ARE AETHER WAVES REAL?

Reality: As of August 9, 2000


Copyright, Harold Aspden, 2000


I have decided to write this brief commentary on August 9, 2000 because the time has come to add something new to this ENERGY SCIENCE web site.

As those of you who have been regular visitors to this web site will know, I declared in the UPDATE note of May 5, 1999 that I was diverting my attentions to active experimental research and would not be developing these pages further until I had reached a certain point in that effort. It concerned a new kind of electric motor, my objective being to prove experimentally that energy could be extracted from the aether, over and above any energy input supplied to that machine. My research findings based on a machine incorporating several powerful magnets were encouraging for a while until I discovered that a mechanical resonance conveyed through the bench support had caused a moving coil measuring instrument to give misleading readings. This has halted my efforts using that particular equipment and I will now need to pause for a while, step back a little and followed a separate route branching out from an early stage in my experimental motor research.

That said, I am now ready to progress with the ENERGY SCIENCE theme presented in these web pages.

I can also say that in my mail this morning I received two items, which happen, by sheer coincidence, to relate to a physical issue of importance that also concerns the aether and its energy role.

It is the combination of these three factors that gives basis for the following account.

The first of these mail communications was the August, 2000 issue of Foundations of Science, a venture directed and edited by David Bergman of Common Sense Science., Inc., P.O. Box 1013, Kennesaw, Georgia, 30144-8013, USA.

The second was a letter from Dave Gieskieng, of 8416-D Everett Way, Arvada, Colorado 80005, USA.

David Bergman is someone who has in-depth knowledge of an academic nature on the physics of electrodynamics, whereas Dave Gieskieng has in-depth experience of radio transmission and reception. I respect both for their discernment of the truth, namely that there is something amiss with the accepted teachings concerning the fundamentals of electromagnetism.

We are, all three of us, in our declining years, dedicated to getting our message across, but in our own different ways, owing to our perception of the serious errors in the common understanding of how energy is transmitted by electromagnetic action. Naturally, we may see the situation differently, according to the different ways in which we have developed our interest, but the message to the scientific world at large warrants attention and one can but hope that one day the scientists of the future will wake up to reality and be able to overcome their confusion and separate fact and fiction.

Now, the trigger that evokes my comment is a Letter which has been published in the above-referenced issue of Foundations of Science. It was entitled 'Aether and Space', its author being Robert J. Hannon of 4473 Staghorn Lane, Saratosa, FL 34238-5626, USA. It simply declares that electromagnetic radiation consists of nothing but in-phase E and M fields whose intensities vary sinusoidally with time. It goes on to say that these E and M intensities are not spatial parameters, because nothing moves in any direction orthogonal to the direction of the propagating field when its intensity varies. It says that they are not physical and do not require a "medium" but that their speed of propagation is controlled by the local value of energy-density of radiation in the region through which there is propagation.

The letter then ends. It is a mere collection of assertions, but it does show how the basic teachings of electromagnetic theory register in one's mind but then leave so much unanswered.

Anyone who has a sound training in electromagnetic theory knows that when electromagnetic waves are generated by a radio transmitter there is energy that is forced into the space surrounding the transmitting antenna. Energy is shed by that action. They also know that energy can be received by a distant antenna which intercepts the transmitted waves. Furthermore, they know from actual experiment or from the theoretical work of Clerk Maxwell that the waves have those E and M field components. In addition, they know that, to launch the maximum amount of energy into space, those E and M wave components must set off on their journey into the depths of space by being in-phase in their time relationship.

I knew that from my physics training in the mid 1940s, so Robert Hannon's message has little to say to me, other than that he does not believe there is an aether medium, or that the fields are real, but he does believe that radiation has an energy-density. So radiation from an antenna is like a gun shooting off energy-quanta at the speed of light through a medium that does not exist but is a true void. Well, Robert Hannon is entitled to his own beliefs on these matters, but I would rather be guided by experiments, particularly those in which I have been involved, which relate to how energy is stored in vacuo and then recovered from vacuo, though by "vacuo" I really mean the vacuum medium or the aether.

Now, as to the other item, the letter I received from Dave Gieskieng. Well, Dave's letter told me that his efforts to interest the journal `Nature' in publishing what he had discovered concerning EM wave propagation had been rejected. He also advised me that he had changed his address and was going off to hospital for a few days. Dave is well on in years and his health is of concern. Naturally, he hopes that his research over so many years will not sink into oblivion and pass away without record. Included in his letter was a graph showing some test data from his antenna measurements. I had seen it several years before and even included it in these ENERGY SCIENCE web pages, but it still had its impact and it clearly warrants attention. See Fig. 6 of An Antenna with Anomalous Radiation Properties

Dave Gieskieng has, over many years, been pursuing tests on the radiation properties of an antenna, which he has called a "Maxwell Antenna", but which I prefer to name the "Gieskieng Antenna". Simply stated, this antenna is not the best design for forcing energy into space as electromagnetic radiation. It does not force the E and M fields to oscillate and propagate with an in-phase relationship, as Robert Hannon declares with such emphasis. No, the antenna designed by Dave Gieskieng deliberately ensures that these two fields or waves set off on their journey into space in a phase-quadrature relationship, meaning that as one goes through its minimum intensity, the other goes through its maximum intensity. The waves are still in phase-quadrature spatially, meaning that they and the direction of propagation are mutually orthogonal, but, in energy density terms, they exchange energy as they oscillate at the transmission frequency rather than convey energy. Here I am saying that the energy can oscillate between electric and magnetic field forms without moving forward at the speed of light.

Now, ignoring theory and what this implies, take note of the experimental facts that Dave Gieskieng discovered. He compared the propagation of his antenna and a standard dipole antenna, taking measurements across canyons to avoid distortions owing to ground reflection. He found that over a range up to 0.36 mile his antenna was less effective in transmission than the dipole antenna. There was a 3 decibel discrepancy close to the transmitter but at the 0.36 mile stage the reception was of equal power. However, at 5 miles, his antenna was 2.2 decibels more effective than the reference dipole antenna and at 14 miles the difference levelled off thereafter over larger distances at the 3 decibel level.

What this means to me is that electromagnetic wave propagation prefers a mode in which the E and M fields are 90 degrees out of phase time-wise, so that the waves propagate by exchanging energy that sits there local to the aether without moving forward at the speed of light. The radiation from the dipole forces energy into space and superimposes its effect on the initial propagation, obliging the two field components to be in-phase initially, but that energy disperses into the aether as heat along the route and leaves the natural oscillation of the aether to develop the wave propagation that ensues. The secret of this action is how the aether can be is tuned locally to cope with the frequencies of all the electromagnetic waves in transit. However, that is where I have made my contribution, as I explain in the next ESSAY.

You do not have to believe me when I say that the in-phase field components of electromagnetic waves shed their energy until they lapse into a phase-quadrature state and then travel ever on at the speed of light, but without carrying energy along with them at that speed. However, if you cannot believe what I say, then just ask yourself why, otherwise, anything material travelling at the speed of light has an infinite energy (as per Einstein's theory or, rather, experiments on particle accelerators), but yet wave energy contrives to break the rules and stay finite as it travels for what can be many billions of light years through that imaginary void we call 'space'. Ah yes, you can invent the notion of a photon that has no mass and so, applying the relativistic formula for its mass increase when travelling at the speed of light, you can say that infinity times zero is zero, but I say that mathematically infinity in numerical terms is a quantity divided by zero and so multiplying it by zero brings you back to that finite quantity. The photon is an example of how modern theoretical science, it seems, can be the art of talking nonsense in a logical way, but when experiments speak then we really ought to listen, even though the language seems foreign and so is difficult to understand. Experiment presents the photon as an 'event' involving a quantum of energy transferring between aether and matter or vice versa and characterized by a frequency of electromagnetic field action. Just because two energy events, one at A and one at B, distant from A, can occur at the same frequency and exhibit a connection owing to one appearing to be consequence of the other, energy being conserved, it does not follow that something we call a photon has actually travelled from A to B.

Without bringing photons into the picture, I would rather think that that initial journey over the 0.36 mile range of the radiation from Gieskieng's antenna and on to the 14 mile stage where the action levels off involves waves that travel at slightly below the limiting speed of light and then develops into a faster travelling wave system as it adopts that limiting speed of light, even though it then conveys no energy.

I know we get warm if we sit in the sun's rays, but I see the heat as being released by the aether locally in response to interception of those rays. That is why one needs to understand the mechanism governing the photon, something that started me on this scientific journey of mine nearly half a century ago, as I explain in the TUTORIAL NOTES in these web pages, but I wonder how you, the reader, might choose in judging between those assertions of Robert Hannon and the experimental report of Dave Gieskieng.

I accept what Gieskieng says because there is mounting evidence wich confirms there is an aether that can shed its energy as useful power to keep the populace of the world alive when our regular fuel resources are exhausted. I also to see that aether energy resource as the source of our own creation, via the process of first creating protons and electrons. The quantum underworld that accounts for these processes warrants our attention, and especially its interplay with the atoms of ferromagnetic materials. That action is what I seek to explit in my motor experiments, as I shall report in these web pages in due course.

Meanwhile, I suggest, if the reader has not already seen the web page item reference to what I have to say about a motor experiment reported by Bedini, then that be read next. It is the next ESSAY in this 2000 series. I believe it shows a fascinating way of using the aether as a catalyst in converting ambient heat into useful electrical power. It is not, in my opinion, a way of tapping energy from the aether, the province of my efforts, but it offers an alternative route in our onward endeavours to resolve the energy problems of the future.

H. Aspden August 9, 2000

If you wish now to see the next Essay in this 2000 series then press:

Is there a Reacting Aether?