Friedwardt Winterberg (born June 12, 1929) is a German-American theoretical physicist and was a research professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is known for his research in areas spanning general relativity, Planck scale physics, nuclear fusion, and plasmas. His work in nuclear rocket propulsion earned him the 1979 Hermann Oberth Gold Medal of the Wernher von Braun International Space Flight Foundation and a 1981 citation by the Nevada Legislature. He is also an honorary member of the German Aerospace Society Lilienthal-Oberth.
Biography
Winterberg was born in 1929 in Berlin, Germany. In 1953 he received his MSc from the University of Frankfurt working under Friedrich Hund, and in 1955 he received his PhD in physics from the Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, as a student of Werner Heisenberg. In 1959, Winterberg was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. Friedwardt was 15 at the end of the war. Paperclip continued to recruit German scientists through the Cold War to prevent them from working for the Soviets.
Work
Winterberg is known for his work in the fields of nuclear fusion and plasma physics, and Edward Teller has been quoted as saying that he had "perhaps not received the attention he deserves" for his work on fusion. He is an elected member of the Paris-based International Academy of Astronautics, in which he sat on the Committee of Interstellar Space Exploration. According to his faculty webpage, in 1954 he "made the first proposal to test general relativity with atomic clocks in earth satellites" and his thermonuclear microexplosion ignition concept was adopted by the British Interplanetary Society for their Project Daedalus Starship Study.
His research in the 21st century has been on the "Planck Aether Hypothesis", a theory that claims to "explain both quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity as asymptotic low energy approximations, and gives a spectrum of particles greatly resembling the standard model. Einstein's gravitational and Maxwell's electromagnetic equations are unified by the symmetric and antisymmetric wave mode of a vortex sponge, Dirac spinors result from gravitationally interacting bound positive-negative mass vortices, which explains why the mass of an electron is so much smaller than the Planck mass." The theory proposes that the only free parameters in the fundamental equations of physics are the Planck length, mass, and time, and shows why R3 is the natural space, as SU2 is treated as the fundamental group isomorphic to SO3 — an alternative to string field theories in R10 and M theory in R11. It permits the value of the finestructure constant at the Planck length to be computed, and this value remarkably agrees with the empirical value.
Proposal for direct test of general relativity
In a 1955 paper Winterberg proposed a test of general relativity using accurate atomic clocks placed in orbit in artificial satellites. At that time atomic clocks were not yet of the required accuracy and artificial satellites did not exist. Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Winterberg in 1957 in which he said the idea sounded "very interesting". This idea was later experimentally verified by Hafele and Keating in 1971 by flying atomic clocks on commercial jets. The theoretical approach was the same as that used by Winterberg. Today atomic clocks and relativistic corrections are used in GPS and it is said GPS could not function without them.
Fusion activism
Winterberg has published numerous articles in the area of inertial confinement fusion. In particular, Winterberg is known for the idea of impact fusion and the concept of the magnetically insulated diode for the generation of multi-megampere megavolt ion beams for the purpose of heating plasmas to thermonuclear fusion temperatures. He conceived of a nuclear fusion propulsion reactor for space travel, which is called the Winterberg / Daedalus Class Magnetic Compression Reaction Chamber, which was later developed at the University of Alabama at Huntsville's Propulsion Research Center. Most recently he has designed a giant spacecraft, propelled with deuterium micro-detonations ignited by a GeV proton beam, drawn from the spacecraft acting as an electrically charged up and magnetically insulated capacitor. Winterberg also developed ideas for mining increasingly rare industrially crucial elements on planetary bodies such as the moon using fusion detonation devices. He became involved with the idea of using beam weapons in outer space in the late 1970s while working at the Desert Research Institute.