Robert Park and Nick Cook on VRIL AKA ZPF

From: Jack Sarfatti (sarfatti_at_pacbell.net)
Date: 10/19/04 

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 02:10:51 GMT

This article reflects what I heard from Cliff Will, Matt Visser and Bill
Unruh at GR 17.

"Anti-Gravity shield rises again, and the zero-point fringe - News and
Comment
Skeptical Inquirer, Nov-Dec, 2002 by Robert L. Park

The following items are from Robert L. Park's weekly electronic
newsletter "What's New" (American Physical Society, Washington, D.C.,
and University of Maryland).

August 2, 2002:

Anti-Gravity: A Gravity Shield Would Be Very Nice, But. ... Never has an
idea with no prospect for success so captivated corporate research
managers who either never studied or never understood the most basic
laws of physics. Both Boeing in the U.S. and BAE Systems, the British
aerospace giant, are trying to make the Podkletnov gravity shield work.
BAE has already been at it for two years (WN 31 Mar 00), with no
success. When NASA couldn't make the Podkletnov shield work, they
invested another million dollars (WN 22 Jan 99). When it still didn't
work, they decided the tests were "inconclusive" and sank another
million into it (WN 12 Oct 01). I have identified seven warning signs of
bad science at http://www.bobpark.com. The Podkletnov gravity shield
fits all seven. So why would Boeing choose to spend millions to test a
ridiculous claim by an obscure Russian physicist that has failed every
test and is a physical impossibility to begin with? Okay, so the
Pentagon is paying for it. But there's also this goofy book by Nick
Cook, who writes for Jane's Defense Weekly."

Podkletnov's and Ning Li's claims may well be wrong. Park may be right.
I do not know. My own theory based on controlling dark energy does not
depend on their work.

""Book Review: The Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook. If this book is
about controlling gravity, what's with the "zero point"? The confusion
is natural; both lie within the province of fringe scientists who
haven't a clue of where the real world stops and the fantasy world of
Atlantis and UFOs begins."

Park is either really covering up or he is really ignorant of the
relevant physics here. I don't care how big a shot he is at APS. Physics
is a big field and no one person is competent in all parts of physics.
Park does not appear to understand the cosmological constant problem
that zero point energy directly gravitates or anti-gravitates depending
on several factors. He also does not point out that dark energy
anti-gravitates and is ~ 73% of all the stuff in the universe with w =
-1 with small error, hence it is zero point energy. The problem is why
is it so small. I have solved this problem I think. On the other hand
when Park writes that there are a lot of "fringe scientists who haven't
a clue of where the real world stops and the fantasy world of Atlantis
and UFOs begins" he is correct. I know a lot of them. Park thinks I am
one of them. Park's intelligence is sloppy and inaccurate on that. He
has not done his homework and depends only on distorted rumors as was
shown when he met my brother at UMD a few years ago. Park is using a
half truth to discredit all work on UFOs as part of the old coverup now
falling apart from within the ranks of the USG Intelligence Community.
It is true that Himmler's Occult Nazis in the SS Ahnenerbe promoted the
"Atlantis" myth as part of their pseudo-science of Aryan racial
superiority and that their ancestor the Thule Society promoted the
"VRIL" that is now "zero point energy" in some fringe quarters. It is
also true that Podkletnov's father, in the Soviet Army in 1945, got the
plans of the Nazi Bell Machine that is the Daddy of Podkletnov's current
device according to Nick Cook's book.

"Cook is not a scientist of any sort; in his world, these guys are the
insiders. Don't look for them in the pages of Phys Rev; they're not a
bunch of pointy-headed academics. They are part of the black world of
really important top secret stuff like--well, electrogravitics. So who
exactly fed Nick Cook this enormous pile of horse manure? If you're a
regular reader of WN, you've already met them all."

Park is essentially correct on this one. I told Nick this in my two
recent meetings with him in London. However, the truth here is "Grey"
not quite as white as Park paints it and not quite as black as say Nick
paints it. ;-)

Fringe: Where Everything Is Secret, and Nothing Is Impossible. When Cook
set out on his search for "the biggest secret since the atom bomb," he
went straight to the Integrity Research Institute (IRI), in Washington,
D.C., where you can buy books and videos with titles like "Holistic
Physics and Consciousness" (WN 5 Mar 99). IRI is really Tom Valone, a
former patent examiner who lost his job in the fallout from the
Conference on Free Energy (WN 21 May 99). He had recruited Paul LaViolette,"

Hmm! That name rings a bell. I think I just heard it in another context.
I need to check that ... Aha here it is just received a few minutes ago.
Synchronicity strikes again. I will conceal the identity of the author
who is actually a well credentialled physicist:

"You may contact Paul LaViolette at :

<gravitics1@aol.com>

and he wil be able to send you his original work based on his 1985
*prediction* of the Pioneer anomaly, work that was published in refereed
journals. Paul's approach is very different. It is based on his work on
sub-quantum kinetics."

"who claims the B-2 uses anti-gravity, reverse engineered from a crashed
flying saucer. He was also fired (WN 18 Aug 00). They sent Cook to the
Institute for Advanced Study. Not the one at Princeton; the one at
Austin, Texas. It consists of Harold Puthoff, who wants to extract
energy from the zero point of the vacuum. He used to run the CIA's
"remote viewing" program, which was inspired by Mind Reach, a book he
wrote with Russell Targ (WN 11 Mar 94). Finally, Cook sought advice from
Charles Platt, founder of CryoCare, a company that keeps human heads
bobbing in liquid nitrogen until scientists can figure out how to
restart them (WN 21 Jul 00).

August 9:

Anti-Gravity: Was This the Lightweight Story of the Year? The Eastside
Journal in Bellevue, Washington, quotes a Boeing spokesman as saying the
company is not funding any anti-gravity research (WN 2 Aug 02), nor is
it attempting to duplicate Podkletnov's results. Ha! Nick Cook warned us
they would say that. He would say it's just disinformation, part of the
massive government coverup.

August 16:

Cook Book: Fresh Air Offers a Recipe for Stale Baloney. Two weeks ago,
WN dumped as much cold water as one page can hold on the anti-gravity
nonsense stirred up by Nick Cook's goofy book, The Hunt for Zero Point.
We braced for sensational stories in the National Enquirer and on Art
Bell, but where does Cook turn up? Gasp, on National Public Radio's
Fresh Air. "I am not a scientist," Nick Cook admits in a brilliant
understatement, "but I enlisted some help." So who did he enlist? "There
are scientists working right on the cutting edge. ... Dr. Hal Puthoff is
pioneering this whole zero-point energy field. ..." Well, there's a name
we know. One of the first scientists to vouch for spoon-bender Uri
Geller, Puthoff headed the CIA's remote-viewing program, and is said to
have sent his own mind to explore the surface of the planet Mercury (WN
11 Mar 94). Guest host Barbara Bogaev, who also is not a scientist, asks
how anti-gravity machines work? They all spin, Nick Cook explains. "Some
theories say if you spin this zero-point energy field that exists all
around us, some weird and magical things start popping out, one of which
is an anti-gravitational effect." There you have it--an authoritative
explanation on NPR."

Park is right about this one. I told Nick Cook the same thing.

Robert L. Park is director of the Washington office of the American
Physical Society, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, and
author of Voodoo Science.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of
the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

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