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?