Stephen Hawking's book, "A Short History of Time" is a masterful expression of everything that is wrong in the field of physics. His acceptance of general relativity and unified field theory gives the impression that everything is on the right track. The basic traits of complacency and smugness are evident. This, of course, is an absolute necessity if any volume of sales is expected.

The trouble with the attitude is that it leaves no room for progress. The comment, the more things change, the more they remain the same, is not at all funny. There has been no change in basic thought in the past 2000 years of history. The original error of Euclidian space led to relativity theory as well as to unified field theory. Quantum theory, although it is sadly lacking in development, is the only saving grace in the whole mess.

There has been opposition to the trend. If all of the criticisms of relativity theory were laid end to end, there would be no end. The basic flaw to be found in all of these, other than that of pure idiocy, is that they all wanted to replace Einstein's relativity with another relativity of their own. To replace relativity with another relativity doesn't seem to be an answer.

There exists a control in the field of science that is much more severe than any that was ever imposed in Communist Russia. The legitimate scientific journals will not accept for publication anything that is tainted with heresy against Einstein. One editor wrote a letter of refusal saying that it was impossible to find reviewers that would even read an article opposing relativity. One Russian author who had brought out a book opposing Einstein commented that the only reason that he wasn't fired from his job was that he had been elected to the politbureau.

There are two opposing ideas in the field of science, both of which are a detriment to its development. One is "Refute"; The other is "Stonewall." Since these two ideas are dead set against each other, the effect is like that of two people fighting over possession of a house while the house is burning down around their ears.

The present work was started fifty years ago with no other thought than that of developing space travel on a practical basis for the future of humankind. To make a play on words, the author soon found that the human is not kind. I found myself in the role of the boy scout trying to do his good deed for the day by helping the little old lady across the street, while she was in the process of beating him over the head with her umbrella because she didn't want to go.

There was no thought of refuting relativity or proving it. The fact appeared that there was no alternative theory to provide a sufficient energy source. It soon became evident that the theory provided insurmountable barriers rather than being a help. Since the mass of a space ship increased with the velocity, becoming infinite at the velocity of light, no material object could ever hope to attain this velocity, let alone exceed it. The twin paradox said that no space traveler could ever hope to return to his own time so that no continuity of existence was possible. The fact that the universe was expanding so that any chosen destination did not stay put was the clincher. I threw the whole mess away and started over.

The non-equivalence of mass and energy should be apparent by the fact that no consideration of the energy of charge was given. In the case of the neutron, the measured mass cannot account for the total energy. This fact is demonstrated both by electromagnetic theory and by quantum theory when mutual contractions are considered. It is a pity that the investigators are so enamored by their own laws that they come to believe them.

The question concerning the universe is," What good is it?" If there is no way to get to it, what is the point of creating it? It is no more than a machine that is so complicated that all inputs are lost internally so that there are no outputs possible? These questions may well be applied to the field of science. The mechanism has grown so complicated that the machine does no useful work.

Technology is limited to applications of the output of the machine of science. If science is not putting out any results, technology lags also. It has been some time since Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity in the mistaken belief than he was doing them a favor. There has been no advance in the understanding of the nature of energy since the time of Prometheus. The burning of wood, coal, oil, and gas continues.

Not so, say the sayer of sooth. Now we have nuclear energy. Ah, but, say the rebutter, the only useful output of fission or fusion is the release of heat. The problem of disposal of nuclear wastes grows by the day, with no possibility of any solution in sight.

In the history of alchemy, there was much effort devoted to the search for the "Philosopher's Stone." This may still turn out to be a worthy cause, although the original thought was based on human greed. The idea was that there should exist some object or material which by touch would transmute the base metals into gold. King Midas was given the gift of the golden touch, but the results turned out to be disastrous.

Even so, the thought is a worthy one. In the case of the radioactive wastes, if we were in possession of the Philosopher's Stone, we could breed the heavy atoms of the waste material to much lighter ones on the mass number scale to the point at which they pose no threat. This possibility is inherent in the resonance absorber which can be applied to the lighter elements to cause nuclear disruption with the release of high energy mesons. It appears that the resonance absorber can be applied to problems other than space flight.

Tests have been made on the effect of temperature on the decay rates of radioactive elements. The conclusion was that the rate of decay was not changed by any measurable amount within the range of temperatures tested. This result is not all surprising in view of the impedance mismatch existing between the orbital electron shells of the elements tested and the molecular frequencies involved in the cooling process. To expect any other result would be a denial of the laws of nature. The only thing revealed by the experiment is the fact that the scientists have no understanding of the tests they run.

Since electron ingestion by the nucleus is known to occur in K-capture and can be carried to any extreme including that sufficient to cause nuclear disruption, any number of intermediate steps are possible. This should remove another barrier in the human mind to the effect that decay rates of radioactive material cannot be altered.

There was another quest proposed in alchemy that should be noted. This was the search for the universal solvent. The question could be raised concerning the container. If it would dissolve anything on contact, it would also dissolve the container. If it exists, it would be found at the mass center of earth. This is easy to conclude because under the action of gravity, it would dissolve its way down to this point before it stopped.

We should not leave the church out of the picture. One ecclesiastical question had to do with how many angels could be seated on the head of a pin. We are inclined to turn it around and ask how many angels "got the point." (Laugh here.)

Incidentally, the story of the world being supported on the back of a giant turtle is true enough, but the turtle does not rest on the back of another turtle. As a matter of fact, the turtle swims in the sea of eternity. Also, the flat plate representing the earth cannot be round. In the biblical account, the earth has four corners.

Hawking's description of the Big Crunch may or may not be true. In the past, I have visualized the first space ship into the remote regions of the universe. Here it encounters a flat plate with a button. It is connected to nothing, but below the button are the words, "Do not push." Human curiosity being what it is, someone pushes the button. Of course the result is to be expected. The whole universe falls apart.

Another fantasy is that the universe is a computer with no inputs and programmed for self destruction. There may be more truth than poetry in this view. I hope to be somewhere else when it happens. At least it should be announced in advance. I might just go home and watch it on television.

Any scientist who is foolhardy enough to try a little humor should label it most carefully to that effect. When I was teaching at Fairmont State College in West Virginia, Tennessee Ernie Ford had a variety show on television. I wrote him a letter explaining a marvelous achievement that would make us both rich. In the span of ten years since I had been granted the degree of Ph.D. in mathematical physics, I had finally achieved the ultimate. I called it may Sure-shot Fly Killer, and I enclosed a working model. The device consisted of two wooden blocks numbered 1 and 2. The instructions were simple, requiring only four steps. These were (1) catch fly, (2) carefully remove legs and wings so that the insect can neither fly not crawl, (3) place fly on block number one, and (4) strike sharply with block number two. I went on to state that if he would publicize the development on his show, I would split any resulting proceeds fifty-fifty with him.

The gag must have tickled his funny bone because he actually used it on his show. The difficulty was that most people seemed to think I was serious, which did little to enhance my reputation. Thirty years later, I mentioned my contribution to Tennessee Ernie's show. At this time I was located in South Carolina. A man of my acquaintance remembered having seen the show. Fame eventually catches up with you, if you wait long enough!

It is a mystery how Oog, the son of Moog, from the dawn of time could affect the thinking of Baron Gottfried von Leibnitz who was so greatly in disfavor with Sir Isaac Newton. A remark attributed to Leibnitz confirms my own analysis as well as that of Oog, the son of Moog. The remark supposedly was to the effect that where there was no matter, there was no space. It follows that matter and space are opposite aspects of the same creation. Since the earth in finite, so is its space. Since the space is given the negative aspect, it must be tensional but equal in its energy to that of the solid earth. This leads to the requirement that the energy density of space falls off inversely as the fourth power of the radius vector. Our dawn man, Oog, as well as having his feet on the ground, had a head on his shoulders. It is a pity that our later philosophers erred so badly.

The fact that space has certain characteristics as an atmosphere cannot be avoided. As applied to the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment, the remote presence of the sun in relation to the immediate proximity of earth requires that if measurable effects exist, they are very minor. The inverse fourth power law of attenuation reduces the effect of the sun.

At no place in the development has the necessity of more than four dimensions appeared. As a matter of fact, the better characterization is that of four space variables rather than dimensions. The fourth variable, time, indicates only the necessity of an internal rotary motion in the description of a dynamic particle in three dimensional space. The use of N-dimensional tensor calculus serves only to impress rather than to explain. There is no need for any mathematics higher than that of partial differential equations of the second order in the three space variables and time.

Three dimensional geometry is quite important in the fact that it helps us to visualize the particle in the only form which will provide stability. As we have stated, it is toroidal in shape. The neutron and the proton as matter wave toroids follow as a matter of course. The fact that the matter wave is of much shorter wavelength than the electromagnetic wave in turn causes the neutron and proton to be much smaller in physical size than the positron and electron. The energy density in the associated wave in the neutron and proton is many orders of magnitude greater than that applying to electron and positron.

The toroidal atom can be speculated to exist. The tendency of an incomplete toroid to unite with another to complete the ring may explain atoms forming into molecules. Since hydrogen has one electron only, and the first atomic ring is complete with two electrons, the molecule of gaseous hydrogen would be complete with two atoms of hydrogen. Since there are already two electrons in the helium atom, the helium molecule is the helium atom in the case of gaseous helium. There has been no particular attempt to develop the concept, but it appears worthy of further consideration. How far the analysis could be carried is a matter of speculation. The accumulation of the aggregate mass of the earth resulted in a spherical shape flattened at the poles by the centrifugal force of rotation.

Newton gave credit to his predecessors by his comment that he had stood on the shoulders of the giants. My own thought is that he might have been able to see better if he had shoved them out of the way to get a better look. If the giants were of the fairy tale variety, they were all beef and no brain. His failure to see the error in the assumption that the inertial force of an object does no work led to the idiotic conclusion that there is an automatic increase in the mass of an object under the action of an accelerating force.

When I was a student, it was drilled into me that the watchword of science was objectivity. If a development failed the test of objectivity, it could be a philosophy, but it certainly was not a science. This requirement of objectivity automatically applied to every scientist. It came as a shock to me to observe that the work of Einstein, which is the most subjective of all theories in existence, constituted the bible of science and any word against it was heresy.

In the remote future of humanity, I can envision a torchlight procession of men and women in white robes waving their torches in the darkness as they chant in unison, "The mass increases with velocity, the mass increases with velocity,.." This is repeated endlessly until it is apparent that the chanters do not know the meaning of their own words.

As a matter of fact, all objectivity was lost to science when the concept of authority appeared. If it did not agree with established authority, it was not science. The writer had to quote his authority to be accepted. Then he himself became an authority to be quoted. Then we find an interlocking system of error. Each author cites the errors of his predecessors to justify his own erroneous conclusions to the point that there is no point.

As apposed to the ideal, the real procedure of science is that of jumping to an erroneous conclusion and then trying to justify it for the rest of your life.

The present author incorporated the rules for writing an acceptable science article into the form of a jingle.

If you have the perfect answer

But you just can't make it fit,

Do what all the experts do

And fudge a little bit.

The factor of finagle

Is the very thing to use

To make the reader think

You have all your p's and q's.

The confusion coefficient

Will prevent it being known

That the space that ought to be your brain

Is filled with solid bone.

Of course it wouldn't hurt a bit

To name some well known names

If you want to be a scientist

You must learn to play their games.

Cite every work that ever was

Since Hector was a pup.

The thicker you can lay it on,

The more they lap it up.

If you would claim undying fame,

Just follow my suggestion.

Generate an answer

That doesn't have a question.

The failure of science is encompassed in the two words, "Refute" and "Stonewall." Neither one has the slightest thing to do with truth. Refutation is a complete waste of time and effort. How does one refute the concept that the mass increases with velocity when it actually does in the case of the particle accelerator? There cannot be a theory in existence that does not have elements of truth. The mass energy form is true for radiation and for the simple particles. Who would want to refute a fact?

The concept of Stonewall automatically leads to the "adversary" situation. An adversary is an enemy. and enemies are dangerous. The surest way to remove a danger is to get rid of the source. If murder is ruled out, then use any means available to damage the reputation of the opponent. At the very least, make it impossible for him to be heard by a control of all the sources of publication.

The case of the adversary situation is that of no-win. Any goal that may have been in mind originally is completely forgotten in the smoke of the burning house. The fact that your adversary lies dead at your feet obscures the fact that the flaming roof is collapsing on your own head.

If humanity is to find an escape from its present doldrums, space travel on a practical basis is an absolute necessity. In the westward expansion, the pioneers finally reached the Pacific Ocean. Now they are in the process of filling up Alaska. Very soon there will be no place left on earth in which to expand. Any such closed system as that of the earth is a self-destructive system.

In 1956, I became Chief Engineer and Dean of Academics at the Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxet River, Maryland. Since I was expected to teach aerodynamics to navy pilots, some of whom had been flying for twenty years, the fact that I knew nothing about the subject was matter of some concern. In fact, I soon came to the conclusion that what I did not know would fill a book. This led to the textbook, The Aerodynamics of Powered Flight which was published by John Wiley & Sons in 1960. The philosophy used was, if you don't know it, wing it. This can be translated as learning as you go.

In the process of writing, I learned the difference between research and plagiarism. If you steal from one author, that's plagiarism; if your steal from a dozen, that's research. I did a lot of research, but colored it with my own interpretations. The book was used as standard text for ten years. My advice to anyone in the field of science is "wing It." No man knows what he can accomplish until after it is done.