REVIEW AND OUTLOOK

       THE DEVELOPMENT OF POST-RELATIVISTIC CONCEPTS IN PHYSICS
                    AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY ABROAD

                      Rolf Schaffranke, Dr. h. c.
                            Member A.I.A.A.

"Far more is done to the progress of science by skepticism than by
gullibility". (Dr. Wood, Director R & D, McDonnel-Douglas Astronautics
Div., CA)  NASA - Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA is named after
Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906), an American astronomer, engineer and
architect.

Langley worked out the aerodynamic principles for manned flight.  In
principal, his calculations were correct; but the structural material he
used for wings and engines were insufficient.  In DECEMBER of 1903, the New
York Times published an editorial complaining about his foolish dream and
the associated waste of government money.  The editorial predicted that:
"man would not fly for a thousand years".  Only 9 days after the editorial
was published, the Wright brothers made their first successful powered
flight at Kitty Hawk, Dec. 17, 1903.  But, again, as late as 1905, the
Scientific American suggested the happening was a hoax - two years after
the event which changed history.  Let's reflect for a moment on the fact
that only in a single lifetime, man has journeyed from Kitty Hawk to the
surface of the Moon!

The analogy to the problem of alternative energies and their development
is, of course, obvious.  We are to educate the preaching orthodoxies.  But
orthodox solutions are no longer enough.  Our system of education can only
give from the past.  The present must operate on inspiration and intuition,
or the future will be lost.  The past no longer has enough of the answers
for arising crisis for which there are no precedents.  To keep pace with
the requirements of the future, we must begin to teach not only what to
learn, but how to learn, how to analyze, how to search for the truth.  Only
then will we be able to recognize the discrepancies between experiment and
dogma and to cope with the problems which appear to be just beyond the
corner.  History has shown again and again that no single individual can
rise above the species without being persecuted.  The reasons for that are:

              Some of the most powerful forces in homo sapiens have
              always been GREED, PRIDE, EGO, FEAR and, above all,
              the DESIRE TO CONTROL OTHERS.

A brand new German book titled "Energy in Abundance", which is evidently
creating a considerable impact in the European community, challenges the
contemporary high priests of science, the "Guardians of the Status Quo" and
uncovers an almost incredible narrowmindedness and ignorance in science,
politics and economics, "approaching the criminal" as the author puts it.
The contemporary waste of genuine intellectual creativity is castigated as
a cultural scandal approaching barbarism.  The book stresses that a truly
promising approach to the so-called energy crisis requires a fundamental
and thorough re-evaluation of the theories, dogmas and axioms which form
the basis of present day science and the foundation of out technology.  As
in the past, the formidable inertia of the establishment is not only based
on inaccurate, incomplete and outdated information, but also requires that
we first demythologize generally accepted claims so-called experts of the
past.  An excellent introduction to this problem is the article "Resistance
by Scientists to Scientific Discovery" by Bernard Barber in Science, Vol.
134, pp. 596-602, Sept. 1961, or the paper by Stephan C. Brush in Science
of March, 1974, titled "Should the History of Science be rated 'X'"?,
culminating with a statement of Huxley:

              "Authorities", "disciples", and "schools" are the
              curse of science and do more to interfere with the
              work of the scientific spirit than all its enemies".

The former astronaut, Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, one of our famous
contemporaries, also stressed the need for an open mind!

              "History has shown time and again that important
              scientific discoveries generally happen only when
              someone steps outside the limits of his traditional
              disciplines and looks at something from a fresh
              point of view.  Then what should have been obvious
              all along comes into focus".

Those of us who are familiar with the pioneering efforts of Dr. Hans Nieper
of Hanover will Appreciate this statement by an ex-astronaut.

One of the most important cornerstones of today's scientific dogmas dates
back to 1905, more than 3/4 of a century ago.  Lest we forget, television
and radar, jet aircraft and cyclotrons, moonrockets and close-up photos of
the planets of out solar system were nothing but wild fantasies of science
fiction then.

The speed of light was assumed to be constant and the maximum possible
speed in the universe; vacuum was to be a total void.  In reality, the
speed of light as measured in the Michaelson-Morley experiments was not at
all the same in all directions.  The "ether drift" still amounted to the
respectable velocity of about five miles per second, and similar results
were obtained by D.C. Miller in a series of experiments extending over 25
years, from 1902 to 1926.

              "Even worse, the measurements showed such marked
              discrepancies with previous results as to occasion
              a distress call to the US Coast & Geodetic Survey,
              whose surveyors repeatedly remeasured the length
              of the tube and found no error there," reported
              the Popular Science Monthly March 1934 issue.
              And it continued: "More recently, speed of light
              observations only emphasized the apparent erratic
              behavior of the light beam that the scientists were
              attempting to plot.  On some days it seems to travel
              faster than others by as much as 12 miles a second.
              Its speed seems to vary with the season, also in a
              mysterious shorter cycle lasting about 2 weeks.
              Finally, the scientists ended by taking an AVERAGE
              of all the readings which has been announced as
              186,271 miles per second".

In his paper "A Critical Look At The Theory of Relativity", Library of
Congress Cat. No. 77-670044, F.K. Preikschat compiled all known light
velocity measurements during the past 300 years or so, from Olaf Roemer in
1676 to the Laser measurements conducted by the National Bureau of
Standards (USA) in 1972.

Of the 27 experiments undertaken in this field, 18 of them after the turn
of this century, it must be concluded that the velocity of light as
measured within the reference system of our Earth has changed as much as
plus/minus 50 km/sec during the past century.  Preikschat plotted a curve
of these deviations and suggests a possible relationship between sunspot
activities and changes of the Earths magnetic field during the time period
in question.

The "universal constancy of light" appears, therefore, as somewhat shaky
"empirical evidence" for our cornerstone in physics, especially since
Einstein himself has gone on record as saying:

              "If a single one of the conclusions drawn from it
              (relativity) proves to be wrong, it must be given
              up; to modify it without destroying the whole
              structure seems to be impossible".

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