More on "new physics"

[Tim May]

Someone sent me a private note. I have deleted his name for this public 
reply.

> Tim May wrote:
>
>
>> The "new physics" stuff is quite different. It is scorned in a way 
>> that plate tectonics was not, and for good reason. Folks should visit 
>> Bearden's site. http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/index.html
>
> I did. Oh, dear.
>
> Not sure what is supposed to be denoted by "Tesla physics", but Tesla's 
> work with power transmission via HF is fascinating, even if there was 
> apparently no practical or safe use for it.


No one disputes the outstanding work Tesla did on a.c. transmission. And 
anyone who has seen or used a Tesla coil knows how real it is.

"Tesla physics" is all the cruft that has developed around some of his 
more obscure (and late) writings, usually mixed together with stuff 
Tesla could not have known about at the time of his death. To wit, the 
stuff about zero point energy and perpetual motion machines. And, 
sometimes, mixed together with the usual nutcase stuff about the Hollow 
Earth theory (zeta reticulans colonizing the hollow earth, Greys, 
underground UFO bases, secret Nazi weapons, etc.).

Tesla is a hero to these "new physics" nuts, even though nothing Tesla 
ever worked on or built contradicts in the slightest way the predictions 
of Maxwell's theories. They take Tesla's very real contributions and 
some of his weirder theories (though none of them so weird as the Hollow 
Earth/antigravity/time reversal theories of modern nutters) and say that 
this means "They laughed at Tesla, they laugh at me!"

BTW, I was/am an early ("angel") investor in a company doing work on 
ultrawideband transmissions. Some of the works Bearden cites, like those 
of Barrett, are familiar to me and others with this company. Saying that 
there is a role for ultrawideband pulse technology, a la spread spectrum 
and beyond SS, is NOT the same as saying there are confirmed "problems" 
with electromagnetic theory. There may be, and there are a handful of 
folks doing "foundational" work in E&M, but, so far, there are no 
indications that their foundational work is changing any engineering 
calculations. Quite the contrary, in my view. Electromagnetic theory 
basically "works"--to many decimal places of accuracy. Circuits work as 
expected, antennas work as expected, and there are no "unexplained 
observations" (as usually exist before a new theory arrives). There may 
be some _semantic_ issues, e.g., does a square wave or impulse "really" 
have components that were sent out _before_ the square wave or impulse? 
(A Fourier decomposition of a square wave starting at time t = 0 has 
"sine wave components" spread out over time and adding up in such a way 
as to give the square wave, or the impulse, or any other signal. Some 
think this means deep and mysterious things are happening, something 
having to do with time travel and reversing the aging process, blah blah 
blah.

Henning Harmuth may write fairly eloquently about the "dogma of the 
circle" and how  the Fourier decomposition of a signal into (allegedly) 
a near-infinite series of sine waves is "not real," but for all intents 
and purposes it all works. And the "new physics" people like Bearden go 
way beyond what Harmuth and Barrett are talking about: they bring in 
"curved space-time" and gravitation and antigravity and the ultra-weird 
notion that aging can be reversed by "pumping the conjugate time-axis of 
the Minkowski manifold" (OK, I made this up...don't have time to lift 
one of Bearden's direct quotes...and this will help train me in the 
jargon if I ever become a "new physicist.").

Nut cases like Bearden have the patter of physics down. Very few actual 
physicists waste their time dissecting and refuting Bearden for obvious 
reasons.

I urge readers of this list not to waste time on this stuff.


--Tim May, Citizen-unit of of the once free United States
" The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood 
of patriots & tyrants. "--Thomas Jefferson, 1787