Dear New Scientist,

 

I don't have time for strait-jacketed questionnaires. But if you are serious and interested, I'll tell you how you are really missing it in the energy field, and have been missing it since your beginning.  I'm speaking of proven science that you and everyone else in officialdom is ignoring, even though the basic science is clearly proven and well-established in the scientific literature.

 

Check out Lee and Yang's receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1957, for predicting broken symmetry.  Broken symmetry so revolutionized physics that the Nobel Committee in an almost unprecedented speed awarded the Nobel Prize to them in the same year (Dec. 1957) that Wu et al. proved it experimentally (Feb. 1957).

 

One of the proven asymmetries is that of opposite charges --- as on the ends of a dipole.  Every dipole.

 

Now comes the punch line.

 

There is not now, and there never has been, a single university electrical engineering department, professor, or text that knows or teaches what actually powers an EM circuit.  Shocking, but absolutely true.  Let me prove it.

 

The classical EM model (CEM) used by electrical engineering is more than a century old and seriously flawed (as shown by scientists such as Nobelist Feynman, the great John Wheeler, and many others.)

 

Note that CEM does not even model the active vacuum exchange with the system and its charges and dipoles, much less a broken symmetry in that exchange.  So CEM absolutely excludes the experimentally observed free outpouring of EM energy flow from every dipole and charge in the universe. This free outpouring of EM energy from the source charge establishes its fields and potentials and their energy, across the universe.  Form a little charge quickly, and wait.  The energy pours from it in all directions continuously. Wait one year, and that simple action has already changed the EM energy density of the vacuum out to a radius of one lightyear (out beyond the solar system) and the outflow is still advancing at the speed of light.

 

This is called the "source charge problem" or "the problem of the association of the fields and potentials and their energy, with their source charges".  The charge sits there and pours out observable EM energy in 3-space in all directions, with absolutely no observable EM energy input.  Piece of cake to prove that experimentally, anytime, anywhere so it's well-known.

 

Either this "most difficult problem in classical and quantum electrodynamics" (Sen) must be solved, or else one has totally destroyed the conservation of energy law itself.  This is a recognized formidable problem, but very much "swept under the rug" and never discussed in "polite circles".

 

I put together the solution to that problem, and published it in 2000.  The basis for the solution has been in particle physics for 45 years, since the award of the Nobel Prize to Lee and Yang in 1957.  Not only is the solution not in CEM, but even the basis for the solution is not in CEM. So CEM as it now exists already excludes every charge -- and thus every EM field and potential.  Not really the way to model electrodynamics!  One doesn't have much electrodynamics left if one is consistent and discards all charges, fields, and potentials!

 

One keeps one's sense of humor.   The electrical engineering professors apparently will not walk across the campus to the particle physics department, and find out how the energy gets input to a source charge or a source dipole in the first place.  It's simple.  As is well-known, an "isolated charge" in space is actually clustered around by virtual charges of opposite sign.  Using a differential piece of the observable charge and one of the virtual charges of opposite sign, that constitutes a composite dipole.  The charge can thus be treated as a set of dipoles.  Hence the charge is a set of broken symmetries, since each of its composite dipoles is a broken symmetry due to the asymmetry of opposite charges on its two ends.

 

Voila!  By the proven broken symmetry of opposite charges, every charge and every dipole constantly receives and absorbs EM energy in virtual photon form, from the seething active vacuum.  The charge (probably due to its spin) coherently integrates the "broken bits of EM energy" into observable photon energy, and re-emits them in all directions.

 

This solves the long-vexing problem of the source charge, and also saves the conservation of energy law.

 

Since CEM does not model the active vacuum, it also cannot model a broken symmetry in the interaction between the active vacuum and the charge.  Hence the CEM model assumes that every charge and dipole in the universe is a perpetual motion machine, freely and continuously creating energy out of nothing.  The greatest "perpetual motion nuts" (a little humor here!) on earth are --- our classical electrodynamicists and electrical engineering professors!  Their teaching implies that every charge and dipole in the universe freely creates EM energy out of nothing, continuously.

 

Their own model, if rigorously applied, absolutely excludes every source charge and source dipole, hence all their fields and potentials with all their energy. In short, their model excludes itself.

 

In short, by not modeling the active vacuum, CEM "eats itself by its tail" and is not a valid model at all, and never has been.  Either that, or it "destroys and falsifies the conservation of energy law on a giant scale."  Either way, take your pick.  To be consistent, you have to prepare for the greatest blow to science of all time. There is no alternative except the "ostrich" approach to bury one's head in the sand.  Presently there are lots of "electrodynamic ostriches" populating our electrodynamicist population and our electrical engineering population.

 

Interestingly, we may define the "efficiency" of an energy conversion process (such as is accomplished by the charge or dipole) as the output energy divided by the input energy.  In that case, we may say that the charge or dipole has 100% efficiency as an energy converter.  However, the coefficient of performance (COP) is defined as the energy output divided by the energy input that we ourselves must furnish or arrange.  Since we furnish nothing at all, the COP of every charge and dipole in the universe is COP = infinity (as is the COP of a windmill, e.g., which properly viewed).

 

The Lorentz regauging condition (actually performed by Ludwig Lorenz in 1867; Lorentz was erroneously given credit for doing it first, by others circa 1900) imposed upon the Maxwell-Heaviside equations is interesting.  It assumes that the system receives two inputs of excess free energy (free potential energy, which is possible at will under the gauge freedom principle of quantum field theory) from its environment (the active vacuum and the active local curvatures of spacetime, neither of which is included in CEM).  But it selectively gates these inputs so that the two free fields formed are equal and opposite, forming a stress potential.  Hence the stress potential does continuous internal work in the system, but cannot translate electrons to do external work in the load.

 

Interestingly, Lorentz regauging implies (1) receipt of free potential EM energy from the vacuum via two channels simultaneously, (2) constriction of this free energy input to a stress potential, doing internal work on the system continually to increase and maintain stress, and (3) curves local spacetime by varying the local energy density of spacetime, thereby rotating the frame of the system out of the local lab frame.  Yet all the books try to tell us this "new system condition" is exactly the same as the old one.  Pure nonsense.

 

These are the kinds of energy analyses and work that the scientific community (and science journals and magazines like New Scientist) should be doing.  They are not.  They have not yet even discovered that every EM circuit and power system ever built, is powered by EM energy extracted directly from the seething local vacuum, once the dipole is made.

 

Incidentally, Gabriel Kron's "open path" which allowed him to make a true negative resistor at Stanford on a U.S.Navy contract to GE in the 1930s, was actually the pre-discovery of what Lee and Yang predicted and what became in modern terms "asymmetry of opposite charges".  Every dipolarity in the universe --- whether between any two points in a circuit, between one point in a circuit and any other point in the universe -- is a broken symmetry in the fierce virtual particle flux of the active vacuum.

 

The easiest thing in all the world is to extract enormous and copious EM energy directly from the vacuum; anywhere, anytime.  Just assemble some charge or make a dipole suddenly.  From that charge or dipole, instantly there spreads in all directions, at the speed of light, a steady and continuous flow of EM energy.  It will continue so long as you do not kill the charge or the dipole.  The charges and dipoles in original matter in the universe have been pouring out energy this way for some 14 billion years, and have not "run down" yet.  So long as the material in an electret or permanent magnet is able to hold the dipoles intact, then so long will that electret and permanent magnet freely pour out energy in all directions, establishing its fields and potentials continuously so they appear to be "static" (they are "static" somewhat like a perfect whirlpool in a river is "static".).

 

There is not now, and there never has been, any "electrical energy availability" problem.  That's easily solved for peanuts, and costs one dollar to solve.  Lay an electret or charged capacitor on a permanent magnet so that the E-field and the H-field are at 90 degrees, and --- even by "normal" flawed Poynting theory one has optimized S = E X H and a continuous flow of EM energy therefore gushes steadily from that simple contraption.  There is no problem in establishing an EM energy flow extracted directly from the seething vacuum.

 

The only energy crisis there has ever been, and that there is now, is how to intercept in an external circuit some of that free flow of energy from the source dipole, collect it, and dissipate it in an external load to power it freely -- WITHOUT destroying that free energy flow generator (the dipole or dipoles).

 

Since that is the only energy problem, then obviously no one is funded to work on it or even allowed to work on it, and in fact the entire scientific community viciously opposes any attempt by graduate students, post docs, and researchers to work on that single energy problem.  The community is directly enforcing dogma of the worst kind, since that dogma has already long since been disproved and continues to be disprove by every charge in the universe.

 

The present absolutely stupid but ubiquitous closed current loop circuit (arbitrary, not a law of nature!) self-enforces the Lorentz symmetrical regauging condition, especially in the dissipation of the collected energy.  It uses half the collected energy in the external circuit to destroy the source dipole, and the remaining half is used to power the loads and losses of the external circuit.  Obviously then, less energy goes into powering the load, than goes to destroying the source dipole and free flow of EM energy from the vacuum.  To restore the dipole in a perfect generator or power source, then requires inputting as much energy to reform the dipole as was used to destroy it.

 

Voila!  That stupid closed current loop circuit, enforcing the Lorentz condition, also self-enforces COP<1.0.  That is the reason -- and the only reason -- that our electrical power scientists and electrical engineers build only COP<1.0 circuits, and then erroneously proclaim that this arbitrary system condition of COP<1.0 is a great "law of nature".  It isn't. One can build COP>1.0 EM systems, but only if that Lorentz condition is violated in some fraction of the circuit functioning.  And that can be done, fairly easily.

 

In thermodynamics, a "closed system" is defined (ugh!) as a system where mass cannot exchange across its boundary --- but energy (such as heat) can!  Then thermodynamics defines an "open system" as one that is open to exchange of either energy or mass --- or both --- across its boundary. Gosh, that defines a closed system as an open system with respect to energy flow. Could that possibly be a glaring non sequitur in this hoary old thermodynamics, itself more than a century old, and put together before they even knew what energy is, and were still thinking only in terms of material fluid flow?  It seems that the notion of caloric has not yet perished.  Anyway, if energy can be freely exchanged across the boundary of a "closed" thermodynamic system, then all that we need is a "closed" system where the energy exchange between

 

But it gets worse.

 

Every generator and battery already pours out enormously more EM energy than the mechanical shaft energy input to the generator or the chemical energy dissipated in the battery.  Simply check the pioneers (Poynting and Heaviside) who independently and simultaneously discovered "flow of energy through space" in the 1880s, after Maxwell was already dead.  Poynting never considered anything but the very small component --- of the available energy flow filling all space around any EM circuit --- that is diverged into the conductors to power the Drude electron gas.  Heaviside, however, also considered the nondiverged energy flow component remaining, and it is enormous.  No one in the 1880s had the foggiest notion where all that tremendous excess of energy could be coming from; there was no known active vacuum or broken symmetry of the source dipole available then, the electron and atom were not yet discovered, etc.  Everybody thought in terms of a material fluid and a material fluid ether.  So unable to solve that mystery (of the enormous outpouring of free energy pouring from the terminals of every generator and battery, once the Heaviside extra component is accounted), Lorentz discarded the problem rather than fight for the solution.  He originated the little trick of closed surface integration of the energy flow vector around every volume element of interest. That arbitrarily discards Heaviside's nondiverged EM energy flow component, while retaining Poynting's diverged energy flow component that enters the circuit.  The Heaviside flow is still there, but just no longer accounted.

 

So every charge, every dipole, and every charge in the universe already exhibits COP = infinity and efficiency = 100%.  Yet due to their preoccupation with the terribly insane closed current loop circuit, and their eagerness to enforce the Lorentz condition at all costs, our electrodynamicists and electrical engineering departments (and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, great national labs, etc.) do not understand how easy it is to extract all the energy one wishes from the seething vacuum, absolutely do not believe and will not accept COP>1.0 EM systems (while many experiments such as negative resonance absorption of the medium absolutely prove it, as does every charge and dipole.

 

In short, electrical scientists need to awake from the century-old lethargy and go find out what particle physics has already discovered and proven.  And then they need to update this piece of junk called CEM that they are teaching all the electrical engineers.  That is a model which confuses effect for cause, destroys Heaviside's nondiverged energy flow component (which, by the way, is what is causing the excess gravity in the spiral arms of the galaxies, to hold those arms together -- the solution to the dark matter problem), still assumes the material ether, does not model the active environment of every EM system nor the environment energy exchange with that system, etc.

 

Anyway, my book, Energy from the Vacuum: Concepts and Principles will go deeply into all that, and will pointblank reveal how to catch and use the EM energy from the vacuum, so easily evoked. It should be published by World Scientific at the end of 2002 or in early 2003.

 

So this kind of thing is what New Scientist should be going into. You should be looking at that word "New" in your title, instead of simply promoting the same tired old 130 year old CEM taught to all our electrical power engineers.

 

In short, I do not believe either New Scientist or the rest of the scientific community is doing its scientific homework, or is much interested in doing it.

 

It only takes one white crow to prove that not all crows are black.  Every charge and dipole in the universe is a white crow. proving that COP >> 1.0 EM systems are possible, and that extracting EM energy from the vacuum is simple and easy.

 

All the fields and potentials and their energies, are already extracted directly from the vacuum by the source charges.

 

It would be remarkably nice if scientists would finally realize that after the Nobel Prize award to Lee and Yang, and finally recognize what powers every electrical circuit and system ever built and all those today.

 

We can get rid of all those big generators, hydrocarbon burning, nuclear powerplants, hydroelectric dams, windmills for electrical generation, gas and diesel generators, etc. We can also power our electric cars with clean EM energy directly from the vacuum.

 

The problem is the scientific mindset and its archaic attachment to a 130 year old seriously flawed CEM model.  The scientific community in its laziness is directly responsible for the pollution of the biosphere to get and produce electrical energy, etc.  There is no excuse since 1957.

 

Very best wishes,

 

T. E. Bearden, Ph.D.

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired)