin 0 Klein-Gordon field causes the particle to go spacelike tachyonic and even turn around backwards in time like Feynman's positron. Not only that, but since the warp bubble is locally geodesic it has no time dilation relative to the GIF it starts out with. Assuming that it starts and returns in the same GIF - there will be no time difference between two twins one one the warp voyage round trip and the other who stays at home no matter how far in space or even to what time period past or future the voyager traveled. Note that there are TWO TIMES external global AOF and internal local Bohm hidden variable. The external Minkowski proper time of the Feynman amplitude is that calculated by the AOFs so that there is constructive interference of the amplitudes in the classical limit. However, the internal proper time of the voyager is the same as the zero warp Minkowski timelike geodesic proper time connecting the start and finish of the voyage in the same GIF, i.e. the same foliation of the flat Minkowski proper time. Issues of conservation of the COM momentum of the warp bubble are not even wrong in my opinion because RIGID T4 symmetry breaks down on the singular line (world tube) of the warp bubble therefore dP^i(COM)/dt (i = 1,2,3) seen by AOF need not be zero even though there is no propellant ejected from the warp bubble. The warp bubble's path is locally geodesic, but is globally non-geodesic.