A collected alternative physics

Start here / 9 minute read

Aether Science Papers

Aether Science Papers is a 1996 volume by Harold Aspden, published by Sabberton Publications of Southampton. It is a collected-papers book rather than a single continuous argument: a 68-page opening commentary titled The Creative Vacuum is followed by fourteen papers reproduced from the scientific periodicals in which they first appeared. The online version of the book presents the commentary as web pages and the papers as PDF files. This article covers the commentary, which is the part reproduced in the available text; the appended papers themselves are referenced but not reproduced, so their internal arguments can only be described at the level Aspden summarises them.

The book's purpose is to argue that the aether — which Aspden calls "the real medium" — is a physically real, structured substrate that can be analysed quantitatively, that it supplies the mechanism behind gravitation and particle creation, and that it can in principle be tapped as an energy source. The organising device for the whole argument is not a new equation but a programme inherited from Sir Arthur Eddington.

Eddington's ratios as the book's platform

Aspden opens by conceding that one cannot build on Einstein's foundations, but argues that one can take stock of Eddington's. In New Pathways in Science (Cambridge University Press, 1935), Eddington proposed that the seven primitive constants of physics — e, m, M, h, c, G and λ — could be reduced to three, matching the three dimensions of energy, length and time, if one could discover what determines four purely numerical ratios:

• (i) M/m, the proton–electron mass ratio
• (ii) hc/2πe², the reciprocal of the fine-structure constant
• (iii) e²/GMm, a ratio linking electric and gravitational forces
• (iv) (2πc/h)(Mm/λ), involving the cosmical constant

Aspden states plainly that Eddington's own attempts to derive these ratios "have not stood the test of time," that Eddington relied on apparent numerical coincidences, and that his theory could not adapt as precision measurements improved. He then asserts that his own theory, presented in the appended papers, "stands up extremely well." The distinction between Eddington's failure and Aspden's success is asserted rather than demonstrated in the commentary: both rest on the same style of dimensionless-ratio reasoning, and the commentary does not supply the derivation that would separate them.

Aspden reports that the appended papers cover the first three ratios. He is dissatisfied with the fourth, the cosmical constant λ, which he calls curiously defined and possibly without real significance given the vagueness of the natural radius of curvature of space-time. His substitute is the Hubble constant, which he proposes as the seventh primitive constant and which he claims can also be deduced theoretically by extending the particle-creation theme that yields M/m (cited to Lett. Nuovo Cimento, 41, 252, 1984).

Particle creation, the mass ratio and the fine-structure constant

The mechanism Aspden offers for the proton–electron mass ratio is the creation of protons from activity involving muons. He cites three papers on the theme: Nuovo Cimento 30A, 235 (1975); Hadronic Journal 11, 169 (1988); and Physics Essays 1, 72 (1988). From this he reports a theoretical derivation of M/m = 1836.152, and suggests that the value might be fine-tuned further in terms of a fundamental energy quantum.

The fine-structure constant is treated in the same way. Aspden reports a theoretical derivation of hc/2πe² = 137.0359, based on the same principles, which he describes as involving an adaptive "fluid crystal" interpretation of the aether. The fluid-crystal image is the book's central picture of the medium: not a rigid lattice but a structure that can adapt and re-order in response to what is placed in it.

The Hubble constant enters through the same particle-creation theme. Aspden's account is that the aether throughout space continually attempts to create matter as protons and electrons, succeeds only sporadically, and usually only transiently, so that the particles have a momentary existence. This quasi-matter — effectively "missing matter" — is present fleetingly everywhere, and its presence attenuates the frequency of electromagnetic waves in transit from the stars. Aspden says the aether is non-dispersive in this connection because it has two dynamic systems that keep each other in balance in a special way. He adds that his objective is not to be drawn into contention with Big Bang theory, though the Hubble-constant derivation and the missing-matter mechanism are cosmological claims that bear directly on it.

Vacuum spin as an energy source

The technological core of the book is the claim that a radial electric field set up inside a conductive medium can displace charge in the aether — "vacuum spin" — and that this state stores energy which can be drawn upon. Aspden's quantitative figures, all traceable to his own earlier publications, are the substance of the argument:

• From his first account of the vacuum-spin induction theory in 1960, the spin charge density is given as 4.781 esu/cc per rad/s of spin.
• In coulomb terms, one micro-coulomb per cc corresponds to aether spin at 6,000 rpm.
• Ten micro-coulombs per cc squeezed into a sphere of 10 cm diameter corresponds to an energy density of the order of 10⁹ J/m³.

The solar argument follows. In a 1977 lecture paper Aspden explained the Sun as created by gravitational attraction between protons, setting up a positive core charge that produces a radial electric field. That charge density is given as G times the Sun's 1.4 g/cc mass density; with G as 6.67×10⁻⁸ in c.g.s. units this yields 3.6×10⁻⁴ esu/cc, which develops a vacuum spin of 7.5×10⁻⁵ rad/s, or one revolution every 23 hours. If the whole present angular momentum of the solar system were returned to the Sun, Aspden's paper reports the Sun would spin at 8.3×10⁻⁵ rad/s, or one revolution every 21 hours. He calls this "close enough" to explain how the solar system acquired its angular momentum from a phase-locked aether, and to support the proposition that energy can be shed by vacuum-spin activity and transferred to matter. A more formal account appears in his 1980 book Physics Unified.

The empirical anchor is ball lightning. In a 1983 paper presented at a U.K. Institute of Physics conference at Oxford, Aspden argued that known thunderball energy densities point to an aether capable of storing energy by spin. He cites Altschuler et al. of the High Altitude Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado (1970), whose suggestion in Nature was that thunderballs might be nuclear powered because they all had an energy density in the range 2 to 5×10⁹ J/m³. Aspden notes this is the same energy density as his vacuum-spin figure. The match is presented as corroboration, but Altschuler et al. proposed a nuclear explanation, not an aether-spin one; the agreement is a numerical coincidence argument rather than a causal demonstration, and the commentary does not adjudicate between the two explanations.

The Earth's magnetism is treated in the same 1983 paper. Aspden argues that if the Earth shares its spin with the aether, two systems are involved, each neutralising the other in electric-charge terms but still producing a magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field is seated in charge displaced in, and rotating with, the Earth; the vacuum charge involved in the aether spin cannot itself develop a magnetic field because it is the reference against which magnetic action is measured. From the strength of the Earth's magnetism he reports calculating the Earth's vacuum-spin charge, and finding a value that constrains vacuum spin — whether in thunderballs, tornadoes or certain homopolar motor experiments — to an energy density of the same estimated order.

The technological claim

The book's conclusion is that the same action can be reproduced in the laboratory. Aspden's formulation is that by adding one joule of energy in one pulsation of the vacuum-spin state, one receives "gratis" a further unit of energy, drawing on the universal energy priming of the aether activity at a jitter angular frequency he denotes Ω. The technological task, as he frames it, is to reiterate this action at a rapid pulse rate, given that a priming radial electric field or spin can be set up effectively. This, he says, takes the aether subject out of philosophical debate and into technology, where the aether can serve as an energy source. The back cover promises "energy in abundance with no risk of pollution."

The commentary presents no experimental demonstration of this tapping, no measured output, and no independent replication. The claim rests on the internal consistency of the vacuum-spin figures and on the asserted match with thunderball energy densities.

Historical lead and the Fermat aside

Aspden traces a historical lead to C. A. Bjerknes, whose investigations around 1877 concerned spheres pulsating in antiphase in an enveloping medium to set up mutually attractive or repulsive forces; he cites page 284 of Sir Edmund Whittaker's A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity: The Classical Theories (Nelson, 1951). Bjerknes is invoked only as a precedent for treating the medium as mechanically active, not as a source of the quantitative results.

A separate strand argues that Fermat's Last Theorem has real relevance to physics, because it concerns the physics of three space dimensions and three physical dimensions such as energy, length and time. Aspden contrasts this "three dimensional world" with what he calls the imaginary mathematical jungle adopted by followers of Einstein, and he declines to hypothesise about negative mass, negative energy and negative time. He argues that concern about the nature of electric charge, rather than the speed of light, provides the more appropriate line of demarcation between aether theory and relativity. This material is polemical framing rather than part of the quantitative argument.

Evidence and limits

The book is a self-published collection of the author's own papers. The numerical figures are internally consistent and traceable to the journal articles Aspden cites, but the commentary offers no independent replication, no experimental demonstration of the energy-tapping claim, and no peer validation of it. The thunderball match is a coincidence argument; the solar angular-momentum argument is a plausibility argument ("close enough") rather than a derivation with error bars; and the claim that Aspden's theory "stands up extremely well" is the author's self-assessment. The commentary also contains an internal tension: Aspden dismisses Eddington's numerical-coincidence method while his own derivations of 1836.152 and 137.0359 rest on the same style of dimensionless-ratio reasoning, and the commentary does not supply the derivation that would distinguish the two. The vacuum-spin energy-source claim sits in tension with conservation-of-energy expectations, and the wiki's existing treatment of Aspden's over-unity material as bounded and unverified applies here as well.

All claims in this article are Aspden's unless attributed otherwise. They should not be transferred to Eddington, whose theory Aspden explicitly says failed; to Altschuler et al., who proposed nuclear power for thunderballs; or to Bjerknes, whose pulsating-sphere work is cited only as a historical lead.

Related work

The book extends the Aspden cluster already in the wiki: Harold Aspden, concepts/aether-cosmology-claim, concepts/vacuum-spin-claim, concepts/over-unity-claim-aspden, concepts/vacuum-reaction-field-claim, concepts/vacuum-lattice-hypothesis-aspden, concepts/synchronous-lattice-electrodynamics and concepts/preferred-cosmic-frame-claim. It connects to the broader aether and over-unity thread running through the Correa, Bedini, Moray and Rota material.

References

• Harold Aspden, Aether Science Papers, Sabberton Publications, Southampton, 1996. ISBN 0 85056 015 2.
• Sir Arthur Eddington, New Pathways in Science, Cambridge University Press, 1935, p. 232.
• Sir Edmund Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity: The Classical Theories, Nelson, 1951, p. 284.
• Aspden, Lett. Nuovo Cimento, 41, 252 (1984).
• Aspden, Nuovo Cimento, 30A, 235 (1975); Hadronic Journal, 11, 169 (1988); Physics Essays, 1, 72 (1988).
• Aspden, Physics Unified, 1980.
• Altschuler et al., High Altitude Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, Nature, 1970.

Keep reading

• Modern Aether Science — Adds context.
• Power From Magnetism — Adds context.
• Standing Wave Interferometry — Adds context.