EVOLVING IN A PLACE CALLED EDEN IS A PROMISING YOUNG CIVILIZATION. WE GROW MORE DANGEROUS YET WISER EACH DAY...

"The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the Cosmos stir us. There’s a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries. The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity, is our tiny planetary home, the Earth.

 

For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but, our species is young and curious and brave. It shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries, about the Cosmos and our place within it. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos, in which we float like moat of dust in the morning sky."

Carl Sagan

 

 

"The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder, and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that which is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms. This knowledge, this feeling, is the center of true religion."

Albert Einstein

Despite the depth of our societal challenges, we have struggled with all our imperfections to a pinnacle of knowledge, achievement, judgment, wisdom, and justice never before seen in human history.

We can be incredibly proud of this accomplishment, including all branches of civilization upon which it stands: science, religion, industry, government, military, community, and individual. For all the flaws in the ladder of history, it has supported our ascent to a dizzying height. But in using our evolved talents of thought, from faltering beginnings in the mists of prehistory, to the present day, homo sapiens has struggled to understand its place in the universe. We struggle to gain any glimpse of the root of the great ladder upon which we stand.

Contemplating the mysteries of the heavens, the awesome forces of nature, and the cycle of life and death, our ancestors' effort to extract meaning from their experience has helped give rise to myths, religions and philosophies that have acted as beacons along the way.

A relative newcomer to mankind's cultural journey is the beacon of science, with its focus on objectivity and experimentation. As with myths, religions and philosophies, science attempts to come up with a "theory of everything," a unifying principle from which all else follows.

If we think of science as a process by which we gain knowledge and understanding of things, then it is a phenomenon that should be looked at over time. It will remain unfinished, as there will always be more to learn. In the January 1999 issue of Scientific American, a revolution in Cosmology is unfolding before our very eyes: the rate of expansion of the Cosmos is accelerating. It appears that the gravitation of matter is not the fundamental arbiter of the Cosmos after all. Something else is, and we shall discuss it later.

But to a scientist this is a fundamental discovery: when considered as a single space-time unit, the universe is now seen to be infinite: perhaps bounded in space, but infinitely growing in time.

The progression of orders of space through the function of time is studied by the disciplines of science. Cosmology is the study of the origin of spacetime, or the fountain of creation. Physics is the study of how the Cosmos behaves in its simplest forms energy and matter. Chemistry is the study of how the energy and matter of physics have joined with themselves to form more complex structures, such as molecules. Astronomy and astrophysics are the studies of how the processes of physics and chemistry have formed galaxies, stars, planets, moons, comets, and asteriods. Geology is the study of how the chemistry and astrophysics of planets has formed into mountains, oceans, rocks, and soil.

Ecology is the study of how geology has formed into systems hospitable for life. Biology is the study of the systems of ecology that have evolved into organisms such as you and I. Philosophy and neurosciences are the studies of why and how the conscious biology within us thinks the thoughts we do. Together, the disciplines of science give us a window into time, with an ever clearer picture of how nature herself has evolved into the spacetime machine we call the universe. Through this very same science of the universe, we continue to advance our understanding of the astounding spacetime machines we call human beings.

The question of which is more remarkable, the advances we make at the close of this millennium or those that were made in earliest recorded history, is a subject which can be debated passionately on either side. If you think of prehistoric man 10,000 or more years ago figuring out how to harness fire or devise the wheel for transportation, is that not on a relative basis as awesome as space exploration or the routine transplant of vital organs?

If you think of man starting out with his survival instinct and building on his experience, it is clear that we are the product of a brilliant accumulation of what came before us. Yet there was a time when the only means of communicating what man learned was by passing it on verbally to the next generation, since there was no other form of communication. He couldn’t even write it down.

For as long as man has inhabited the earth, he has looked to the heavens. Why? Because it was always there. Because he could learn more about himself and the world in which he lived. Because he could learn how to get along in that world. Today we continue to look at the heavens for the same reason. Some things never change. Or do they?

We take for granted the most mundane things in our lives. When it is dark, we turn on the lights. When we are hungry, we heat food in the microwave oven. If we want to talk to someone, we pick up the telephone, and if they are not there, we can leave a voicemail message. The news of the world is delivered to our door, our TV and our computer. Most of us can’t conceive of life without these things and yet, for most of our history, none of them existed.

These are stunning technological powers, and we take them for granted. Yet as wondrous as they are, and even in full view of the majestic history of science that has illuminated their underlying phenomena, they pale in comparison to the wonders that await us at the turn of the millennium.

As we now look up again through our telescopes, and down again through our microscopes, we see the fingerprints of the gods, the evidence of revolutions more wondrous than any seen this century, revolutions to boggle the imagination.
 

The Leading Edge of Biology

"Life is understood backwards, but must be lived forwards."
--Soren Kierkegaard

The single greatest power which science has developed is the power to observe. A special role for observation is found all across nature: in the foundation of creation known as quantum mechanics, in living beings, and indeed in the evolution of life itself.

With observation, all things, from the smallest bacteria through the largest beast and the most knowledgeable human know what they need to know to survive. Therein may lie a clue to motivate us to reconsider physics in terms more familiar to biologists. What if this same principle in a more general electromagnetic form did in fact apply to all mass?

Principles of evolution pervade all that we seem to observe. Natural selection seems as well equipped a phrase to describe all truth --the birth and death of galaxies, stars, worlds, civilizations, religions, and even theories themselves, as to describe the birth and death of life defined by biology alone.

Biologists speculate that since biological life began on Earth a few billion years ago, some five to 50 billion distinct types of life forms – species – have existed. The Earth veritably swarms with life --life in astonishing diversity. There appears to be almost no locale too remote or too inhospitable for life in some form to take a hold.

Algal species, for example, thrive inside the frozen rocks of Antarctica and in the superheated, acidic waters around deep sea vents. Earth itself when life first appeared was such a hostile environment: hot, volcanic, and surrounded by an atmosphere lacking in oxygen but abundant in carbon dioxide, which is toxic to most present life forms. Surprisingly, in view of less-than-ideal initial conditions, life established itself on Earth just a few hundred million years after the planet's formation --an unimaginably long time by human standards, but a relatively brief period in cosmological terms, particularly so in view of the seeming improbability of the event.

Since then, life, displaying equally amazing creativity, has expanded into and adapted to every nook and cranny on the planet.

Two fundamental questions immediately suggest themselves. How, in spite of what would appear to be almost impossible odds, could life of any kind come into being, and how has it been able to develop with such diversity? In the eighteenth century, when naturalists, most of them good Christians, first began to ask such questions, the answer seemed obvious: God had created the species.

Such a belief was of course not new to the eighteenth century; it had been held by many different cultures since prehistoric times. What the eighteenth century could add to traditional belief was new, detailed zoological and botanical knowledge about how species manifested characteristics that ideally suited them to their peculiar environment and to each other. The hand-in-glove fit of a species to its habitat seemed to bespeak design, which therefore implied a designer, God.

Biological science thus supported believers against skeptics of religion, who began to appear in increasing numbers as the century waned.

The romance of biological science and religion was short-lived, however, for soon evidence began to appear that seemed to call into question the assumption that the Bible was a reliable guide to the study of life's beginnings. Such evidence came from two quarters, first the fossil record. Quarries began to yield fossilized remains of some species that clearly had long since died off and of others that had appeared suddenly in the fossil record. The problem was that if God had established species in the beginning, how could they appear and disappear on their own?

The other source of disquieting discovery was the new science of geology, which was beginning to uncover evidence that the Earth was far older than anyone had imagined, certainly far older than the Bible seemed to allow.

What emerged from these facts was the notion that life and the Earth itself had evolved. Evolution per se did not necessarily rule out a role for a God, but it allowed for the possibility that independent processes may have been at work, processes which, though perhaps initiated by God, were self-sustaining. As an independent force of nature, therefore, the evolution of species could be studied as a science rather than as an adjunct to theology.

It was into the debate about the scientific mechanism of evolution that Charles Darwin burst like a supernova in 1859.

What is new about Darwin's explanation of the development of species is not that this happens by evolution, but that it happens through natural selection. According to Darwin, only a handful of fundamental forces are needed to explain the evolution of life. One of these is mutation. Through mutation, new features are introduced into the genetic pool. In point of fact, Darwin did not understand how genetics works, but he correctly perceived that random variation is the only apparent way for new genetic traits to enter what is otherwise a closed system.

We now know that genetic mutation can also occur through biotechnology, but Darwin couldn't even have conceived of such a possibility 150 years ago.

Certain types of variation will have no appreciable affect on an individual life form's odds of survival. Other changes will make a difference, however small, for good or ill, and this is where Darwin's second and most important factor, natural selection, comes into play. If, for example, I inherit from my father a mutation that makes me less likely than my neighbor to contract skin cancer, then chances are that I'll live longer and be more likely to have children and pass on this beneficial trait to them.

Those of my children that inherit this trait will in turn be more likely to survive than other children who lack the trait. If I live in a sunny environment, this trait may prove to be a factor in the differential selection of my offspring for survival, and more and more of my offspring will be represented in the total population. Over time, resistance to skin cancer could become a differentiating trait of an entire population as against other populations, for whom sun and skin cancer are not problems, and who therefore lack any genetic inheritance to resist the disease.

Thus, in response to pressures arising from the environment, natural selection amplifies the effect of random mutation and, together with inheritance, provides a means by which the amplified effect can propagate through a population. Life responds to the diversity of physical environments by spawning diversity.

Like most great scientific insights, Darwin's explanation of evolution, though simple, is not intuitively obvious. Indeed, it appears downright improbable. If mutation is random, and if, as Darwin asserted, natural selection operates to no particular end, then how do complex organisms emerge? How, for example, could something as intricate as the human eye or brain be formed by a random process?

And, if it's hard to imagine how even one such organ could evolve through random combinations, then how much more unlikely is it that millions of complex life forms, each with a host of intricate subsystems such as eyes and brains, could come into being? The answer, and the seeming paradox of Darwinian evolution, is that, although it involves an inconceivable number of random events, the process itself is not random. It is not directed per se, but it is also not random.

It's cumulative self-organization. In other words, absent external genetic engineering, evolution is directed by itself.

In a random process where there is no link between what happens in one generation and the next, whatever success evolution achieves in one generation toward the development of, say, an eye, will likely be lost in the next generation. Time therefore becomes largely irrelevant, for the odds of developing an eye in one million steps are the same as those of doing it in a single step. In evolution through natural selection, however, nature improves upon itself with each generation. The cumulative effect is radically different.

To illustrate the point, Richard Dawkins, one of Darwin's cleverest modern proponents, poses a variant of the famous example of the monkey that randomly types away at a keyboard and manages to recreate the works of Shakespeare.

Instead of having to come up with the works of Shakespeare, all the monkey has to do in Dawkins's simplified version is to generate the single sentence from Hamlet, "Methinks it is like a weasel", which contains just 28 characters. If the monkey used a stripped-down keyboard of 27 characters (26 letters of the alphabet plus the space bar), the probability of randomly generating the sentence is (1/27)²⁸, or 10e⁴¹. That's one in a 100,000 trillion trillion trillion. Such an event would almost certainly not occur within the lifespan of the universe, even if the process were carried out on a computer capable of executing millions of tries per second.

But now let's change the rules. We'll let the monkey type 28 characters at a time, and we'll keep any matches from one turn or "generation" to the next. Dawkins designed a Macintosh computer program to do just that. The program starts with a random phrase of 28 letters and duplicates it repeatedly, but with certain chance of random error or mutation in the copying. The computer then selects from each generation's progeny the one that is closest to the target phrase. The selected phrase becomes the basis for the next generation, and so on.

Depending on the initial set of random characters chosen, the program was able to generate the target phrase in as little as 41 generations (a few seconds of computer time).

Now, as Dawkins notes, this test is not an altogether proper analogue, since evolution is not directed at producing any particular result. Nonetheless, the example does illustrate the radical difference between random, single-step operations and cumulative selection. Results that are highly improbable as a sequence of unconnected, single-step operations can be achieved through selection. In evolutionary terms, the time scale may still be on the order of thousands or millions of years, but far less than would be required by simple random mutation.

Dawkins summarizes as follows:

"...if any entity, anywhere in the universe, happens to have the property of being good at making copies of itself, then automatically more and more copies of that entity will obviously come into existence. Not only that but, since they automatically form lineages and are occasionally miscopied, later versions tend to be 'better' at making copies of themselves than earlier versions, because of the powerful processes of cumulative selection. It is all utterly simple and automatic. It is so predictable as to be almost inevitable. Evolution, then, while still requiring many generations to yield results, is inherently less improbable than one might at first have supposed."

Evolution is the process of life, and for the first time in the known history of Earth, a species of animal has learned how to control and shape evolution using technology. What we've learned from the application of biotechnology in the past 10 years has fundamentally reshaped our comprehension of the power of biological knowledge itself.

We are now on the verge of possessing a complete genetic map of the homo sapiens animal. At our choice, we will have a similar map for any other life form on this world. This is the instruction manual used by the Cosmos to construct and operate you. It took 15 billion years to make, and at the turn of the second millennium since Christ into the third, humanity will see its own temporal blueprint for the very first time.

How rare or common is such an event in the history books of a galaxy?

We will soon be faced with the exceptionally high-stakes task of determining how knowledge of the human genome should be used. We all seem to agree that we will use it to cure disease. But how? What should we do when an incurable disease is found in genetic testing of a fetus? Shall we terminate after pregnancy? Shall we sterilize children carrying lethal genetic defects? Shall we culture new body organs from stem-cell tissue? Shall we enable parents to select their child's sex? If so, then why not eye color? Prevent baldness? Determine height? Skin and muscle tone? Sexual orientation? Athletic performance? Intellectual traits?

Is cloning ethical? If not, why do some animals reproduce that way? Would we allow parents to clone a child who has passed away in a car accident? Could you one day clone your own DNA into a new embryo, upon your death? What would it be like to see a home video of your great grandfather, and see a human with appearance and traits exactly like yourself? Shall we allow homo sapiens to make these decisions for other animals as well? Shall we one day create new forms of animal, as we have already created new forms of plants?

Isn't it virtually certain that, somewhere in this galaxy, these questions have been asked and answered before? Profound questions.
 

The Leading Edge of Computing

In the January 1999 issue of Discover magazine, David Freedman presents a stunning portrait of a new field of computer science just now emerging into view.

A new type of computer, called a quantum computer, appears to hold dramatic promise for complete revolution in information technology.

"What's the big deal about quantum computing? Imagine you were in a large office building and you had to retrieve a briefcase left on a desk picked at random in one of hundreds of offices. In the same way that you'd have to walk through the building, opening doors one at a time to find the briefcase, an ordinary computer has to make its way more or less serially through long strings of 1's and 0's until it arrives at an answer.

 

Of course, you could speed up the briefcase hunt by organizing a team, coordinating a floor-by-floor search, and then getting them all back together again to compare results. Ordinary computers can do this sort of thing, too, by breaking up the task and running the components in parallel on several processors. That sort of extra coordinating and communicating, however, exacts a huge toll in overhead.

But what if instead of having to search yourself or put together and manage a team, you could instantly create as many copies of yourself as there were rooms in the building, all the versions of yourself could simultaneously peek in all the offices, and then – best of all – every copy of yourself would disappear except for the one that found the briefcase?

That's an example of how a quantum computer could work."

A stunning concept, to say the least.

It's particularly appealing because it sketches a possible solution to a long-standing challenge that has confounded even the faster modern computers: pattern recognition. Traditional binary digital logic is notoriously poor at pattern recognition. While even a young child can instantly recognize her mother's face, this simple kind of task is falteringly primitive even in the most advanced computers. Today's "speech recognition" in some new computers is exceedingly primitive and slow, and is thus largely unusable.

However, a quantum computer might one day be able to approach the problem of pattern recognition from a fundamentally new angle. Instead of breaking down an image or sound into tiny pieces for serial processing, it might be able to conduct an overall "macro" comparison of one pattern with another in a manner more similar to that within our own brains. More speculatively, it has been suggested by many researchers that quantum computing may ultimately lead to the ability to create technology that is conscious!

Will the concept depicted in Star Wars of conscious droids not ultimately turn out to be fictional after all?

Although we are getting ahead of ourselves to mention it here, those with inside knowledge of the UFO phenomenon quite uniformly assert that the technologies employed with these craft respond directly to conscious thought.

Taking this speculation yet a further step forward, shall we one day marry biology and computing in some way, perhaps to serve our needs? Might other advanced civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy have already accomplished this?

The Leading Edge of Physics

"The whole of science consists of data that, at one time or another, were inexplicable."
--Brendan O'Regan

The search for a unifying principle in physics has led to the development of theories whose names are becoming household words, even though their content may be accessible only to the specialist -relativity theory, quantum theory, superstring theory.

Echoing pre-scientific roots in the concept of an all-pervasive energetic flow, these modern scientific disciplines similarly posit an underlying energetic matrix, the void or vacuum out of which springs all manifestation. In relativity theory we hear of the spacetime metric, with its curving warp and woof; in quantum theory, the vacuum fluctuations or zero-point energy, so-called because of its unceasing activity even at a temperature of absolute zero.

As before, called by many names in many disciplines, such terms conjure up images of a pregnant void, full of potential, and indeed this is where modern scientific theory has led us. It would appear that, like fish discovering the ocean, we have finally discerned the ocean of energy in which we move and have our being.

In Western traditions the genesis of the scientific concept of an energetic void underlying all manifestation can be traced back to at least the time of the Greek philosophers. Democritus argued that empty space was truly a void, otherwise his postulated atoms would not have room to move around. Aristotle countered that what appeared to be empty space was in fact a plenum, filled with substance, for did not heat and light travel from place to place as if carried by some kind of medium?

The debate ricocheted back and forth through the centuries until its essence was distilled by the 19th-century British physicist James Clerk Maxwell. As mentioned previously, Maxwell postulated the existence of a luminiferous ether, a medium that carried electromagnetic waves, including light, much as a lake carries water waves across its surface (Whittaker, 1960).

All attempts to measure the properties of this ether, however, or to measure the Earth’s velocity through the ether (the famous Michelson-Morley experiment), met with failure.

Furthermore, Einstein’s development of the theory of special relativity in 1905 did not require reference to such an underlying substrate, and thus the concept of the ether seemed superfluous, and fell out of favor. Maxwell’s ether was banished in favor of the concept that empty space constitutes a true void. Ten years later, however, Einstein’s own development of the theory of general relativity, with its emerging picture of curved space and distorted geometry, brought back the idea of a richly endowed plenum, this time under the new label spacetime metric.

It was the advent of modern quantum theory, however, that established the quantum vacuum, so-called empty space, as a very active place, with electromagnetic and other fields continuously fluctuating on a microscopic scale, and with particles fleeting into momentary existence, only to vanish back into the restless void, like foam tossed at the base of a waterfall. Thus empty space began to look more like a frothy, bubbling cauldron than a serene silence. And its fluctuations led to a statistical uncertainty in all measurement that is so fundamental to quantum processes as to be raised to the status of a Principle -Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle -named for physicist Werner Heisenberg who stressed its importance.

When physicists calculated the energy density of the quantum foam, they were amazed to find that even the most conservative estimates placed its value at greater than nuclear energy densities (Feynman and Hibbs, 1965). At first it was thought that perhaps some fundamental aspect of the theory used to perform the calculation was in error. However, it was soon discovered that the energy densities so calculated had to be taken seriously for certain experimental observations to be explained.

For example, an observed discrepancy (shift) between the predicted and observed frequency of emission from excited hydrogen gas could only be explained if one took into account the "jittering" of the electron’s orbit around the nucleus due to the underlying quantum field fluctuations. This convergence of theory and experiment is known as the Lamb shift, and won for its researcher Willis Lamb, Jr., a shared Nobel Prize in physics.

At this point, although the vacuum fluctuation energy concept had been demonstrated, as far as physical effects were concerned it appeared to be of significance only for such esoteric concerns as the calculation of small corrections with regard to the properties of fundamental particles, or for atomic processes. In 1948, however, H. G. B. Casimir of the Philips Laboratories in the Netherlands predicted an entirely new effect based on the fluctuations of the vacuum electromagnetic field -an attractive force between closely spaced metal plates.

This force, now known for its discoverer as the Casimir force, derives from partial shielding of the interior region of the plates from the background fluctuations, much as a metal building shields incoming radio waves and thus interferes with radio reception. This partial shielding of the external electromagnetic fluctuations results in unbalanced forces that push the plates together (Milonni, Cook and Goggin, 1988).

The Casimir force has recently been measured with high accuracy at the University of Washington (Lamoreaux, 1997), a scientific event considered of sufficient importance as to be given prominent coverage in the New York Times (Browne, 1997).

Step by step the concept of a rich and active vacuum began moving from the periphery of physics toward center stage. As stated on the dust cover of a recent collection of essays on the vacuum by well-known physicists (including Einstein), "The vacuum is fast emerging as the central structure of modern physics" (Saunders and Brown, 1991).

And, as if to emphasize the concept that this has meaning not only for the academic pursuit of fine points in the development of physical theory, but also potentially for application, Nobel Laureate T.D. Lee (1988) introduced the concept of vacuum engineering with the words,

"The experimental method to alter the properties of the vacuum may be called vacuum engineering..... If indeed we are able to alter the vacuum, then we may encounter some new phenomena, totally unexpected."

One of the first breakthroughs in application of the concept of vacuum engineering involved the phenomenon that excited atoms -for example, electrically-excited gas atoms in a neon tube -do not stay excited for very long. Like a pencil poised on its point, an excited atom hovers in an excited state for a brief moment and then falls to a ground state, emitting its energy in the process -in the case of the neon tube, emitting light. This process is called "spontaneous emission."

As it turns out, "spontaneous emission" is not so spontaneous after all. Rather, spontaneous emission is triggered by quantum fluctuation fields, much as the fallover of the poised pencil is due to such disturbances as microscopic acoustic vibrations. Therefore, if excited atoms are passed through specially-constructed Casimir-like cavities in which the resonant field modes are suppressed -and likewise the quantum fluctuation energy in those modes -the time before spontaneous emission occurs can be lengthened considerably, by factors of ten, for example.

As stated in a review article in Scientific American,

"An excited atom that would ordinarily emit a low-frequency photon cannot do so, because there are no vacuum fluctuations to stimulate its emission..."

(Haroche and Raimond, 1993).

In a similar fashion the cavity can be designed to enhance spontaneous emission and thereby speed up the process. This form of vacuum engineering has led to the development of a whole new field of research called cavity quantum electrodynamics.

It is only a matter of time and engineering before manipulation of atomic emission times by this process will find useful application.
 

Overunity Energy?

A continuing search for energy alternatives to fossil and nuclear fuels has intensified over the past few years. This search includes a national commitment of several billion dollars to develop high-energy ("hot") fusion -to reproduce the sun on a small scale -which is still controversial in the physics community as to probable success. Complementing this are the so-called renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind energy alternatives that have been under development for many years.

Given the apparent energy density of the vacuum fluctuation fields, which can be traced to radiation from the fluctuating quantum motion of charged particles distributed throughout the universe (Puthoff, 1989, 1991), the question naturally comes to mind as to whether this reservoir of energy can be tapped. Can the energy be "mined" for practical use? If so, it would constitute a virtually ubiquitous energy supply, a veritable "Holy Grail" energy source.

Looking to whether Nature herself may have already taken advantage of energetic vacuum effects, physicist I.Yu. Sokolov (1996) of Toronto University suggested just this in a paper entitled "The Casimir effect as a possible source of cosmic energy."

In this paper he presents calculations to support the concept that the anomalously high energies associated with certain supernova explosions or with quasars might constitute examples of the conversion of vacuum energy into other forms.

In yet another example, researchers A. Rueda of California State University at Long Beach, B. Haisch of Lockheed-Martin and D. Cole of IBM proposed that the vast reaches of outer space constitute an ideal environment for energetic vacuum effects to accelerate nuclei and thereby provide a mechanism for "powering up" cosmic rays (Rueda, Haisch and Cole, 1995). Details of the model would also appear to account for other observed phenomena, such as the formation of cosmic voids.

As utopian as the possibility of tapping vacuum fluctuation energy might seem, researcher R. Forward (1984), while at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, CA, demonstrated proof-of-principle in a paper, "Extracting electrical energy from the vacuum by cohesion of charged foliated conductors." Furthermore, follow-up proof that such a process violates neither energy nor thermodynamic constraints can be found in a paper with the title "Extracting energy and heat from the vacuum" (D. Cole and H. Puthoff, 1993).

Forward’s approach exploited the Casimir effect described in detail earlier. In brief, as metal plates are pushed together by vacuum fluctuation forces, one obtains heat when they collide, or, if electrically charged, a buildup of electrical field energy as they approach. In either case, vacuum energy is converted to another, potentially useful, form.

Though of insignificant magnitude in the simple configurations described, proof-of-principle has nonetheless been demonstrated, paralleling earlier demonstrations of the release of small amounts of energy from early experiments in nuclear fission. Fortunately, all indications to date are that, unlike its nuclear predecessor, vacuum fluctuation energy release is environmentally benign.

Attempts to harness the Casimir and related effects for vacuum energy conversion are ongoing at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (Austin, Texas) and elsewhere. One approach utilizes pinch effects in non-neutral plasmas (Puthoff, 1990), the plasma equivalent of Forward’s electromechanical charged-plate collapse.

A patent issued on this process contains the descriptive phrase,

"...energy is provided... and the ultimate source of this energy appears to be the zero-point radiation of the vacuum continuum"

(Shoulders, 1991).

Yet another technique under investigation is based on an argument suggested by Boyer (1975) and elaborated by Puthoff (1987) that (stable) atomic ground states are states of dynamic equilibrium in which radiation due to ground state motion is compensated by absorption from vacuum fluctuations. If verified, a corollary is that appropriate perturbation of this equilibrium state would result in a release of energy.

Finally, an approach described in a recent patent proposes the use of finely-tuned dielectric antennas to convert energetic high-frequency components of the vacuum-fluctuation spectrum into a more useful lower-frequency form (Mead and Nachamkin, 1996).

Though remaining to be developed, what has been shown is that the basic concept of the conversion of vacuum energy to other potentially useful forms is a legitimate and viable physics principle. What remains, however, as with solar and thermonuclear energy, is the matter of engineering and demonstration as to whether vacuum energy conversion can be developed to the point that it constitutes a significant energy resource. Given global energy concerns, however, disregard of any possible energy solution is a luxury that we can ill afford. Therefore, robust pursuit of the vacuum energy option is essential.

That such a concept has attracted interest in the broader engineering community is reflected by an Air Force request for proposals for the Fiscal Year 1986 Defense SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) Program.

Under entry *AF86-77, Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (AFRPL), Topic: Non-Conventional Propulsion Concepts* we find the statement:

"Bold, new non-conventional propulsion concepts are solicited.... The specific areas in which AFRPL is interested include.... (6) Esoteric energy sources for propulsion including the zero point quantum dynamic energy of vacuum space."

Gravity and Inertia - Last Steps to the Frontier of Space

The launch of a mighty rocket is truly an awe-inspiring sight. As it strains against the twin forces of gravity and inertia, we can only marvel at the progress we have made in our attempt to throw off the shackles that bind mankind to earth.

But what of the fundamental forces of gravity and inertia? We have phenomenological theories that describe their effects (Newton’s Laws and their relativistic generalizations), but what of their origins?

The suggestion that these phenomena might themselves be traceable to roots in the underlying fluctuations of the vacuum was first put forward in a short paper published by the well-known Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov (known also for his human rights activism).

Searching to derive Einstein’s equations for general relativity from a more fundamental set of assumptions, Sakharov came to the conclusion that general relativistic phenomena could be understood as induced effects brought about by changes in the quantum fluctuation energy of the vacuum due to the presence of matter (Sakharov 1968). Although still in its exploratory stage, this hypothesis has led to a rich and ongoing literature on quantum-fluctuation-induced gravity, a literature that continues to yield insight into the role played by vacuum fluctuations (Puthoff, 1989, 1993, and references therein).

Thus, once again, the underlying quantum fluctuation reference frame is called into play, in this case to be restructured in its role as the very fabric of spacetime itself.

Given an apparent deep connection between gravity and the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum, a similar connection must exist between these self-same vacuum fluctuations and inertia. Why? It is an empirical fact that the gravitational and inertial masses have the same value, even though the underlying phenomena are quite distinct. Why, for example, should a measure of the resistance of a body to being accelerated, even if far from any gravitational field, have the same value that is associated with the gravitational attraction between bodies? Indeed, if one is determined by vacuum fluctuations, so must the other.

We have all experienced inertia. A train lurches with a sudden jolt, and one is thrown to the floor. What is this force that knocks one down, seemingly coming out of nowhere?

This phenomenon is an inbuilt feature of the universe that has perplexed generations of physicists from Newton to Einstein. Since in this example the sudden disquieting imbalance results from acceleration "relative to the fixed stars," one could provocatively say that it was the "stars" that delivered the punch. This key feature, emphasized by the Austrian philosopher of science Ernst Mach, has become known as Mach’s Principle. Nonetheless, the mechanism by which the stars might do this deed has eluded convincing explication.

This issue was recently addressed in a paper entitled "Inertia as a zero-point field Lorentz force," in which it was argued that the resolution of the question of inertia and its connection to Mach’s Principle, as with gravity, could be traced to the vacuum fluctuations (Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff 1994). In a sentence, although a uniformly moving body does not experience a drag force from the vacuum fluctuations, an accelerated body meets a resistance proportional to the acceleration.

By accelerated we mean, of course, accelerated relative to the fixed stars. Since the argument can be made (Puthoff, 1989) that the local vacuum-fluctuation frame of reference is due to the quantum fluctuations of distant matter -the fixed stars -in the train example one can say that the punch was delivered by the vacuum fluctuations acting as proxy for the fixed stars through which one attempted to accelerate.

If further research continues to support the vacuum-fluctuation genesis of gravity and inertia -and it appears that this is likely to be the case (Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff, 1997, 1998) -then we are led to a remarkable implication: Given experimental evidence that vacuum fluctuations can be altered by technological means (for example, by the techniques of cavity quantum electrodynamics cited earlier), then, in principle, gravitational and inertial masses can also be altered.

Does anyone take such a concept seriously, that it might be possible to alter mass? In fact just this possibility was the basis of an investigation by the Advanced Concepts Office of the Propulsion Directorate of the Phillips Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This office is charged with initiating research relevant to the development of 21st century space propulsion, and it is well understood that a fundamental understanding of gravity and inertia could well contribute new concepts in this area.

With a view to easing the energy burden of future spaceships, Robert Forward, a respected authority in the area of gravitation theory and measurement, accepted a Phillips Laboratory assignment to review the mass-alteration concept. After a one-year study investigating the present status of vacuum fluctuation research, Forward (1996) submitted his report to the Air Force, who published it under the title Mass Modification Experiment Definition Study.

The Abstract reads in part:

".... Many researchers see the vacuum as a central ingredient of 21st-Century physics. Some even believe the vacuum may be harnessed to provide a limitless supply of energy. This report summarizes an attempt to find an experiment that would test the Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff (HRP) conjecture that the mass and inertia of a body are induced effects brought about by changes in the quantum-fluctuation energy of the vacuum.... It was possible to find an experiment that might be able to prove or disprove that the inertial mass of a body can be altered by making changes in the vacuum surrounding the body."

With regard to action items, the Forward Report in fact recommended a ranked list of not one but four experiments to be carried out to investigate the vacuum-fluctuation inertia concept and its broad implications. These implications are being pursued in laboratories around the globe.

As we peer with longing into the heavens from the depth of our gravity well, hoping for some "magic" solution that will launch our spacefarers first to the planets and then to the stars, we are reminded of Arthur

C. Clarke’s phrase that highly advanced technology is essentially indistinguishable from magic. One of the more magical possibilities that looms on the scientific horizon is the portent of metric engineering, restructuring the vacuum to order -a designer vacuum, as it were. With gravity and inertia traceable to the underlying vacuum fluctuation fields, and with the field of cavity quantum electrodynamics giving us demonstration that such fields can be structured by technological means, the possibility of engineering the metric for space travel has moved from the pages of science fiction to peer-reviewed physics journals.

With titles like *Wormholes in spacetime and their use for interstellar travel*, and *The warp drive: Hyper-fast travel within general relativity*, the potential with regard to exotic approaches can be said to have moved a little closer, in theory if not yet in practice.

But who is to say what the 21st-century will bring?

To elaborate the metric engineering perspective, we begin with the oft-quoted velocity-of-light limitation. This restriction has its origin in the special theory of relativity, wherein equations show (and experiments confirm) that the mass of a body increases catastrophically as its speed approaches the velocity of light, with the corollary that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to this speed. In the general theory of relativity, however, the possibility of tricks and shortcuts comes to the rescue, one trick being to increase the local velocity of light by manipulating the parameters of the vacuum.

With regard to the "trick" of manipulating the parameters of the vacuum to alter the velocity of light to advantage with regard to space travel, it is useful to begin with an analogy. It can easily be demonstrated that the velocity of sound in various substances, such as water or steel, differs from that in air. This is because the velocity of wave propagation in a substance depends upon the characteristics or parameters of that substance.

Similarly, the velocity of light in a material depends on the parameters of the medium through which it propagates. The velocity of light in glass, for example, is only about two-thirds that in air. Specifically, in engineering terms the velocity of light in a medium is given by an expression c = 1/(me)1/2, where me are parameters called, respectively, the magnetic permeability and dielectric permittivity of the medium. These are simply parameters that indicate how polarizable (responsive) the medium is to magnetic and electric fields, how much magnetic or electric flux will result.

Polarizability of the vacuum is similar to the polarizability of more familiar substances such as solids, liquids or gases. Thus, the vacuum itself has properties characteristic of physical media. Indeed, a lecture, given by Nobel Laureate T. D. Lee (1994) in honor of the 150th birthday of one of physics’ patriarchs Ludwig Boltzmann, was entitled Vacuum as a Physical Medium.

What might be surprising to the nonspecialist, within the context of general relativity and vacuum-energy physics the velocity of light in a vacuum is not as fixed as widely believed, but is context-dependent (Wesson 1992). For the case of light propagation near a massive body like the sun, for example, a distant observer would note that the velocity of light is reduced from its usual value by an amount proportional to the gravitational potential, a result first predicted by Einstein (1911).

For the case of light propagation between closely-spaced Casimir plates, the velocity of light is increased due to the reduction of vacuum fluctuation energy between the plates (Scharnhorst, 1990).

Such effects can be conveniently modeled in terms of a variable vacuum polarizability. In this approach the conventional curved-space formalism of general relativity finds expression in terms of easily-understood, engineering-like concepts. The slowing and bending of a light ray near a massive body, for example, can be seen as deriving from spatial variation of the polarizability (or refractive index) of the vacuum, not unlike that of a light ray passing through a lens. This approach, often used in comparative studies of gravitational theories, has been formalized in the scientific literature (Lightman and Lee, 1973) and is especially useful with regard to a metric engineering perspective (Puthoff, 1996, and references therein).

Now if the vacuum polarizability were to be subject to manipulation by technological means such that within a localized region the value c could be made to assume a new value, say c’ = 10c, then, without violating a local velocity-of-light constraint, travel at speeds greater than the conventional velocity of light within that region would be possible; it’s only that a new constraint would apply within the localized region based on the local elevated velocity of light.

A recent speculative, but nonetheless scientifically-grounded, proposal to take advantage of just this possibility is the so-called "Alcubierre Warp Drive" (Alcubierre, 1994). Taking on the challenge of determining whether Warp Drive a là Star Trek was a scientific possibility, general relativity theorist Miguel Alcubierre set himself the task of determining whether faster-than-light travel was possible within the constraints of standard theory.

Although this clearly could not be the case in the "flat space" of special relativity, general relativity permits consideration of altered spacetime metrics (vacuum characteristics) as presented here where such a possibility is not a priori ruled out. Alcubierre’s further self-imposed constraints on an acceptable solution included the requirements that no net time distortion should occur (breakfast on earth, lunch on Tau Ceti, and home for dinner with the wife and children, not the great-great-great grandchildren), and that the occupants of the spaceship were not to be flattened against the bulkhead by unconscionable accelerations.

A solution meeting all of the above criteria was found and published in a peer-reviewed journal, referenced above. The solution involved the creation of a local distortion of spacetime such that spacetime itself is expanded behind the spaceship, contracted ahead of it, and yields a hypersurfer-like motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the perturbed region (though without violating an elevated local velocity-of-light constraint within the region). In essence, on the outgoing leg of the journey the spaceship is pushed away from the earth and pulled toward its distant destination by the engineered local expansion of spacetime itself.

The Alcubierre Warp Drive and other marvels that can be envisioned as products of metric engineering have yet to leave our drawing boards, unfortunately, for both theoretical and practical reasons. With only a decade or so of focused development, many theoretical questions remain unanswered. Those that have been tentatively answered would appear to require technological solutions beyond reach without unforeseen breakthroughs. Therefore we must question anew whether the vacuum can be engineered for spaceflight applications in the foreseeable future.

The answer to the above question is:

"In principle, yes"

(Puthoff, 1998).

However, it is clear that there is a long way to go. Nonetheless, in keeping with the cliché "a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first steps," those first steps are now being taken in the universities, laboratories, and research institutes around the globe.

Given that Casimir and related effects indicate the possibility of tapping the enormous residual energy in the vacuum fluctuations, and the demonstration in cavity quantum electrodynamics that the vacuum fluctuations can be manipulated to produce technological effects such as the inhibition or enhancement of spontaneous emission of excited states in quantum systems, the first steps along this path have already produced visible results. Combining this observation with the newly-emerging concepts of the relationship of gravity, inertia and warp drive as properties of a manipulable vacuum, our reach for those unforeseen breakthroughs is imperative.

And we must also ask whether in a universe of such magnificent proportions might not other species have asked the same questions, trod the same path? And perhaps found solutions?

Humility would dictate that such may well be the case.

As cosmologies have developed and matured, only to be replaced by yet others, one common theme emerged again and again -the recognition that all things, living and nonliving, constituted an interactive and interdependent tapestry of existence in which each thread was but part of a greater whole. Out of this recognition one can discern a metaphysics in which man and Cosmos are seen as inextricably intertwined, interconnected by a ubiquitous, all-pervasive cosmic flow of energy that undergirds, and is manifest in, all phenomena.

Called by many names in many traditions -soul, chi, élan vital -this pre-scientific cultural concept of an underlying energy flow made manifest expresses recognition of unity in diversity, a oneness that stands behind all things.

Our future is the Cosmos of worlds uncounted. Our survival as a species requires that we dare not shrink from this destiny. And the one companion from which we will never be separated on our long journey is the underlying ocean of energy on which we travel and from which springs all manifestation. What is certain to emerge as the Cosmos becomes part of our heritage is an ever-increasing recognition that we are, each and every one, in ecological balance with the Cosmos as a whole, immersed in an overall interpenetrating ground of being.

Indeed, such an interpenetrating field of energy may be the true medium of life and consciousness itself.

Lessons For the Future

What can we learn from the first part of this book? What can we learn from these studies of the Cosmos, life, humanity, history, civilization and science?

First, we can learn to be both soberly concerned and thrilled beyond imagination about our future. The new technologies science is approaching will have a stunningly large impact on civilization. Indeed, they will record the greatest single exclamation mark of an inflection point in the lifespan of homo sapiens to date.

Why? Two reasons.

The money sitting in your bank account right now is in reality a metric system for the one thing of value it represents: energy. The more money you have, the more energy you can buy from others, in the form of resources, labor, services, and their resulting products. The less money you have, the more you are forced to give your resources to others. What happens if energy becomes "free"? The economy will be restructured such that any process requiring energy alone will be reduced in value nearly to zero, and thus available to nearly everyone.

That's a complicated and destabilizing transformation. We're seeing this effect in a smaller way with the rise of the Internet, as it reduces the cost of rich communications nearly to zero. The upside of overunity energy is that vast numbers of wondrous advances can be made, more useful to all people of the world than just the super-rich. Sea water can be converted to irrigation and drinking water, for free. Electricity and heat can be supplied within homes themselves, for free. Purely automated electronic services can be offered almost for free, and the cost of innumerable manufactured products will drastically drop.

A related technology will enable gravitational propulsion. With this new kind "propellantless" propulsion, we will be able to skip from place to place on Earth with the precision of a helicopter, the size of a one-man plane, the sound level of an automobile, at any speed we desire, with essentially no fuel bill. We will ultimately be able to dispense with the freeway system. And we will ask ourselves the meaning of a national border when individual space-time transportation devices emerge.

These are massive changes, and they must be approached with great care. The rapid progression of scientific advancement is today dangerous if not preceded by ethical belief systems with the power of religious morals.

Since its origin in a divorce from religion, modern science has deeply lacked a foundation in experience. Today it lacks an ethical fabric of its own to bound, pace, and frame the consequences of its processes. Science is deeply amoral. Not immoral, amoral. In a sense this is an obvious product of its necessary opposition to an arthritic and over-interpreted orthodox religious moral paradigm. Through its neutrality, science has opened our eyes to our nature.

Science has taught us how to distinguish between lie and truth, and build order upon the latter. This knowledge has given us tremendous powers to control our lives, and to others to control our lives for us. We have imagined, communicated, and engineered our way towards wondrous revolutions in technology not even thinkable by homo sapiens 100 years ago. The idea that such revolutions are largely behind us is laughable. Yet science today laughs at the evidence that will come to represent its next renaissance. Indeed, the evidence for the greatest scientific revolutions of them all to date may be before our very eyes.

When science does wake itself from its present slumber on these issues, it must face first a critical fact: the failure of science through the centuries to control the use of its own discoveries and inventions is a sign of the depth of its fundamental disconnection between emotion and fact, between meaning and truth. This disconnection is perhaps now its greatest liability. It might not be such a complex problem if it weren't for the fact that science now undergirds Western society as much as religion, and science cannot match faith in terms of an expressed paradigm of ethics to guide behavior and to give meaning to experience.

Where can we find middle ground here? Is there a new intellectual place for both science and faith to cohabit?

We now know for certain that natural evolution is a force of life more powerful than all forms of civilization, science, and technology combined. We are thus advised to look to principles of evolution evident in history for the guideposts to our distant future. What core principles can we learn from evolution? I believe we can learn several lessons, and they’re not ones that are often taught.

The first lesson regards the core principle of evolution most people know as "survival of the fittest", as mentioned above. The argument goes that only the strongest, richest, most aggressive, with the most might and right will survive. Many biologists have termed this literally a "war of survival". If evolution is indeed a war, then survival of the fittest can only be a tactic used to win a battle, for it is the one certain recipe for the ultimate loss of the war.

The key to correct this grievous mistake is to understand that if there is war, we will lose. We will only survive in peace. Throughout history, we have learned that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Whether it is an eye for eye, the Golden Rule, the equation of Newtonian motion, or a decision and its consequence. Any force we send out, we will receive back. If we indiscriminately destroy natural microbes, they will so destroy us. If we lie to nature, nature will lie to us. If we murder nature, nature will murder us. If we murder the future, the future will murder us.

The Cosmos behaves like a mirror to our minds.

It is thus not the survival of the fittest that we should worship, it is balance and equilibrium we should worship and remember – the survival of diversity, or the survival of all. It is the concept of being in peace with all kinds of truths, experiences, institutions, civilizations, people, animals, plants, and microbes. These are the tools with which to survive, evolve, and thrive across eternity, and peaceful life will create uncounted new tools, whereas devastation driven by instability will not.

Without enough peaceful diversity to add fiber, the fractured branch of evolution upon which we stand will be pruned from the tree of life. Whatever battles we choose to wage in our "war" of evolution, we must remember that ultimately the diversity of life will win, it is only a question of the scale of time within our microscope, telescope, or history book.

An intelligent person at the end of this century simply cannot and must not deny the truth of this. And we must act on this truth.

We cannot live by the power of lies or fear or mindless destruction. This is a scientific fact. The direct implication is that the mystical concepts of truth and love simply must be actual and real fundamental principles of the Cosmos that will ultimately be understood in terms of an expanded concept of physics. I believe you will one day see something akin to equations of emotion and thought, and understand how they manipulate the medium of the Cosmos.

Remember the quotes from Einstein and Sagan at the beginning of this chapter. They drip with emotion, and only in so doing carry their power. Is that power not real? Emotion is real, for it conveys meaning in experience. Emotion conveys the temporal significance of a truth.

Such an important lesson as this must be taught to our children from the first instant. For all the generations preceding the most recent one, we have employed devices to perpetuate the emotions surrounding our most important truths. We call these devices rituals, and life throughout evolution is replete with examples.

Life has always used rituals. Rituals are used throughout the activities of eating, sleeping, playing, and mating. Humans have used rituals since our time began, from the simplest body painting to the most sacred rites of passage. We gather when a child is born. We all name the child. Some of us are circumcised. Some of us are baptized. Some of us are blessed. Some of us are swaddled. As we grow into youth, all of us are schooled. We learn to speak. Some of us are sung to. Some of us learn to sing. Some of us learn to read. Some of us learn to write. Some of us even learn to calculate. We learn the difference between truth and lie.

When we reach adolescence, all of us search for both collective and individual meaning. Some of us learn to hunt, some of us learn to fight, some of us learn to smoke, some of us learn to sport, some of us learn to learn. Some of us are given priesthood, most of us are loved, and most of us learn to love. Most learn to hate, too.

As we enter adulthood, we are confronted with responsibility, and the responsibility of choice is felt with the greatest power ever. Most of us choose most of our path through whatever future our culture allows, and celebrate the major milestones along the way. We ritualize graduation. We ritualize marriage. We ritualize reproduction. We ritualize entertainment. We ritualize "success" and "failure" by the ultimate macro construction of ritual, our culture. We ritualize age through the birthday. And we ritualize death through mourning.

And our society ritualizes events from its history, in the form of holidays. We celebrate the founding of our ideologies of all forms and kinds.

We celebrate the important things in life. Indeed, rituals are the poetry of life.

What rituals must we create to perpetuate the love for the things we want to become in a million years? What systems of mental and physical practice must we put in place, in order to convey to our children’s children the vision we have for them? We must not ignore billions of years of evolution, which have taught us that repetition is a key to reproduction, and the repetition of a system of beliefs is fulfilled by the ritual.

As David Van Biema said, writing for the cover of Life in October 1991,

"Protect the spiritual ozone layer. Consider ritual."

Without ritual conveying the emotions of our beliefs, what are we?

"Just interchangeable Nielson statistics? Are we plugged into everything... or, in reality, connected to nothing? Should we attempt to explain to our children how it all fits together, or assure them that it just floats weightlessly, like unsecured objects in a space capsule?"

Actually, I believe that we are both entirely interconnected and utterly unsecured, and these two states are two sides of one state called being. The one being is the student and the teacher, separate and together at once.

The lesson to be learned from the first part of this book is that the kind of faith in truth and love promulgated by the rituals of religion, appropriately shorn of their dogmatism, may be the perfect remembrance structure for humanity to use as a foundation upon which to evolve for millennia to come, as a new foundation for science. For in the history of the world, few rituals have done as good a job as those of religion, despite its profound flaws, in perpetuating the passing of sacred truth from generation to generation and from people to people.

Do I propose a return to orthodox concepts of religion?

No, but I do propose that science reunite with spirituality. I believe there are greater reasons than just good sense to do this. I believe that this is not the first time beings have asked and answered this question in this way.

As both a student and a teacher of sorts through this book, I ask a question to scientists: would you reevaluate your posture against the historicity of the greatest ritual traditions of our heritage – religion – if I showed you how to use vacuum energy to warp gravity upon convenience, enabling travel at effective speeds far greater than the speed of light?

If I showed you the way an "angel" could come down from the "heavens" and teach, would you listen to my hypothesis?

Would you reconsider whether systems of belief in love and truth, ground in faith to the ultimate power of a higher order to which we aspire, are important to our future?
 

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