Although I have chosen to talk about inventions in opening these Web pages, the primary topics to be dealt with as we proceed fall into two categories. These are Energy Technology and Fundamental Physics. The secret of tapping energy from the physical underworld of our environment can only be found by deciphering the data coded in what are recognized as the universal constants. Indeed, I have entitled my opening remarks as a 'Keynote Address', having in mind my attendance at the 1981 Conference on Precision Measurement and Fundamental Constants held by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, MD, from June 8-12 of that year. At that meeting there was a Keynote Address on The Laws and Constants of Nature delivered by Professor Ian W. Roxburgh of Queen Mary College in the University of London. He spoke about unsolved problems in the theories related to those constants, problems which I knew I had already solved many years before. In contrast, I, who had taken leave from my management duties in a corporate environment and was there purely for my personal interest, was denied a spot on the conference programme. The two or three souls, like myself, who had ventured into this conference forum without the platform of a university department or government research institution, were allocated a few minutes at a poorly attended beer and pretzel session one evening. "Let him speak" was the cry when the moderator asked if the audience really did want to hear what I had to say about the way in which the aether determines the values of the proton-electron mass ratio and the fine-structure constant. You will not, therefore, find record of what I said in the proceedings of that conference, just my name as an attendee and my image on the group photograph of the event. However, though I did spend nine years back in academia following my later retirement from IBM, these Web pages are now my platform and I can pick up the thread of the fabric of space that I was speaking about by quoting from Professor Roxburgh's Keynote Address at that NBS meeting. Take note that if one can explain how the energy needed to create the proton is wrapped up into that tiny particle, one can explain the creation of the whole universe. It is then a small step for mankind to find the way of tapping some energy from the same source to supply our energy needs, though not such a small step for the solitary individual.
I quote now from Section 12 of the Conference Proceedings version of Professor Roxburgh's Address. This is at pages 1-9 in the 646 page National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 617 dated August 1984.
I have already pointed out that in standard theory (i.e. general relativity and quantum mechanics) the large numbers vary in time, and it is just a chance event that these three numbers happen to be about 1040. These numbers could be different, in which case the properties of the universe would be different, and in particular we, man the observer, would not be here to ask why the universe is as it is. This idea has been elevated to the status of The Anthropic Principle.
Now I quote this because it brings together three facets of the energy scenario. These are the conflicting roles played (a) on the grand universal scale by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, with its implications for gravitational energy potential, (b) on the microscopic scale of quantum mechanics where the energy of the minute photon quantum does its work and (c) man, the observer, in the middle of an 'Anthropic Principle' which amounts to a conundrum concerning his energy requirements.
It may be awe inspiring to think that the universe is as it is because we happen to be around to see it or, conversely, that we are around to see it because it is as it is, but such thoughts and those implicit in the Large Number Hypothesis are far removed from the fact that deciphering the values obtained by precision measurement of fundamental constants is what counts.
Einstein's theory does not tell me how energy is stored in empty space, meaning space devoid of matter, by the process of magnetic induction. Nor, indeed, does quantum mechanics. I do know that mankind would be in a sorry plight if that empty space could not somehow store the energy locked into a magnetic field. Numbers do creep into the picture here, because I realized that the real question we must face is not how we shed energy into space when we send magnetizing current through an air-cored coil, but how that energy can ever come back as electricity when we switch the current off? Mathematics or man-made laws based on empirical observation offer no answer.
I had to reason that something equivalent to current flow in a coil was occurring within that space taken up by the real coil. This meant that if I applied a current having the effect of, say, 2 amps in the coil and that hidden space coil reacted by setting up a 1 amp current reaction, then the net effect would be that of a 1 amp input, but when I switch off the current input, that residual 1 amp reaction effect in space would collapse energy back into my primary coil. Overall, space would need to respond as if there was a 2:1 anomaly in the field reaction.
As my Ph.D. research was all about magnetic reaction effects in steel and I knew there was a 2:1 anomaly observed in the gyromagnetic reaction of pivotally mounted ferromagnetic rods when subjected to field reversal, it was clear to me that here was the signature of space itself. It had a thermodynamic property. It would heat up when a steady magnetic field was applied and cool down when that field was switched off. For 'it' read 'aether', because it, meaning empty space, is 'nothing' and one can only put energy into 'something'.
So, far from that large number of 1040, here was I, concerned about the simple number 2! When, back in the 1950s I told physicists about my factor-of-2 theory, I was duly kicked in the teeth for daring (a) to say there was an aether, when Einstein had proved otherwise, and (b) for ignoring Dirac's explanation of the factor of 2 based on his contriving a combination of relativistic principles and quantum mechanics.
I did know enough about Einstein's theory and quantum mechanics to set about building an aether theory which fitted the empirical facts on which those two theories had been founded. That kept me busy for many years but was rewarded very early by the discovery of how to decipher those fundamental constants pertaining to fine-structure in the atomic spectrum, gravitation and the proton-electron mass ratio and, eventually even the Hubble constant fell into place on my aether theory. However, that factor of 2 holds the secret which tells us we can tap energy from the aether with the aid of ferromagnetism.
So, when you have finished reading this discussion note and you return to the main Web page, the HOME PAGE, you have a choice in your onward journey through the subject of Energy Science. You may go directly along the TECHNOLOGY path by studying the relevant Lectures and Essays or you may take the more academic scientific route and embark on the PHYSICS route which has its own separate set of Lectures and Tutorials. Of the latter, do work through the Tutorials first, because you will then find how easy it is to understand how the key fundamental constants of physics are determined by aether theory. However, if your mind is on technology and tapping the energy of the aether, then the starting point should be my Lecture entitled 'The Invention of Hans Coler, which is Lecture No. 7.
Returning briefly to the Roxburgh Keynote Address I quote now from the early Section 11 of that paper:
Other pure numbers we have considered are the fine-structure constant and the mass ratio of the electron to proton, these being approximately 1/137 and 1/1836, respectively. Why do these numbers have these values? What would the universe be like if these numbers were different? I think most scientists would conjecture that one day we will be able to explain why the particles masses are as observed and why the fine-structure constant has its particular value. At the moment we do not have a deep understanding of particle physics to provide the explanation. A similar view can be taken about the cosmological numbers of the order 1040. Such fundamental theories linking cosmology and microphysics have been pursued by several people, but without apparent success.
On this latter point there were two references quoted, one being to Eddington's 'Fundamental Theory' and the other to Roxburgh's own account in 'The Encyclopedia of Ignorance'.
I may add that I had gone to the Conference expecting to be given a hearing on my own theory for those two numbers 1/137 and 1/1836. I was not intending to announce any kind of discovery, but rather to draw attention to what had been published on the subject already in well respected scientific periodicals. My 1972 Physics Letters paper: 'Aether Theory and the Fine Structure Constant', v. 41A, pp. 423-424, [1972a] was known to Brian Petley, an attendee from the U.K. National Physical Laboratory at that Conference. Indeed, he expressly referred to it in the book entitled: 'The Fundamental Physical Constants and the Frontier of Measurement', (Publishers: Adam-Hilger), which he wrote in the aftermath of that Conference. However, it seems he did not know about the 1975 paper: 'Calculation of the Proton Mass in a Lattice Model for the Aether', Il Nuovo Cimento, v. 30A, pp. 235-238 [1975a], as that eluded mention in his book, though it did attract later comment in a research paper by experimentalist R.S. Van Dyck, another attendee at that Conference, one famous for his measurements of the proton-electron mass ratio. I refer to that in my recent book: Aether Science Papers as listed in the Bibliographic section of these Web pages and commend that book for attention by any physicist willing to have an open mind on such matters as particle creation and those fundamental constants.
So you see, I have a theory which gives the answers, but yet, because those answers come, not from relativity or string theory or from one of the popular modern theories, but come instead from the mundane aether, those answers are ignored. We shall have to see if physicists can ignore the energy bonanza that is now at hand, thanks to that aether source!
To end this discussion I offer a few words about the theory of relativity. Periodically there are conferences in London held under the auspices of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science on the subject of 'Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory'. The last such event at the time this was written was held on 6-9 September, 1996.
As an attendee I was surprised to find that my research was praised by a speaker who was unknown to me, J. Dunning-Davies of the University of Hull. In the text of his paper, as later published, he writes:
In this country, possibly the two best known critics of relativity are Louis Essen and Harold Aspden but, as Essen points out, even someone as academically eminent as 'Rutherford treated it as a joke and Soddy called it a swindle'. On the other hand, equally eminent academics such as Eddington championed the pro-relativity cause. Recently, the fluid dynamist Kenneth Thornhill has reported significant results without recourse to relativity.
Now, to correct the above impression it was really Essen, acclaimed for his discovery of the caesium atomic clock and the measurement of time at the U.K. National Physical Laboratory, who made a full-frontal attack on the theory of relativity. Essen pointed a finger in my direction as a 'Hope on the Horizon' and referred to my book 'Physics without Einstein' and also to 'Modern Aether Science', but I never did set out to probe the weaknesses of Einstein's theory. All I was aiming at was to be sure that that theory did not block the path for acceptance of my aether theory. I do not wish to be remembered as a critic, but rather as the discoverer of the secrets hidden in the aether.
Reading further in the Dunning and Cole paper: 'Qualms concerning relativity theory and some of its applications', in the conference proceedings of that meeting (pp. 52-63 in the Late Paper section), I was interested in the following reference to Thornhill's work:
Thornhill concludes by noting that a return to Newtonian mechanics and all that that implies would create a backlog of problems still demanding conventional solutions, as well as a suitable aether. However, he claims that such problems may be solved using the methods of unsteady gas dynamics and the theory of characteristics.
On that subject I stress that it is a false approach to try to explain the properties of the aether in terms of the properties of matter and especially in terms of fluid dynamics. You see, the root of the problem is that of understanding the very nature of mass in terms of electrical energy. It is electrical action and the attendant magnetic actions that can assert their influence through the space which separates electric particles. Fluid dynamics requires contact and does not countenance action at a distance. If we are to tap energy from space there has to be something other than exchange of energy by collisions between particles. We have to tap into the energy pool to which we are coupled by those magnetic fields and it is the latter that come quantized in units determining the Planck constant. That tells us to look at the dimensionless fine structure constant as an aether property, because it combines Planck's constant, the unitary electron charge and the speed of light in one numerical expression 1/137. Decipher that in terms of an electrical aether and you have arrived where you need to be and there are then really few unsolved problems even though Einstein's theory sinks into oblivion.
I end this Discussion by emphasizing that the subject of interest in these Web pages is ENERGY. We are dealing with Energy Science of the kind which concerns actions involving AETHER. This is the domain of those electrical phenomena we still do not fully comprehend. Our subject is not philosophically based on the problems of communication across space and Einsteinian-type questions such as how light can always travel at a constant speed and yet bend in its path around a star. Imagine two runners going around a curved track, side-by-side, and see one get ahead as they run at the same speed! Let two separate observers time their motion by their different stop watches to find they keep pace with one another. Then go away and make sense of those findings in the light of what you know you have seen. You will soon lose all sense of time and have no regard for the energy expended by those runners. I would say that those stop watches needed calibrating against the steady rhythm of Nature's natural time and without reference to Einstein, the Swiss Patent Examiner.
ENERGY is what counts, and once we understand all we need to know about how energy is juggled about in space, particularly in the space local to our Earth, then we can build a picture of that AETHER. So we will delve into Aether Science and Energy Science and jump between the two as these Web pages take form.
I have much to say about what lies ahead in that territory, but there are still vast unexplored regions. The physical basis of that 1836 number ratio for the proton-electron mass ratio tells us about proton creation but does not fully answer questions such as "when" and "where" those protons found they could form the atomic nuclei of, say, carbon and oxygen. It is all too easy to speculate about what happens inside stars, assuming their cores are at temperatures of tens of millions of degrees. Give 'cold fusion' a hearing and you might wonder if stars need be much hotter than, say, 10,000 degrees. Resolve the anomalies surrounding the photon and the transport of energy by electromagnetic waves, with gravity in mind, and you might wonder if waves ripple through the aether, promoting fluctuations of aether energy already there, whilst the source energy of stellar radiation is pulled back to the star by gravity and so conserved. Such a hypothesis would account for how a star can sustain its radiant condition for billions of years. Go even further and face up to that question of whether the fundamental physical constants can change with time. They may be different in different galactic regions. If so it could be that those oxygen atoms could form in some regions of space as part of the ongoing process of proton creation, rather than by a subsequent fusion process. Then we could see a way of forming the hydroxyl ion and so water and begin to pay attention when scientists tell us that comets are composed of ice. One might even wonder if comets contain more than a good measure of spinning aether, inasmuch as the aether exists, what exists can move and a form of movement is 'spin'. Anything, therefore, which involves energy in an unusual way and has bearing on both cosmology and microphysics warrants scrutiny with the aether in mind. However, amidst all of this, it is the interplay between aether and the ferromagnetic condition of matter or the interplay of aether and the electrodynamics of the heavy ion that offers us an access route to 'free energy'. Do not let your false preconceived notions about the AETHER deter you from considering what is said on the subject in these Web pages. The aether is the only hope we have for avoiding the pollution caused by fossil and nuclear fuel. If that aether can create protons and package energy into photons then it has something useful to tell us about energy. If, as a scientist, you can explain proton creation and photon creation without needing an aether, then you can claim an alternative scenario. If you cannot, in a way which can rival what I have to say in these Web pages, then do see the aether as I do and offer it your support.
Now make your choice. Go back to the Homepage and decide whether you wish to select a Lecture topic or work through the Tutorials to see how easy it is to explain those mysterious numbers 137 and 1836, or even those very large numbers that come into play as the Constant of Gravity gets into the act. I thank you for your interest.
Harold Aspden, August 19, 1997