THE HISTORY

On 15/3/1984, an article appeared in New Scientist entitled "What Made the World" by a Professor E. Tryon. He said gravitational potential energy (GPE) was considered negative since it was customary to choose the datum point at infinity. Then any object would need to have energy added to take it to the datum and so this made GPE negative. He showed the magnitude of the GPE of all the matter in the universe to be approximately equal to all its positive mass-energy and concluded that the two would cancel so that the universe could arise "Ex-Nihilo".

I was amazed that the flaw in this argument had passed all assessors and thought it important to publish a critique.

Only the last attempt received a positive response. It was by then August 1987 and the response was from Professor J.P. Vigier of Paris, the gravitational consultant of "Physics Letters A". In his reply, dated 2/8/87 he said I was correct and that the critique should be published, giving advice on possible journals. He added that he hoped I would succeed in this and that I could quote his letter to help. However, he made it clear it could not be published in Physics Letters A despite the fact that articles concerning gravitation do appear in that journal. All previous referees had rejected the critique as invalid, showing they all lacked an adequate understanding of mechanics.

Realising the considerable effort made had been futile, I wrote to Professor Paul Davies, asking how this could affect the Big Bang theory of which Tryon's argument was a part. Davies responded by sending me a copy of the theory of "inflation" written by Dr. Alan Guth for inclusion in a book under preparation called, "The New Physics".

I was astonished to discover this contained an error in logic on nearly every line!

It began by saying that space had to be supplied with energy in order to expand and equated its energy density to pressure, so that the latter had a huge negative value (violates thermodynamics). This "intrinsic negative pressure of the vacuum" was substituted in an equation from Einstein that included a pressure term and this switched the energy density to a negative value (something totally impossible since it had been assumed positive in the first place). This negative density was inserted in Newton's equation for gravitational attraction, to make it give repulsion, and this was postulated as the cause of the inflationary creative explosion. The implosive effect of the negative pressure was conveniently ignored but this was a minor fault compared with those in every other step of the argument. The theorist had relied entirely on his maths without considering its meaning. Again a totally inadequate understanding of both mechanics and thermodynamics was demonstrated. Davies was so embarrassed at my tactfully worded response that he refused to speak even on the telephone. But clearly this had some effect since when the book appeared in 1989 (Cambridge University Press) the derivation (p57-59) had been split up to make the flaws less obvious -but they are still there.

THE PROBLEM OF THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT

It was at this point that I realised something was badly wrong and that I ought to be able to solve the problem of the "Cosmological Constant" from the basis of my own discipline. This problem had arisen from the failure of Guth's approach to provide any way of adequately switching off the explosive creation he had postulated.

Regardless of any other factor, such as "Higgs fields" that could be incorporated as mathematical abstraction, the only way a universe could arise from nothing required a background medium that consisted of a mixture of real positive and negative mass. The latter is defined by simply reversing the directions of the forces of "action" and "reaction" in Newton's mechanics. This seems absurd at first sight since an object being pushed would seem to move back against the pushing force. However, if the pushing object is also of negative mass then it is easy to see the effects come in pairs and cancel. So responses would be identical to those of positive masses. Accordingly all physics could be based on everything being negative and we would never see any difference! With mixtures of both kinds, however, both pure creation and annihilation from and to a zero energy state become possible without violation of energy conservation.

My solution also required kinetic energy and an associated kinetic mass to be real, so that when added to rest values a real "total energy" and an associated real "inertial mass" had to exist that increased as an object was accelerated to a higher speed. This had to apply for each type of energy.

Relativity theory seemed to be required for this purpose since in Newton's mechanics only rest mass was considered. Unfortunately the subsequent study of relativity, I had to make, soon showed that its "relative mass" was not real. Relative mass had to be considered illusory instead of real. This was because the observer was considered as the frame of reference and so observers in motion with respect to one another would measure different values of both relative mass and kinetic energy.

AN ALTERNATIVE TO RELATIVITY HAD TO BE DERIVED

Clearly the local background medium --I subsequently called "i-ther" to indicate that it was different from the old "ether"-- had to become the frame of reference instead of the observer. It meant I had to start from scratch to devise an alternative to relativity. This seemed a daunting task at first since the end product needed to satisfy all the experiments that had so far been considered the unique achievements of both special and general relativity. The latter had the force of gravity as an illusion caused by "curved space-time", something intangible that needed a careful look. Clearly similar effects would be produced by an i-ther having a non-uniform density. The density would have to increase as a massive object was approached. Then everything could be expressed in terms of the simple straight-line geometry of Euclid.

The new "Exact Classical Mechanics" had therefore to include gravitation and so the daunting problems seemed to multiply.

QUANTUM CONSIDERATIONS

Then again studies of quantum theory I had made, from interest, had shown everything at the atomic level to have a mysterious dual nature. Sometimes quantum objects behaved like particles, just as one would expect, but at other times acted like waves spread over a region of space. The existing interpretations of this "wave-particle duality", the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations, were both absurd.

Something better was needed. Clearly the quantum level depended on waves whose nature was never identified. Were they real or abstract? What made these waves? Clearly a deeper level of reality had to exist that was not wave-dependent in order to provide the power and organisation of these waves. This ultimate level could not itself operate according to wave mechanics as did the quantum level, since then an even deeper level would be required to make its waves. It was decided that the assumption would have to be made that the new exact classical mechanics would also operate at the level of i-ther. This meant that the i-ther would create a macroscopic level mirroring itself using the quantum level, sandwiched between the two, as a means to achieve that end. This assumption could only be justified if predictions of the theory matched experiment. This was the reason the new mechanics needed to satisfy all the experiments just as well as did both special and general relativity.

THE PARANORMAL COMES IN

Worse, the solution I was homing in on seemed to be supporting some paranormal aspects I did not believe existed, such as survival of the soul. At this point a lady friend, Susan Coppard, told me that somebody she knew called, Michael Roll, was having problems of obfuscation similar to mine and that it might be a good idea if we met up. We met in 1988.

He showed me that the evidence of the survival of consciousness had been around for over a century, starting with the experiments of Sir William Crookes. I was appalled to find that, not only had his work been suppressed, but that this famous scientist had been devalued by deliberate character assassination in order to support the suppression.

This seemed to add complication to complexity since it was now clear that the developing alternative physics would need extension to include the paranormal.

THE ATTITUDE OF "NATURE"

Efforts to publish the solution to the cosmological constant had also all been rejected despite the promise made by a sub-editor of Nature, Dr. David Lindley, that they would gladly publish any satisfactory solution. A total of ten revisions were all rejected, the reason mostly given being that it was necessary to accept the problem existed and then find a way to "force it to zero". Mine was no solution, he kept saying, since in my version the problem did not exist. This seemed like nit picking to me but finally the real reason emerged from a letter to me written by Dr. Maddox himself. He said it was an editorial decision that Nature would never publish any of my work, that in no way did this mean it was wrong and that he would be happy to see it published elsewhere.

Then a year later a solution to the problem, satisfying Lindley's specification, appeared in Nature dated 22/29 Dec.1988 p711. This was an article by a Cambridge physicist, Dr. F. Abbott entitled, "Baby Universes and Making the Cosmological Constant Zero". It said baby universes in higher dimensions were connected to ours via huge numbers of minute "wormholes in space-time". Baby universes would have the same problem of cosmological constants as ours but somehow theirs had to be negative. They also had to match ours in magnitude to unbelievable accuracy so that they could cancel ours through these wormholes, so forcing the constant to zero. The article went on to say that the, "approach relies on a shaky formalism and on many untested assumptions". It also said this was part of the Hawking-Coleman programme.

So Nature was organised to reject solutions it could not fault but was prepared to publish anything, even shaky ones, provided they had the support of the acknowledged genius of the age. Something again was badly wrong.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO RELATIVITY NOW MATCHES EINSTEIN'S ACHIEVEMENTS

Concurrently the alternative to relativity had been developing and all efforts at publication again met with rejection. The last attempt was favoured with three postcards sent at intervals during a whole year saying it was being assessed. Then finally dismissal was justified by the following single sentence from "The Canadian Journal of Physics" dated, Jan.19, 1989:

"This paper does not meet the standards of CJP, since it fails to properly connect with the currently accepted theories such as Einstein's general relativity and the presently accepted problems of quantum gravity".

Clearly the assessors had spent a whole year trying to find a flaw, or a mismatch with observation, in order to justify rejection. Clearly they had failed in this and so resort had been made to a weak excuse. In other words relativity had been regarded as sacrosanct from the beginning and no alternative is publishable whether it is flaw free or not.

This was typical of all the other rejections.

If alternatives are not permitted to surface then it is inevitable that physics will at some point be diverted onto false tracks. There is good reason to think that this has already happened! It is essential for the maintenance of true progress that existing theories be continually challenged and alternatives offered, if only to attract critique.

ENTER DR LOUIS ESSEN

In 1991 a letter arrived from Dr. Louis Essen FRS, inventor of the Caesium beam atomic clock. He had been exposing flaws in relativity theory during the 60's until told that he would place the tenure of his post in jeopardy if he did not desist. In one of his publications in "Wireless World" he quotes Rutherford who considered relativity theory a joke. "But", writes Essen, "I do not think he would have regarded it a joke had he realised how it would retard the rational development of science". Dr.Essen in his letter then says that since it is impossible to publish any alternatives to relativity in the West I ought to attend a conference in Russia where I would discover that a far greater degree of open-mindedness existed. He suggested I present the theory there and enclosed an invitation form asking me to deputise for him.

I followed this advice at considerable expense, taking my wife as well. As Essen had predicted the submission found empathy and was selected for publication in their proceedings.

AN ALARMING RESPONSE FROM THE STUDENTS PHYSICS SOCIETY OF CAMBRIDGE

Now I come back to Cambridge and the crunch line. I received a request from the secretary, J.R. Knight, of the "Students Physics Society" to repeat the presentation just given in Russia. I do not know how they found out about this. It was not any initiative from me.

The lecture on the alternative to relativity took place on Halloween night in 1991 and I was most impressed by the quality of these students. They followed the logic without trouble and became very interested indeed. Then one said all surprised, "We can all understand this: it all makes sense". I said, "Surely your own courses make sense?" A chorus of derisive laughter broke out and then they came back with, "None of it makes sense: the maths comes at us so thick and fast we have no time to understand what it means. All we can do is learn it well enough to pass the exams".

Now this was a real shock! It really told me everything. It could be inferred that what had gone so badly wrong was no fault of anybody. Courses had become more and more difficult and more and more devoted to abstract mathematics. Consequently the essential non-mathematical logic required as back up for providing a basic understanding had been gradually squeezed out. This must be why so many highly qualified physicists showed an inability to understand the simple things. This must be why assessors were not spotting flawed logic and seemed unable to properly assess that which was sound.

TO BRIEFLY END THE STORY

This is not the end of the story. By 1992 the way the i-ther could begin as a small explosive creation had been developed, caused by a breeding effect as "primaries" of opposed energies collided. Instability then resulted causing centres of annihilation to develop that cancelled almost all the creation still going on. The maths predicted the formation of a tangled filamentous structure that certainly provided a source of waves and the power to drive them. It also seemed to offer the potential for the evolution of the background conscious intelligence needed for the organisation of those waves. A new interpretation for the vexed question of wave-particle duality governing quantum mechanics could now be proposed.

Years later, "New Scientist" published an article in their 24 July 2004 edition entitled, "Quantum Rebel" that described how the physicist, Shahriar Afshar, had carried out an experiment that showed both faces of waves and particles simultaneously. This had been previously regarded as impossible. This had paradigm-shifting potential since it demolished the two most popular interpretations of wave-particle duality, those known as Copenhagen and Many Worlds!

It gave perfect support, however, to the new interpretation based on the intelligent wave-generation and wave organising power of i-ther.

I continue with the story. Instead of all the matter and energy of the universe being created in a split second during a gross violation of energy conservation, as in existing big bang theory, a steady net creation now occurred continually, so creating an-ever accelerating expansion. It also meant that the i-ther was indefinitely old, not a few billion years.

This extension was first presented in Russia in 1993 under the title," Quantum Gravitation and the Structured Ether" but it was not until 1997 that this theory, stripped of its mathematics, was published in the West.

There is no possibility of further publications as the editors of that journal, "Frontier Perspectives" soon made brutally clear. The inference is that some powerful individual brought pressure to bear on the editor, who had shown considerable enthusiasm until the paper had appeared. However, all is not lost.

THE INITIATIVE MOVES TO INDIA

It turns out that the "Yin and Yang" character of Survival Physics" fits in well with Eastern philosophies that have been handed down for thousands of years. The new interpretation of wave-particle duality also matches in with their insistence that the universe of matter is a deliberately contrived illusion. This seems to be why Indian intellectuals approached me in 2003 showing a keen interest. To them it is a great boost to have their beliefs supported by a similar picture that arose independently from a scientific base. An Indian scientific journal will shortly be publishing an updated version of the approach. It seems that over there a seed has been planted on fertile soil. There it will grow and flourish and then, I predict, it will gradually spread back to the West as soon as physicists here begin to realise how badly they have been diverted onto false tracks.

I further predict that in a few decades the previous fifty years or so will then be regarded as the worst in the history of physics. A period when absurdity was piled on absurdity to counter the false prediction resulting from what was flawed logic in the first place. A period when resort was made to the unethical practice of obfuscation of inconvenient facts, such as the survival of consciousness, that appeared as threats to established thinking.

A RECENT EXPERIENCE ILLUSTRATES THE POINT

I will end this message by just mentioning a recent experience that supports my contention that students of physics are not receiving an adequate understanding of mechanics and thermodynamics. A young man wished to meet me saying he had ideas that could help. He came on a short dog walk with me to give me some advice on how to achieve publication. His advice was that I should study for a degree in physics and then go on to obtain a Ph.D in the subject.

"Only then will the assessors feel confident in believing you", he said.

My answer, "I do not want or expect anybody to believe me. All I expect is for my logic to be assessed and then if no fault is found I expect it to be accepted." But they won't be able to understand it that way", he responded, "All they have to go on is your qualifications and if they are adequate then they will feel safe in letting it pass".

He was quite adamant about this and considered it perfectly normal. What kind of state have we reached?

In my opinion something needs to be done to correct the alarming situation that has gradually developed.