Dr. Bryan G. Wallace
FARCE OF PHYSICS
Chapter 5
Light Lunacy
At first I did not realize the military implications of
realistic knowledge of the nature of the relative velocity of
light in space. The article that opened my eyes on this matter
was titled "The Search for a Nuclear Sanctuary (II)", and it was
published in the journal Science in 1983.[58] The following
quotations are from that article:
Buried inside the Defense Department's bureaucracy is a
small, well-run program of enormous significance in the
ongoing debate over whether or not the United States should
construct a large-scale antiballistic missile system, as
President Reagan proposed in his widely publicized "Star
Wars" speech last March. It is known as the Advanced
Strategic Missile System (ASMS) program, and almost
everything that falls under its jurisdiction is considered
secret....
For roughly two decades, the technical managers of ASMS
and its bureaucratic antecedents have analyzed potential
Soviet strategic defenses and devised the means to defeat
them....
ASMS, along with several newer Pentagon programs aimed
specifically at countering potential Soviet space-based laser
systems, will have a significant impact on the strategic
balance in the event that the United States proceeds with
Reagan's plan to "counter the awesome Soviet missile threat
with measures that are defensive."...
The Air Force, which directs the ASMS program, does not like
to crow about the program's technological successes,
preferring that the Soviets, and perhaps the general public,
be kept in the dark about what is obviously one of its most
sensitive scientific endeavors....
The active decoy is a product of substantial wizardry in
microelectronics and computing, engineered by MIT's Lincoln
Laboratories and by the General Electric Company....
In 1968, Dr. Thornton Page, a prominent astrophysicist,
reviewed my original c+v analysis paper titled INCONSISTENCIES IN
RADAR DISTANCES TO VENUS. At that time, Page was Director of the
Van Vleck Observatory, Chairman of the Astronomy Department of
Wesleyan University, Associate Director of the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory, Vice President for Astronomy of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an
Associate Scientist with NASA. He chopped the paper down to at
least half its original size, making many significant changes.
Page also helped me to present arguments with regard to the work
to many prominent scientists he introduced me to at the Fourth
Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics that was held in
Dallas Texas in 1968. He concentrated mainly on radio
astronomers and had advised me not to answer questions in the
conclusive sense but always in the possible sense. A fair number
of the scientist asked for preprints of the paper.
On the fourth day of the Symposium, Dr. Irwin I. Shapiro
presented a talk titled OBSERVATIONAL TESTS OF RELATIVITY.
Shapiro was the principal investigator for the above mentioned
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory's
analysis of the interplanetary radar data that came from radar
stations scattered throughout the world, and his research was
funded by the Air Force. In the talk, Shapiro presented the
illusion that the radar data was consistent with Einstein's
general relativity theory. The talk was essentially the same as
the paper titled "Radar Observations of the Planets" which he had
published in the prestigious journal Scientific American.[59] In
my debate with Shapiro, in the comment session that followed his
talk, he admitted that all his calculations were based on a
constant speed of light c (the wave in ether model), and he had
not tested c+v (the particle model). He did this, in spite of
the fact, that the major problem in modern physics, is the wave-
particle paradox. That is, in some experiments light seems to
behave like a wave, and in other experiments it seems to behave
as a particle. He admitted the fact that the published radar
analysis showed very large impossible variations in the
calculated value of the astronomical unit (the mean distance
between the earth and the sun), that were far larger than their
maximum estimate of all possible errors. The graphed calculated
values of the astronomical unit contained a daily component that
was proportional to the relative velocity due to the Earth's
rotation, a 30-day component, related to the Earth-Moon rotation,
and a component related to the relative solar orbital velocities
of the Earth and Venus.[60] The variations in the calculated
value of the astronomical unit are what one would expect to find
if the speed of light was c+v, and the calculations were based on
c. The astronomical unit is the basic unit of measurement used by
astronomers for the solar system. The telescopic methods used to
determine its value, had an uncertainty of as much as 170,000
miles (273,589 kilometers), due to the fact that until the
interplanetary radar observations became technologically
possible, the only way to measure distances was by the indirect
method of analysis of the angular positions of bodies in the
solar system.[61] The radar observations were estimated to be
capable of measuring the distance to Venus with an accuracy of
within 1.5 kilometers, the only important variable being the
relative velocity of light in space. The Earth's rotation could
cause a maximum difference in calculated distance between the two
theories of 260 kilometers when two radar stations, one on either
side of the Earth, observe Venus at the same time when the planet
is at its closest point to the Earth. This difference would
increase as the distance between the Earth and Venus increased.
An analysis of the data based on the incorrect theory would show
the center of Venus to be at different distances from the center
of the Earth at the same time. The analysis of the data
published by Shapiro's research group also presents evidence
against the c theory from observations made at the same time from
different points on the Earth. The Lincoln Laboratory made a
complete c analysis of all the radar data up to 1966. The
Einstein general relativity time delay goodness-of-fit for the US
Massachusetts radar station was 1.57, the value for the Puerto
Rico station was .97, the value for the USSR Crimean station was
7.10. The article[62] states:
Although not apparent from inspection of Fig. 4, the
residuals of the U.S.S.R. time-delay are systematically
negative relative to the Arecibo and Lincoln Laboratory
residuals during the time period (June 1964) when all three
groups were observing Venus. This incompatibility cannot be
removed by assuming simply that different units of time were
used by the different observatories.
In his chapter of the book[63] "Radar Astronomy", Shapiro states:
If the theory is wrong, the values of the parameters will be
selected from the data in a manner that tends to cover up the
inadequacies of the theory (for example, if least-mean-square
fitting is employed).
I told Shapiro that my analysis of the published 1961 Venus radar
data[18] showed a much better fit to the Newtonian particle c+v
model for light than for the Einstein wave c model. I stated
that my analysis would have been far more impressive if I had
more than the sparse set of data that was published. Shapiro
made no effort to challenge any of my arguments, and promised to
send me any data I would require to make a more in depth analysis
of the relative velocity of light in space. Thornton Page was
furious over the corrosive nature of my arguments and the tone of
voice that I had used, and let me know about it in no uncertain
terms! From that point on, Page has not given me any further
assistance in my efforts to bring scientific objectivity and
integrity to the question of the relative velocity of light in
space. The loss of Page's support has proven to be a devastating
blow to this cause. For example, Walter Sullivan, the science
editor of The New York Times, was at the Symposium and had shown
an interest in publishing an article on my results. In a short
letter sent 13 March 1969, he thanked me for sending him copies
of my exchanges with Shapiro. He stated he was far from being
qualified to assess the merit of my case and would have to depend
on old friends who areÄÄincluding Thornton Page. Needless to
say, Sullivan never wrote the article. To show the impact that
this article could have had, I would like to quote from Michael
Riordan's recent book[64 p.180] "The Hunting of the Quark":
One might question all this concern over a mere newspaper
article, but The New York Times, as the nation's foremost
daily, informs scientists in other fieldsÄÄand especially
Washington policymakersÄÄabout new discoveries. In a science
so dependent upon government money for its continued
progress, Sullivan's front-page article was a valuable trump
card in the annual budget scramble.
With regard to the correspondence with Shapiro mentioned by
Sullivan, my first letter of 26 December 1968 states:
Enclosed you will find a copy of my paper "Inconsistencies
In Radar Distances To Venus" that I promised to send you.
Dr. Heinrich K. Eichhorn checked the calculations and Dr.
Thornton L. Page suggested how to write it and reviewed and
edited it. I have sent copies to most of the research
centers and observatories in the U.S. as well as a few other
countries. Enclosed you will also find a small sample of the
answers I have received.
In Shapiro's answer of 13 January 1969, he thanked me for sending
him a preprint of my paper, and said he found himself in
agreement with the comments of Prof. Dingle. The Prof. Dingle
Shapiro spoke of, was the Herbert Dingle I had mentioned earlier,
who had published the article in Nature concerning the
inconsistent logic in Einstein's Special Relativity theory.[47]
With regard to the problem of Dingle's understanding the
interplanetary radar paper, Dingle wrote in his letter of 16
August 1968 that he agreed that Dr. Page (whom he knew) has
condensed the account too muchÄÄat any rate for the understanding
of those who are not primarily dynamical astronomers but are
concerned with that subject in relation to their own interests.
In Shapiro's letter of 17 January, he states that the radar data
are not consistent with the "ballistic theory" of light, but are
consistent with general relativity (cf. their article on the
verification of the second-order Doppler shift in Phys. Rev.
Letters circa. October 1966).
An interesting side note is the fact that Dr. Svetlana A.
Tolchelnikova-Murri, a professional Russian astronomer and
mathematician working at the Pulkovo Observatory, has published a
paper titled The Doppler Observations of Venus Contradict the STR
in the US journal GALILEAN ELECTRODYNAMICS.[151] Dr.
Tolchelnikova delivered a Russian version of that paper at a 1991
Conference that I talk of in the next chapter. In my answer to
Shapiro of 23 January, I wrote:
With reference to your letter of January 17, I read the
article you referred me to. You should know by now you can't
bluff me. The article does not support your argument and you
know it.
You admitted at the symposium in front of 500 scientists
that all your calculations were based on c. How can you
state that the radar data is not consistent with the
"ballistic theory"? Prove it, and then publish it.
Considering the capabilities of the Lab. and the importance
of the question, this is the most responsible thing you can
do.
You state the radar data is consistent with general
relativity, yet when the observing time is varied you get
variations that are far larger then the maximum possible and
the variations are proportional to the change in the
observing time. The variations disappear when the observing
time is held constant but variations between radar stations
that are proportional to the distance exist. These facts are
documented by articles published by your group in "The
Astronomical Journal."
You lost the fight when you did not challenge me at the
symposium. This fact has made a impression on a large number
of scientists. Your only hope is to finish a half-finished
job, and make a complete and fair analysis of the radar data
based on the ballistic model before someone else does.
I brought the matter out in the open, now you must decide
to sink or swim. Good luck!
In my 13 February letter to Shapiro, I wrote:
Dr. Wilbur Block is a radio astronomer who is doing
research on radio radiations from Jupiter. He has
collaborated with others in publishing a number of papers on
this subject. He was the one who invited me to give a
lecture at his college on radar testing of Special
Relativity.
I told Block that you had promised to send me all the data
I needed. He wants to do research on this himself. If he
limits his analysis to a test of relativity and does not get
involved in a deep analysis of Venus' orbit, he will probably
be the first one to publish verification of my work.
He would like the data from about five consecutive days
during inferior conjunction. He needs transit time and
Doppler shift from three observations each day, one at the
earliest time, one at 12:00 UT and one at the latest time,
all from your station. The larger the difference between
observing times, the more dramatic will be the results. He
would also like the geographic location and data for 12:00 UT
for the same five days from the U.S.S.R. station.
Please send it as soon as possible. From the way the
other radio men were talking at the symposium he may not have
much time.
Here is his address:...
In Shapiro's letter of 27 March, he wrote that unfortunately the
data did not exist in the form in which I wanted them and, hence,
he could not honor my request. In my reply of 3 April, I wrote:
You promised to send me all the data I would need, yet
when I requested a limited amount, you ignored the request in
two letters and offer an excuse for not doing so when I make
an issue of it.
I have quoted your remarks as I remembered them. The main
reason that your newer results appear to look better, is that
your group found it could eliminate the large daily
variations by changing to a constant observing time (12:00
UT), even when the planet was not observed or in some cases
was not even visible.(J. V. Evans, etal., Astron. J. 70, 486
- 1965) Of course there is a second-order difference in the
Doppler formulas between c and c+v, but it is obviously
irresponsible to state that a solution based on c that is
valid only for a constant observing time and a single radar
station, proves that the velocity is c.
I will tell you what more one could ask. One could ask
for a complete and honest evaluation of the data based on c
and c+v. Then one would have sufficient information to make
a valid and intelligent comparison of c and c+v.
Since the Department of Defense had funded the research, I wrote
a letter to Dr. John Foster, Jr. the Director of Defense Research
and Engineering, requesting the data. In reply to the request, I
received a letter dated 29 September from Dr. Lowell M.
Hollingsworth, Technical Advisor for Electronics, Department of
the Air Force, Headquarters Air Force Cambridge Research
Laboratories. Hollingsworth wrote that he spoke with Dr. Shapiro
regarding the data requested by me on radar observations of
Venus. The data in the form I requested did not exist. However,
if the data in the form in which it did exist would be of value
to me a deck of IBM cards could be prepared from which I could by
analysis obtain the data I desired. This deck would be a stack
of IBM cards totalling an inch or so in thickness. For machine
computation the data resides in the holes punched in the cards
but pertinent data would appear typed on the cards. Thus I would
be able to read the cards visually for the purpose of my
analysis. I wrote Hollingsworth 1 October, stating:
With reference to your letter of September 29, please send
the IBM cards containing the radar data. They will make
possible a far more conclusive test of the relative velocity
of light in space. I have read Fox's 1965 article and have a
correspondence with him. He is enthused about the results
from my radar analysis.
And I closed my letter with the sentence:
I plan to attend the AAAS meeting in Boston in December. I
would be interested in talking to you on this subject.
I wrote Shapiro 4 October stating:
Wilbur Block has suggested to me that I offer to
collaborate with you and the Lincoln Lab., in a full
investigation of the relative velocity of light in space and
celestial mechanics. I am willing, if you are. It is
obvious that continued opposition will be mutually
destructive to both of us. On the other hand, collaboration
is bound to be mutually beneficial.
Shapiro's reply of 13 October asked if I would be more explicit
as to exactly what form I would wish the collaboration to take?
In my letter to Shapiro of 18 October, I start out with:
Your letter of October 13 has caused me to make a fast
rewrite of the lecture I am going to give October 30, at
Florida Presbyterian College. I had planned to be rather
hard on both you and the Lincoln Lab, but it would not be
wise to try and hurt the credibility of a potential ally.
The lecture will be publicized and open to the public. I am
hoping for enough publicity to bring this thing out into the
open.
further into the letter, I wrote:
L. M. Hollingsworth sent the radar data I wanted and he
asked me to call him when I get to Boston in December so that
we can get together. I think there is a good possibility
that the data will make a more impressive test of c. I will
send you the results of the analysis. Perhaps you would like
a joint paper on this? Both our names on the same paper
would be mutually beneficial; it would tend to repair any
damage I may have done to your reputation and help me by
making it easier to overcome the remaining psychological
barrier that exists on this question.
Shapiro's answering letter of 6 November stated that he was
pleased to hear that I had received the radar data that they had
sent me, and he hoped that I would find them useful. In my reply
of 12 November, I stated:
I am sorry to say that the data you sent me can't be used
for a test of the relative velocity of light in space. There
was no significant difference in the location of the stations
or the observing time, so there would have been no
significant difference between a c and c+v analysis.
How about us having a private get together when I am in
Boston this December?
Shapiro's answer of 28 November states that he could not
understand why I concluded that the Venus data sent to me was
inappropriate for my purpose. In my letter to Hollingsworth of
25 October, I wrote:
I am afraid that Shapiro has pulled a fast one on us, the
data you sent me can't be used for a test of the relative
velocity of light in space. There is very little difference
in the distance between the radar stations so I can't show
that the false theory shows the planet Venus in different
places at the same time while the true theory shows it in the
same place. There is almost no difference in the observing
time so I can't show that the false theory shows Venus doing
a jig while the true theory shows it moving in a rational
manner.
Analysis of Shapiro's article in The Astronomical Journal
(72, 338 - 1967) shows that the Lincoln Lab has the data that
I would need. Page 343 shows that they had data from both
their station and the U.S.S.R. station for June 1964 and
Figure 4 on this page shows considerable daily variations for
1964 indicating data at different observing times. The only
possible way they could have eliminated the synodic variation
from the General Relativity Fit part of Figure 4 was by using
empirical corrections similar to Duncombe's corrections.
They eliminated the daily variations for later years by
observing for only a short time at the same time each day.
The early articles published by the Lincoln Lab group are
open and above board, but the later articles are little more
than misleading fabrications and I am sure that Shapiro knows
this. They started out by believing that c was a proven fact
so they made no attempt to treat the velocity of light as a
variable. After several years of not being able to make
sense out of the data, they were probably under considerable
pressure. So they used empirical methods to overcome the
inconsistencies they did not understand. I do not think that
one should blame them. For all practical purposes Einstein's
Theory is based on empirical ad hoc equations that were
designed to save the ether theory from the Michelson-Morley
experiment. The ballistic theory explains the results of
that experiment in a simple manner without any ad hoc
assumptions. They had a precedent in the fact that the
Duncombe empirical corrections were already used to correct
similar variations in the optical data when all the
calculations were based on c. The only real difference is
the higher accuracy of the radar measurements made the
inconsistencies more obvious.
Shapiro has already shown an interest in collaborating in
a full analysis of the relative velocity of light in space.
Considering the resources and capability of the MIT Lincoln
Lab group, they would be the ideal ones to conduct this
investigation. It would be great if it were possible for you
to persuade them to do this.
In Hollingsworth's reply of 7 November, he wrote that there were
a number of reasons why it is impossible for him to persuade Dr.
Shapiro or other Lincoln Laboratory people to prove that the
velocity of light in space can be measured as anything else than
a constant value c, and that he looked forward to talking with me
when I would be in Boston that December. In my letter to Shapiro
of 5 December, I wrote:
I received another letter from Hollingsworth. He is
looking forward to talking to me on this during the week I
will be in Boston. I am going to try and get him to
recommend to the Air Force that they finance a full c+v
investigation. Would you be interested in heading this
investigation? This sort of thing is just not my cup of tea.
Of course, I would be available to help in case there were
any difficulties.
Shapiro's reply of 9 December 1969 states that he was at present
too much occupied with university matters to direct any large-
scale investigation. When I attended the AAAS meeting in Boston
that December, Hollingsworth drove through a snow storm to meet
with me in my hotel room. It was a long and interesting meeting
that lasted for about four hours. I found him to be far more
reasonable in person than he had been in his correspondence. I
had brought with me copies of all the referenced articles, as
well as a copies of correspondence with scientists on this matter
from around the world. Hollingsworth admitted that while the
Lab's published center value for the astronomical unit had stayed
virtually unchanged, the graphed individual values ranged over
thousands of kilometers, and that the variations were related to
the relative velocities. He also admitted that the data I wanted
existed, but he refused to release it without Shapiro's
permission. I now suspect that he was just giving me the run
around and the real reason he would not release the data was
military secrecy.
I now think that it is most probable that the Soviet military
is not involved in the speed of light coverup, and that the main
force behind the coverup is the US military "Star Wars"
adventure. The many conversations and the evidence of text books
that were little more than translations of US text books that I
saw during my visit to the USSR in 1989, seemed to show that the
dominant trends of Soviet physics and astronomy, are little more
than copies of their US counterparts. Then there was my
conversation with the young man with the long nose and fancy
suit, that came to sit beside me during the Pulkovo Observatory
conference. He asked for information with regard to the articles
I had published in regard to this matter. When I told him I
would be glad to send him reprints, he stated that his
institution had a very extensive library that contained all the
western journals, and he only needed the journal names, dates,
etc. He seemed genuinely concerned about the fact that he had
not heard these arguments before. Svetlana told me that he
worked at a small elite institution in Moscow, and that the
people working there were highly paid, and she did not know what
work was done at the institution. I suspect that the work
involves the Soviet military, and they are about to find that
they had been duped with regard to this matter.
Actually it is easy to see how this was done, the (2) equation
of my 1969 paper shows the radar evaluated c+v Newtonian distance
to the planet to be D = t(c+v)/2 - tv/2 = tc/2 for the time the
beam returns to the transmitter. The fact that the +v in the
first term which is related to the motion of the photon relative
to the transmitter, can be canceled by the -v of the second term
which is related to the motion of the target relative to the
transmitter, presents the illusion that the combined term of tc/2
is relativistic in the Einstein relativity c sense. But the true
Einstein c equation for the distance to the target at the time
the beam returns to the transmitter is D = tc/2 - tv/2, and the
two equations differ in magnitude by the second term of tv/2.
Dr. T. D. Moyer of the JPL, in his 1981 Celestial Mechanics
paper[36] evaluates the distance at the time the signal returns
to the transmitter, does not include the -tv/2 term that would
make the evaluation relativistic in the Einstein c sense, renames
the terms and rearranges the equations, adds the smaller
corrections due to time dilation, gravity, and the troposphere
and charged particles in the beam path, and correctly identifies
his major term as the Newtonian light time. What Moyer does not
do is clearly explain the enormous implications of his
mathematics, or explain how the transit time of light signals in
the solar system is the ultimate test of the Einstein wave in
ether c model and the Newtonian particle c+v model of light. The
fact that he does not present an analysis that compares the
results of the c and c+v models tends to maintain the illusion
that there is nothing wrong with the Einstein general relativity
model! I have sent Moyer reprints of the articles I've published
that present the argument that his mathematics is relativistic in
the c+v sense, and he has not chosen to rebut this argument
either by correspondence or publication. Moyer's sin is the sin
of omission, he has not lied, but has simply refused to present
the full truth. Of course, a half truth that presents the
illusion of a lie, is for all intents and purposes, a lie.
In my 1969 paper[18] I quote Shapiro as stating "If the theory
is wrong, the values of the parameters will usually be selected
from the data in a manner that tends to cover up the inadequacies
of the theory", so you see, even Shapiro does not state outright
lies, if you carefully read everything he has published on this
matter, he only presents the illusion of a lie. But the funding
for all this research comes from the US Department of Defense,
and they have strict control over all information that results
from research that they fund. So one of the questions one could
ask, is it wrong for a scientist to publish the illusion of a lie
to preserve a military secret? Years ago I worked on top secret
defense work, and this sounds like a classic case of how the
system works. All top secret information is handled on a need to
know basis: it does not matter how high a position you hold, if
you do not have a need to know the information in order to help
you in your work, you cannot obtain access to that information.
This would also tend to explain Shapiro's refusal to challenge my
arguments published in journals or presented at meetings, it is a
federal crime to confirm or deny top secret information, even if
it is published in journals or newspapers. In an expansion of
the military secret argument, a recent article[75] titled THE
BIRTH OF THE LASER states on page 27:
In July 1958 Townes applied to the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research for funds to initiate work on a potassium
laser at the Columbia Radiation Laboratory.
and on page 28:
One agency TRG approached was the Advanced Projects
Research Agency, which had been set up after Sputnik in the
secretariat of the Department of Defense and oriented in 1959
toward exploration of innovative weapons technologies. ARPA,
which had more money than it could easily spend, proved a
good choice: TRG made a request for $300 000 but ARPA, which
was interested, inter alia, in the possibility of beam
weapons, awarded it a $999 000 contract for a secret program
leading to operating lasers.
and on page 32 we find:
The high energy density in a laser beam interested ARPA,
which was then investigating every plausible scheme for anti-
missile defense.
In a current article[76] titled HOW THE MILITARY RESPONDED TO THE
LASER, on page 36 we find:
"I feel as do others here that the LASER may be the biggest
breakthrough in the weapons area since the atomic bomb."
This statement, made in 1962 in a letter by Major General
August Schomburg, head of the Army Ordnance Missile Command,
reflected an attitude that was pervasive in the military in
the first years after the birth of the laser.
and further on page 36 we find:
By forcing a change from small to big science, from academic
to in-house and contract laboratories and from open research
to classified development, military interest in the laser
transformed the nature of laser research and development.
on page 37 we find the paragraph:
The laser offered a coherent, directed, concentrated beam
of light that promised to realize an ancient dream,
epitomized in Archimedes's idea to attack the Roman fleet at
Syracuse by using mirrors and lenses to focus burning solar
rays on ships at sea. Science fiction's preoccupation with
burning "death rays" added modern sanction to the ancient
dream. The Soviet Union's large boosters, which lofted
Sputnik and the first cosmonauts into space and might equally
well launch warheads, provided suitable targets for the rays.
The promise of beam weapons enhanced the services' interest
in lasers and launched a number of industry and service
research programs that transcended the interest in laser
ranging, communication and detection.
on page 38 we find the statement:
"Defense at the speed of light!" became a rallying cry for
the military-industrial complex.
As an example of military secrecy with regard to lasers, or
anything connected to them such as the relative velocity of light
in space, I present the following taken from the front of an
article[135] titled "Incident over SPIE papers muddies scientific
secrecy issue":
Just when it seemed the furor over Defense Department
restrictions on certain scientific papers had been quelled, the
situation flared up again. The fracas this time involved an
international symposium of the Society of Photo-Optical
Instrumentation Engineering (SPIE) meeting in Arlington,
Virginia, on 8-12 April. Two weeks before the meeting, DOD
informed SPIE officials that 20% of the 219 scheduled papers
could not be presented, even in a "controlled" session. Until
then, SPIE organizers were so confident the reports of work
done under military contracts had been cleared by the DOD that
titles, and in some cases abstracts, were printed in the
program. But it turned out that some authors had failed to
follow all the Pentagon procedures for clearing their papers
and others were unaware of the new authority that Congress had
provided in the 1984 Defense Authorization Act to deny public
access to technical data under DOD control that are judged to
possess military or space applications of use to the Soviet
Union and its Warsaw Pact neighbors.
About 100 papers were submitted to DOD for clearance. Of
these, 45 raised security problems. On closer reading, DOD
reviewers decided that 16 papers, most by defense scientists,
contained classified information and another 6, by scientists
at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, required special releases
for foreign disclosure. What's more, presentation of the other
papers at an open session, DOD officials argued, would violate
US export controls.
`Star Wars' connection. Most of the papers had originally
been scheduled for a classified session on synthetic aperture
optical systems and laser beams to be held at the Naval
Research Laboratory, across the Potomac River from the main
SPIE meeting. Another SPIE session on adaptive optics was set
for the Corps of Engineers offices in nearby Alexandria,
Virginia. It came off without a hitch. Although these fields
are important to astronomy, most applications are military,
dealing with high-energy laser optics and space surveillance
that could benefit the Strategic Defense Initiative, more
commonly known as the "Star Wars" program.
Current documentation of the nature of this coverup was
published in a news article[77] titled Reactors in Space Threaten
High-Energy Astronomy. In 1976 satellites started to record
very-high energy radiation. Then in 1979 a NASA scientist
received a call from the military saying the information was
classified and not to be published. Amid growing discontent at
NASA, the classification was lifted last August. It turns out
that the radiation that had hampered US high-energy astronomy
programs and even damaged some detectors was from the nuclear
reactors powering Soviet spy satellites, and the Soviets
obviously know of the problem because their current detectors
will orbit far above the interference.
With regard to USSR military laser research, there is an
interesting paragraph in a recent article[78] titled US
PHYSICISTS PAY FIRST VISIT TO CHERNOGILOVKA SOLID STATE INSTITUTE
on page 74 as follows:
The invitation to visit the Institute for Solid State Physics
came after the conference had begun in Moscow, and on 2 June
the ten US participants piled into a bus and were driven by a
somewhat circuitous route to a spot about 50 km east-
northeast of Moscow. The standard explanation for why no
previous visit by Westerners had been allowed was that
Chernogolovka is situated in the first ring of ballistic-
missile defenses that surround Moscow. Another explanation
was that an institute doing work on high-power chemical
lasers may be situated at Chernogolovka.
on page 76 is the paragraph:
The group also was impressed, more generally, by the
freedom with which their Soviet counterparts talked about
politics and expressed critical opinions in public. "Most
striking...is the new freedom of people to know and speak the
truth. For us, this removes several layers of barriers in
our relationship with Soviet scientists," Worlock observed.
There is a possibility that the Soviet military is aware of the
exact nature of the relative velocity of light in space. The
American Institute of Physics publishes translation journals of
the major Soviet journals, and some of these journals are carried
by the University of South Florida Library in nearby Tampa. One
finds many hints to the fact that Einstein's general relativity
does not give a proper explanation to the transit of light
signals in the solar system. For example, in the abstract of an
article[79] titled "Measurements of delay time and Doppler
correction in radar observations of Venus in 1975", we find:
It is shown that the discrepancies between the actual
position of Venus and the position calculated on the basis of
the existing theory of motion of the planets at different
inferior conjunctions have different characters.
The concluding sentences of the article state:
An analysis of the data presented shows that the differences
between the measured and calculated delay times have
different dependence on the time in the different
conjunctions and reach 3500 microseconds, which when
converted to the distance from the earth to Venus comprises
500 km. The presence of such errors in the prediction of the
position of Venus relative to the earth on the basis of the
existing theory of motion of the planets in the absence of
radar measurements could hinder considerably the successful
performance of the terminal stages of flights of automatic
interplanetary stations to Venus, landing on its surface, and
the insertion of artificial satellites of Venus.
Along with my campaign to discredit QCD that I mentioned in
Chapter 2, I've also been involved in a campaign to discredit
"Star Wars." As part of this effort I published the following
letter[31] titled "Directed-energy weapons":
At the 1981 APS Spring Meeting, we had a Symposium of the Forum
on Physics and Society on directed-energy weapons that was
filmed by the BBC for a documentary on the arms race. The
first speaker, Douglas T. Tanimoto of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, showed a film of a propeller-driven
dark red drone plane that was destroyed by an infrared laser
that focused on it for a period of several seconds as it slowly
circled at a relatively close distance. I asked Tanimoto if it
was not cheating to use a close, slow-moving, dark red drone to
simulate a large number of fast-moving, distant, polished metal
targets, and he admitted that it was cheating "a little." The
last speaker, Kosta Tsipis of MIT, presented conclusive
evidence that the technology needed to develop effective ABM
Directed Energy Weapons did not now, and probably never would
exist!
At the 1982 Spring meeting, I attended the APS Council
Meeting and learned that they intended to hold off on taking a
stand on the nuclear freeze issue until after hearing the
results from the Forum Symposiums on this question. One of the
Forum speakers, Hans Bethe, gave a talk that showed beyond a
reasonable doubt that the US was the aggressor in the nuclear
arms race and that the Russians have been desperately trying to
catch up! At the final Forum meeting I called for a vote on
the question of a nuclear freeze, and there was almost a 100%
show of hands!
At the 1983 Spring meeting, George A. Keyworth II, President
Reagan's science adviser and the director of the Office of
Science and Technology Policy, gave a talk in which he asked
for help from the physics community to develop the technology
for future antiballistic missile systems. I was the first to
comment on his talk, and I argued that development of these
types of weapons would expand the arms race and bankrupt the
economy! The loud applause in support of my argument left
little question that a large majority of the physicists have
had enough of the arms race and would not support the
development of Reagan's "Star Wars" weapons.
In my local newspaper there was also a 2/3/91 article titled
NASA scientist to speak at SPJC, and the content of the article
was as follows:
The man who headed NASA's planetary astronomy program for
almost 20 years will speak on future Venus and Mars missions
Wednesday at the St. Petersburg Junior College's St. Petersburg
campus.
Dr. William E. Brunk directed the programs from 1964 through
1982. He was also program scientist for the Voyager mission to
the outer planets. He retired from NASA in 1985.
Brunk will appear as a Harlow Shapely Lecturer of the
American Astronomical Society. The speech, open to the public,
begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Lynch Auditorium, 6605 Fifth Ave. N.
I went to Brunk's speech, and during the questions and answer
period, asked Brunk the following question:
Considering the importance of the wave-particle paradox of
light in modern physics, I am surprised by the lack of
scientific objectivity and integrity of the concerned NASA
scientists on the question of the relative velocity of light in
the solar system. My 1969 published analysis of the first
published Venus radar contact data showed that the best fit to
the data was for the Newtonian c+v particle model, and not the
Einstein general relativity c wave model. The equations in T.
D. Moyer's JPL NASA 1981 Celestial Mechanics journal article
were based on the c+v particle model, and Moyer called the main
term the Newtonian light time, yet the lack of emphasis of the
importance of this fact, means that the average person does not
know of the overwhelming evidence against the Einstein special
and general relativity theories. What is your comment on this
matter?
Brunk's answer was that the analysis of the data and publication
of the results, was the responsibility of the individual involved
scientists, and that NASA was only the bus driver. I suspect
that when the final history of science in the 20th century will
be written, NASA's greatest blunder will be considered to be the
lack of objectivity and integrity on the question of the relative
velocity of light in space, and not the 1986 Challenger space
shuttle explosion, or the flawed mirror on the $1.5-billion
Hubble Space Telescope!