posted 03-28-2002 01:46 PM            

I'm sure this has been discussed here before. I've read a little on it here and there, but this article kind of puts it all in one place. Some of you more knowledgable scientific types wade in. I'd like to know your opinions.

posted 03-28-2002 02:39 PM            

Scanner, you understand that I'm not a physicist. I only know two real honest-to-Ghod physicists, and a year or so ago, when I started hearing more and more stuff about 'scalar' energy, I broached the subject to one of them. He said that he'd heard about it before and looked into it; it was complete mumbo-jumbo.

Maybe this is a good time to talk about the terms "scalar" and "vector". In regular mechanics, a vector is something that has strength and direction. Electromagnetic and gravitational energy are vector energies, since you can measure the strength and force both. (So are the Strong and Weak forces, although it's a bit harder to measure them.) For example, we measure our big component of gravity as being that which results in 32 ft/sec/sec of acceleration (strength) toward the center of the Earth (direction).

Thermal energy is a form of energy, but it is quite different from electromagnetic and gravitational energy. Thermal energy is based on the TEMPERATURE (corresponds to MOTION) of particles, whereas the other two forms of energy are based on FORCES between two objects.

To use thermal energy, you need a temperature difference, say a container with hot water and a container with cold water. Then you can design a machine to use the energy difference to do some work. It is the temperature that determines the amount of thermal energy of a system. Temperature is not a vector but just a simple number, also referred to as a scalar field.

Force fields always have an associated vector potential, from which one can derive the exact value of a force for any given point. Example: from earth's gravitational potential I can calculate the force that acts on me when I am in various places: at sea level, on top of a mountain, in an airplane, somewhere in outer space.

Now, I'm not familiar with any other forms of scalar energy besides heat energy; and certainly most scientists I have talked with aren't, either. If you go to any Physics society on the Internet and type in "scalar energy", you won't get any hits that refer to the scalar energy that's being bruited around on the Internet.

Bearden, like Tesla, is the darling of the 'alternative science' set. The big difference is that a lot (but not all) of Tesla's work a century ago was very real and worthwhile; so far, nothing Bearden has said has impressed anyone in scientific circles. Now I don't know either of them (not surprising about Tesla, he died long before I was born). But what I do know about Tesla's later work - and all of Bearden's hypotheses - is that none of them have been validated in any experiment that I know of. What 3T3L1 says is right on the money: Bearden has not done any experiments under standard conditions, nor has he had any work presented in juried publications.

More important, though, is that, after all these years, nobody (that I know of) has ever built any sort of device that validates any of those hypotheses. Sure, you hear stories about "weapons have already been developed...", but they are just that: stories. You will also hear that the research is valid and certain individuals have actually built some of these machines, but for some mysterious reason, they fail to work. Either the "powers that be" have stolen/sabotaged the efforts of these 'scientists', or they're 'bought out by the big oil companies', or some other excuse.

So until I see results published in a scientific journal, or see a machine that really does what 'scientists' like Bearden claim this mysterious energy can do, I'm going to continue to treat it as bogus.

Regards,

posted 03-28-2002 03:07 PM            

Apparently a patent has been issued on the energy machine Bearden has been talking about. In fact, it was just granted a couple of days ago. Guess if it is for real we will soon know about it.
http://www.prahlad.org/pub/bearden/patent_meg.htm

Did you read any of the article I linked to in my first post? It would be great if the technology could do all the good things that were mentioned. Of course, there are always those who would use the technology to blow us all away, so we would probably never live long enough to enjoy the benefits!! Such is life...

posted 03-28-2002 03:39 PM            

But if Brother Bearden can build a proof-of-concept model, he will become very very rich, very very fast!

posted 04-03-2002 08:38 AM            

What's May 9, 2002 got to do with it?

posted 04-03-2002 03:26 PM            

I appreciate your participation and you are certainly entitled to disagree with whomever you wish. I don't see any reason for personal attacks, however. And...I believe Duncan mentioned that he "wasn't sure" about whether an invention had to actually work to be issued a patent. I suspect the invention works, but the question is whether or not it will work well enough and cheap enough to replace what we have now. It would certainly be wonderful if it does...even if it would put me out of work! As to the intelligence of Duncan's friends, I guess time will tell.

At any rate, I think personal attacks should be just that...personal. That's what the message feature is for.

Thanks for responding though. Now...about May 9th?

posted 04-29-2002 10:07 AM            

Duncan,
What do you make of this?

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen
Warns about eco-terrorism using scalar electromagnetic weapons

"Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves... So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations...It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensifour [counter terrorism] efforts." - Defense Secretary William Cohen, 1997

In a letter to a writer named "Russell" Bearden says,

"In short, Russell, the Secretary of Defense of the United States confirmed that there are indeed novel kinds of EM weapons, right now and have been for some time, which have been and are being used to (1) initiate earthquakes, (2) engineer the weather and climate, and (3) initiate the eruption of volcanoes. We wrote about those exact uses of the weaponry decades ago. Several nations now have such weapons. Three of them (two on one side and the other on a hostile side) are even firing practice shots into Western Australia, as a convenient test range."

posted 04-29-2002 11:35 AM            

You bring up some interesting comments, to which I would like to reply. Your post in "quotes"; mine in italics.

"Mr. Bearden's site is very interesting to say the least."

There are three parts to a Bearden website article: technical stuff I understand, technical stuff I don't understand, and political stuff. Let me just address the technical stuff.

I'm not changing the subject here, but first I want to talk about medical news and military news I read in the Arizona Republic and Mesa Tribune, the two local dailies here.

My wife's an RN and I'm an aerospace weenie, so we can usually tell when there're basic errors with those particular subjects in the news paper. We find that there're about fifteen to twenty percent of the articles that have basic and serious errors - at least in those subjects that we have some expertise in!

I use, as a rule of thumb, that, if there are that many errors that we catch, there're probably the same ratio of errors in articles about subjects we're not "experts" in. Of course, we don't know which 15-20% are errors, but at least it makes us skeptical of everything we read.

Not being a physicist, there are only about a third of the "explanations" in the Bearden website that I can even comment on - and almost all of them are false. For example, he talks about a UV spectrum being a "natural harmonic" of an IR spectrum. That's like saying that mushrooms are a natural harmonic of chemtrails because they both have Holley four-barrel carburetors.

Based on my knowledge that the stuff I comprehend is mostly wrong, does it surprise anyone that I extrapolate to assuming all his stuff is technically bogus?

"And what about the shuttle catastrophe? I find it all fascinating to say the least."

This is one of those 15 - 20% of the news that I actually know about. Having worked for Talley Industries, a sub to Morton Thiokol (the folks who built the solid boosters for Challenger), we all knew that the butyl seals were simply not designed to handle stress loads below a certain temperature. Although this is (literally) rocket science, it's something that anyone who's had even a single semester of organic chemistry can identify with.

The technical results of the inquiry, along with the reports of some engineers trying to stop the launch while the program managers wanted to go ahead, are so typical of any large bureaucracy as to eliminate any doubt in the minds of any technical person connected in any way with the program.

In other words, I'm not sure whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but I know that the official story about the shuttle explosion was the right one.

"U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen Warns about eco-terrorism using scalar electromagnetic weapons
"Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves... So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations...It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensifour [counter terrorism] efforts." - Defense Secretary William Cohen, 1997"

I have read that same paragraph many times, but they have (1) all been on conspiracy web-pages, and (2) never given a citation as to where Cohen actually made those supposed comments. I am not saying that he didn't, mind you; but I did do a search about six months ago of the 1997 issues of the one place where such a speech - if it occurred - might've been reported: Aviation Week and Space Technology (AW&ST). This may be hard to verify, because the AW&ST online data isn't complete and my subscription only goes back two years. But I did pull up all the back paper issues at work and couldn't find anything reported in any of the 1997 issues. FWIW, you can probably find those same back issues at your local library.

I have (and I'm sure you have, as well) read many times about the "president of Proctor and Gamble" on the (choose one) Oprah Winfrey / Rikki Lake / Today Show / Saturday Night Live/ Emeril's Cooking show where he says that his company is a "Satanist organization" and half their profits are going to either the Church of Satan or some other organization.

This article has been painstakingly debunked, not only by outfits like http://www.snopes.com, but also by the shows mentioned above. Spokespeople for all shows announced that there never was a Proctor and Gamble "president" that even appeared on their show! It should be a huge laugher by now - but even today, that same "president of Proctor and Gamble" keeps popping up on whatever show is popular with his "announcement".

So until I get some citations about Cohen's "talk" of scalar technology and read it in from a credible source, I'll continue to be a bit skeptical of that, too.

Just my opinion, of course.

Regards,

posted 04-29-2002 11:56 AM            

Nothing like doing research after you post an article, I always say.

I found the following citation from a Beardenoid website:

"...Quoted from DoD News Briefing, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Q&A at the Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy, University of Georgia, Athens, Apr. 28, 1997."

Now I gotta go check that one out. maybe Cohen did say that! Or maybe he didn't, and one of the Bearden-boys put it in just to make it sound more realistic (like the "president of P&G" on the Oprah Winfrey show!). Or maybe he was quoted out of context. I don't know -- yet.

But I have to go back to a comment I made earlier on this forum:

"More important, though, is that, after all these years, nobody (that I know of) has ever built any sort of device that validates any of those hypotheses. Sure, you hear stories about "weapons have already been developed...", but they are just that: stories. You will also hear that the research is valid and certain individuals have actually built some of these machines, but for some mysterious reason, they fail to work. Either the "powers that be" have stolen/sabotaged the efforts of these 'scientists', or they're 'bought out by the big oil companies', or some other excuse.

So until I see results published in a scientific journal, or see a machine that really does what 'scientists' like Bearden claim this mysterious energy can do, I'm going to continue to treat it as bogus."

Besides, if Cohen is really one of "TPTB", then why would he be saying that stuff? The plot thickens....

I will check out further and let you know what, if anything, I find out.

Regards,