I don't know anything about Bearden specifically, but a glance at his website creates a strange sense of déja vu. I haven't read his stuff in any depth, but *if* my first impression is correct, then I'd have to suggest that the guy is barking up - not so much the wrong tree - but a lamp-post perhaps, or a belisha beacon.
There's fringe science. Really out-there theoretical stuff... 11-dimensional superstring theory. Or quantum teleportation or whatever. Rooted in understood scientific principle, but pushing at the boundaries. Or perhaps magnetic fusion research; pushing at the edges of our understanding and also testing the limits of our engineering abilities.
Then there's the *seriously* fringe stuff. Your cold fusions. Your anti-gravity research. Areas which require serious rewrites to the way we think things work. That's not inconceivable; but it actually happens *very* rarely, contrary perhaps to popular opinion. Euclid, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Einstein. That represents (*I* would argue) the total number of times in western science where the kinds of shifts in understanding required by cold fusion (for example) have occurred.
Not out of the question. But let's not pin our hopes on it.
And then. Well, then there's zero-point energy.
Now, don't get me wrong; I'm no Euclid, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, or Einstein; but - save for a bit of forehead scrunching - I don't have too much trouble understanding their work. Sure, sure... so Gaussian coordinate systems foxed me for a while. It took so long for me to realise that the grid wasn't arbitrary in the sense of "an arbitrary grid on this object surface", but rather in the sense that the object is *itself* the arbitrary component, whose unique surface properties define a *non*-arbitrary grid with respect to the object, but an aribrary grid with respect to the external world. And suddenly all was clear!
Ahem... forgive the unseemly pride in my own maths-geekdom, but it took me an age to get my head around that. And I was dead chuffed when I did.
With zero-point energy though, I start to get a headache about 5 minutes in to any explanation. Usually about the stage that the phrases "time-energy" and "compressed-energy" start to get used interchangeably. Pretty damn early on in Bearden's intro it turns out.
At some point with zero-point energy, and it's always difficult to pin down precisely where, the explanation subtly shifts from the physics that *I* understand into a Star Trek universe where faster-than-light sub-space travel is but a few dilithium crystals away.
Now, I acknowledge the possibility that maybe I'm just not smart enough to get my head around zero-point energy. I accept that. But I know quite a few very smart people who also start to get the same headache after a few minutes. That "uhhh.... what!?" expression steals over their faces too... the one that looks especially comical on smart people.
Anyone proposing zero-point energy needs to be taken _cum grano salis_. Especially if they claim that a contraption they knocked up in their shed from components bought at radioshack can generate as much matter as exists in the entire observable universe out of one cubic centimeter of vaccuum. I'm not saying that zero-point energy is just nonsense. But I'll be putting my faith in benevolent aliens giving us a helping hand, energy-wise, before I count on zero-point.
That's just me. And maybe my research is biased or flawed or incomplete. Please do your own before making up your mind.
|
