Historical research guide · 0192 · 2010
DIRD Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum (Spacetime Metric) Engineering
Harold E. Puthoff · DIA / AAWSAP contractor
In one minute
This is the document that gave the field its name. Writing for the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2010, Hal Puthoff makes one move and follows it all the way: you do not need to know how a technology bends space in order to work out what it would do. General relativity encodes space and time in a set of numbers called the metric tensor, and every measurable quantity — clock rate, ruler length, colour, energy, effective mass, the speed of light — is tied to those numbers by fixed relations. So Puthoff tabulates them. One column is what a dense star does; the other is what an engineered region would do, and it reads like a specification. Clocks inside run fast, emissions blueshift, binding energies rise so materials behave as though hardened, effective mass falls, light bends around the craft, and both light and craft can appear superluminal to an outside observer while nothing locally outruns light. He calls this general relativity for engineers. The open problem he names is the source: what physically generates the metric you have drawn.
Connection
This is chapter 4’s spine document and the origin of the phrase the whole site is built on — metric engineering — and its Table 1 is where chapters 3, 8 and 13 get their checklist of what an engineered spacetime would look like from the outside.
From the source
The metric tensor approach is model-independent: it does not depend on knowing the specific mechanisms or dynamics that produce a spacetime alteration, but assumes only that a technology exists that can control and manipulate the metric — so the physical consequences can be catalogued in advance of the mechanism.Section I, Spacetime Modification — Metric Tensor Approach
The consequences follow from the coefficients by fixed relations: time intervals scale as 1 over the square root of g00, frequency and energy as the square root of g00, spatial intervals as 1 over the square root of minus g11, the remotely observed velocity of light as the square root of g00 over minus g11, and effective mass as minus g11 over the square root of g00. A dense mass gives slowed clocks and redshift; the engineered column of Table 1 gives the exact reverse.Section II, Table 1
Spacetime alteration can be expressed in engineering terms as an effective refractive index of the vacuum, n equal to the square root of minus g11 over g00; because the velocity of light is one over the square root of the product of the vacuum’s permeability and permittivity, generating such an index by technological means amounts to manipulating those two vacuum parameters.Section II, Refractive Index Modeling
In an engineered region where the square root of g00 is greater than one, atomic binding energies rise, so a craft’s material properties would appear hardened relative to the environment; Puthoff’s example is that such a craft could impact water at high velocities without apparent deleterious effects. Time inside runs fast, so trajectory changes that look precipitous from outside are experienced as modest by the occupants.Section III, Time Alteration
Effective mass, as measured from an unaltered frame, decreases under the metric-engineering column, which would mitigate the effects of abrupt changes in movement on craft occupants; the accompanying refractive-index effects predict light bending or terminating in mid-space, apparent changes in size and shape, and sudden cloaking or blinking out consistent with strong lensing around the craft.Section III, Effective Mass in Spacetime-Altered Regions; Refractive Index Effects
Arbitrary metrics with the desired gravity, antigravity and propulsion characteristics can in principle be postulated — the Alcubierre warp solution being the exemplar — but what is required for implementation is to determine appropriate sources for their generation, and that requirement must be met before advanced spaceship technology based on vacuum engineering can be realised in practice.Section III, Gravity/Antigravity/Propulsion Effects; Section IV, Discussion
The way in
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dia/AAWSAP-DIRDs/DIRD_15-DIRD_Advanced_Space_Propulsion_Based_on_Vacuum_Spacetime_Metric_Engineer.pdfHow to cite it
Harold E. Puthoff, DIA / AAWSAP contractor (2010) DIRD Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum (Spacetime Metric) Engineering arXiv:1204.2184