This lecture topic was conceived as I relaxed on an ocean crossing. I was on the cruise liner 'ORIANA' headed from the port of Southampton in England to Auckland, New Zealand, by way of the Panama Canal, San Francisco, Hawaii and Fiji. I am writing this on February 22nd, 1998, just a few days after returning from New Zealand by air with a refuelling stop at Los Angeles. I had been reflecting on a dinner conversation over dinner with a table companion who had boarded the ship at San Francisco. His background was technical, that of a senior executive in the steel industry. Our conversation touched upon our past experiences and present pursuits, mine, as my wife duly explained, being a scientific interest in proving that I was right and that Einstein was wrong. Our dinner companion expressed his curiosity; he had never really understood what Einstein's theory was about. I was now in deep water, metaphorically speaking. There was the Pacific Ocean beneath us, but I ask, how can one begin to explain the intricacies of Einstein's theory, and far less my own efforts, as part of one's social intercourse over dinner without sharing the motion of the ship and floundering a little? So, I compile this lecture from my secure foundation back at home and will use the gist of it as my fall-back position if I am asked the question again on a future ocean voyage.
In the 19th century that space was deemed to be a subtle medium which was referred to by the name 'aether' otherwise spelt as 'ether'. The aether was seen as a real medium which regulated the motion of waves, meaning the kind of wave we associate with radio communication or light radiation. The 19th century scientist assumed that those waves, which he knew travelled at the high speed of light (some 300,000 km/s), were moving at that constant speed by reference to the aether.
Towards the end of the 19th century, scientists developed a way by which to attempt to measure the speed at which body Earth was moving through space by setting up multiple reflections of light between mirrors. They expected that, relative to that apparatus, the light would travel between the mirrors one way faster than it would in the opposite direction. That assumes that the light travels parallel with the direction of the Earth's motion. For light making such a round trip at right angles to the motion but over the same distance there should be no such difference and so, comparing the two conditions, there should be a small detectable effect which would indicate the Earth's speed through the aether. To their horror and dismay, however, their scientific tests gave a null result. This suggested that the Earth was at rest in the aether, even though we know it travels around the sun at some 30 km/s. What had gone wrong?
Now, I want you to imagine that you are the captain of an ocean liner travelling through the waves on the ocean. You can, if you wish, measure the speed of the ship by dropping something that floats overboard and timing its passage over a measured distance along the side of the ship. You would have reason to be most concerned if the test proved that the ship was at rest even though you know it is moving at speed. But there is a difference here between this test and that based on motion through space. Those 19th century scientists did not drop something into the aether which then stayed put in that aether as we moved away from it, nor could they measure distance between two fixed points in the aether. Instead, they made assumptions about waves and looked at how the crests of two separate waves stood in relationship to one another. So, let us ask our captain to perform an experiment analogous to that of the aether tests.
To perform this test, the captain has to go to a swimming pool on board the ship and jump in. (In fact, I witnessed the captain of the 'Oriana' being duly ducked in the pool on the occasion of the equatorial transit - 1998 World Cruise - but that is by the way. He was not performing the test I now describe.)
The pool has to be square in form and the object is to see how the wavelength of a surface ripple depends upon the frequency of the wave, for ripples set up in the direction of the main axis of the ship and for ripples set up in the transverse direction. If there is a difference then a scientist can deduce the speed of the ship, at least according to the same logic as was used in devising that aether test based on light waves.
The captain has to go into the pool so as to be an observer immersed in the medium he is observing, without being distracted by having sight of the surrounding sea, as otherwise he would be able to judge the speed of the ship without relying on a test analogous to the aether experiment.
Now of course this test is not feasible owing to ship's vibration, resonances and numerous other factors, but it helps to put the problem in context. The water in the swimming pool is not part of the body of water in the ocean and so the speed of waves in the pool will hardly be affected by the speed of the ship. Indeed, common sense, backed if necessary by some modest knowledge of Newtonian mechanics, assures us that what happens to water in the ship's pool is referenced on the pool and not the external ocean.
Note that water is trapped in the pool and so moves with the ship. In the analogous case of the aether, surely one can imagine that there is something in the aether than can move bodily with an optical apparatus bounded by mirrors.
The experiment in question is known to physicists as the Michelson-Morley
Experiment but they seem not to have heeded the statement by N. R. Campbell in
his 1913 book 'Modern Electrical Theory', published by Cambridge
University Press. He challenged the meaning of the word 'aether'. On page 388
one reads:
This is the simple way out of the difficulties raised by the Michelson-Morley experiment. If from the beginning we had used a plural instead of a singular word to denote the system in which radiant energy is localised (or even a word which, like 'sheep', might be either singular or plural), those difficulties would never have appeared. There has never been a better example of the danger of being deceived by arbitrary choice of terminology. However, physicists, not recognising the gratuitous assumption made in the use of the words 'the aether', adopted the second alternative; they introduced new assumptions.
In short, physicists failed to see the null test of that experiment as telling us something about the properties of the aether. They just slept on the problem, only to be aroused from their slumbers when Albert Einstein came into the picture by, in effect, saying there was no problem anyway, because, as our ship's captain could have explained, what happens on and inside a ship takes its reference from the ship itself. It is a question of relativity, but not the kind of 'relativity' that Einstein was to present. Yes, there was no problem, because the aether has a way of adapting to wave energy when that energy is confined by apparatus in motion, but Einstein's 'no problem' stipulation was to say that physical processes are all referenced on the observer witnessing those processes; non-accelerated motion is said not to affect what is observed. In other words, Einstein said: "Let us adopt a new philosophy that says there is no problem and adjust our physics to fit what we say - the aether can be ignored if we think along those lines."
Well, either the aether exists or it does not and I am not one for ignoring it, given that it is the only source of energy that offers promise for our future salvation. There is much to learn about the aether and how it creates matter and only a fool would be content to follow the Einstein flag, given that it leads only to a fool's paradise.
Our ship's captain, according to Einstein, cannot see the ocean through which his ship moves. Instead, he has to be content with what he sees occurring in his swimming pool and his observation of ships on the distant horizon. If those ships happen to be moving at the same velocity, they will appear to be at rest; there is no relative motion. However, the captain knows that without reference to Einstein's theory.
So, my reflections amount to defending the need for an aether and urging enquiry into its form, not so much because I care how the speed of light is affected by it, but because I care about its energy properties. It is a storehouse for energy, what is known as field energy, the energy we associate with electric and magnetic fields. One cannot declare that it does not exist, simply because it seems not to live up to one's imaginary expectations!
Einstein has obstructed our progress in understanding every aspect of the aether, especially its role in the creation of matter and its role in regulating the quantized motion of electrons in atoms.
The question of interest is whether such a distinction between forced waves and natural waves exists in the case of electromagnetic waves propagated through space. If it can then we know for sure that Einstein's theory has had its day; it offers no feature that can explain the two forms of wave. The real aether offers such a feature and so aether theory must replace relativity.
The proof that forced waves and natural waves do exist for radio communication is to be found in the canyon experiments reported by Dave Gieskieng.
In summary, a natural wave involving that up-and-down motion, is one in which the potential energy (electric field energy) is exchanged with kinetic energy (magnetic field energy) without obliging energy to move at the wave propagation speed. This means that the energy sustaining this exchange process is conserved locally in space; it is energy that exists ab initio, just as there is water in the ocean before it is rippled by surface waves. The forced wave arises where energy is forced into the space medium, as by a radio antenna, with the kinetic energy (magnetic field energy) and the potential energy (electric field energy) being fed together so as to be driven forward, keeping in phase, with both having their wave crests at the same instant along the propagation path.
As might be expected, with the passage of time, the forced wave subsides into the natural wave form and the experiments need to be able to detect the transition. Obviously, if you accept Einstein's theory, which says that light waves travel at a constant speed, you will not expect there to be any transition to a natural wave. Indeed, you would face a scenario where energy must travel from sun to Earth at the speed of light, rather than one where the wave oscillations merely release energy from the aether where the waves are intercepted, leaving the aether to find its own equilibrium, as does the ocean, if a bucket of water is taken from it.
You are deep into the need for an aether once you face the facts concerning forced and natural waves. However, if you accept Einstein's theory you will not be one to seek funding to perform the necessary experiments. You would rather sleep on the dilemma as to how the energy transported by waves is deployed when two waves crash into each other from opposite directions. Somehow, when you wake up, you will need to reconcile the fact that when two light waves pass through one another their amplitudes are unaffected and if the two waves have the same amplitude you must explain how they acquire extra energy at their instant of interception. Bear in mind that energy is a function of the square of wave amplitude, and two squared implies four units of energy, but only two such units are available. Also bear in mind that, if you say that energy travels at the speed of light, you confront some interesting issues, particularly for waves of long wavelength. Your energy will need to dash around hither and thither in a motion superimposed upon the speed of light, but yet the energy cannot move at any speed other than the speed of light!
Maybe before you wrestle with that problem it is better for you to go back to sleep and dream about Einstein. Or maybe you will be content to rely on Maxwell's equations. They are based on theory which is empirically based on observation of the action of forced waves, so they are silent on the question of natural waves and they lack symmetry for that very reason!
Putting all this into practical terms and coming to the experiments performed by Dave Gieskieng, the issue faced is whether an efficient radio antenna is one which puts out the greatest amount of power by literally forcing energy into the radiating field or one which is designed to exploit the natural wave properties of the aether by setting the energy latent to that aether in motion at the point of transmission. Note that the energy forced into the aether is always lost and dispersed as heat in its passage from the antenna. It is the onward natural wave oscillation that is the true work horse covering the mileage to a distant receiver. If that receiving antenna is designed specially to pick up natural waves then it will do better than one, such as a simple dipole, which is one which might seem to be optimum for forced waves.
Well, I will close this introductory theme here by saying that the Gieskieng experiments prove my case and prove the need for an aether able to sustain natural waves. By testing different combinations of the two types of antenna for transmission or reception and using a radiation path traversing a deep canyon in Coloroda, Dave Gieskieng has discovered something that simply tells its own tale. However, here is an other example where those in authority simply do not want to know the truth, because they have treasured beliefs instilled in them by their academic training. For my part I could not stand by and turn a blind eye to what Dave Gieskieng had to say and so I joined forces with him in documenting the report 'An Antenna with Anomalous Radiation Properties'. It presents the facts of experiment. It has not been published hitherto because the scientific community, those who referee scientific papers, fear the consequences of challenging the equations of Clerk Maxwell and the doctrines of Albert Einstein. Also the experimental research involved was performed by an individual acting on his own initiative and not being part of an institutional academic or governmental research team.
The above-mentioned paper is reproduced in full in the continuation pages of this Lecture.