Jack Sarfatti

Jack Sarfatti (born September 14, 1939) is a physicist whose reputation for holding controversial and non-mainstream views extends back to the 1970s.

Some of his wide-ranging views have included speculation that some UFOs may be of extraterrestrial origin, claims that some parapsychological phenomena may be real, speculation that faster-than-light communication may be possible, and, most recently, his design for space travel by warping spacetime in the region of the vehicle using dark energy/Josephson junction techniques, a form of "metric engineering". Jack Sarfatti says of himself: "I do not invent nutty physics to replace mainstream physics. I use mainstream physics to investigate apparently nutty phenomena."

Sarfatti has of late called attention to himself by his Internet writings and Usenet postings explaining his theories.

Background

Sarfatti earned an undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1960, where he wrote an honors thesis under the guidance of Hans Bethe. He went on to earn a Master's degree from UCSD in 1967, and a Ph.D. from UCR in 1969, writing a thesis under the direction of Fred Cummings. Afterwards, he taught at San Diego State University and studied as a research fellow under David Bohm at Birkbeck, University of London. In 1973 and 1974, he worked with Abdus Salam at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. He then left academia. Among other activities, he worked at Esalen Institute in Big Sur and 1999-2000 Joe Firmage's ISSO exotic propulsion group in San Francisco with a budget of several million dollars.

Jack Sarfatti claims to be a descendent of Rashi des Troyes (1040-1105), Talmud commentator. He also claims to be related to Margherita Sarfatti, but admits his lack of proof supporting this claim, saying that related documentation would have been destroyed after World War II because of her relationship with Mussolini.

Paraphysics involvement

Sarfatti claims that he was phoned in 1953, at age 13, by a mechanical-sounding voice that claimed to be extraterrestrials from the future. This voice informed him that he was one of a select group and that he would meet up with the others in 20 years, and that he should go out on the fire escape to be picked up. He did, but they did not show. This story is told in detail by Picknett and Prince in their book The Star Gate Conspiracy. It is also mentioned in several other books by Robert Anton Wilson (e.g. Cosmic Trigger), Tim Leary, Ken Kesey (Spit in the Ocean magazine) and others.

On 21 June 1974, Jack Sarfatti, with Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Koestler, David Bohm, John Hasted and others, observed alleged psychic Uri Geller. Sarfatti was profoundly impressed by Geller, and commented: "My personal professional judgement as a Ph.D. physicist is that Geller demonstrated genuine psychoenergetic ability at Birkbeck, which is beyond the doubt of any reasonable man, under relatively well-controlled and repeatable experimental conditions." (Science News, vol. 106; 20 July 1974; page 46). He later revised this opinion after discussing the matter with James Randi. He wrote in a letter, "On the basis of further experience in the art of conjuring, I wish to retract my endorsement of Uri Geller's psychoenergetic authenticity." (Science News, 6 December 1975, page 355). He has, however, since revised his opinion yet again and as of 2005 once again believes Geller's abilities are genuine. He has stated (in 2005) that his change of view was "temporary" and made "under pressure" from Randi and others. [1]

In 1975, he publicly stated that he had "serious information indicating a high probability that extraterrestrial contacts are being made" (in a letter to James Randi, quoted in "Magic and Paraphysics", see below). At about this time he became one of the three co-authors of Space-time and Beyond, published by Dutton in 1975. At this time he postulated that paraphysical occurences could be explained by "non-local quantum connections".

He also filed a patent disclosure on a device to transmit coded information faster than light. Martin Gardner said of this invention, "I know of no other physicist who thinks it will work. If it does Sarfatti will become one of the greatest physicists of all time." (in "Magic and Paraphysics" reprinted as Chapter Eight of Science, Good, Bad and Bogus, Avon, 1981.) Sarfatti subsequently withdrew his support for this particular design, saying that he realized it would not work because it assumed orthodox quantum theory that has the "no-cloning" theorem.

Sarfatti stated in 2005 that he "does think that FTL communication, precisely 'signal nonlocality' does happen as the essential signature of all living matter."

Sarfatti stated in 2005 that he thinks the remote viewing experiments at SRI in the 1970s by Puthoff and Targ are "essentially valid".

Other activities

He also claims to have originated the idea of supersolids in a 1969 paper cited below; this paper has recently received praise from physicists including George Chapline, Jr. (of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory) and David Finkelstein for foreshadowing developments in the 2000s. Leonard Susskind (of Stanford University) has also mentioned discussions with Sarfatti in the early 1960s as contributing significantly to a 1963 paper Susskind co-authored, although Sarfatti is not formally credited.

Criticism

In response to his many claims of having made important discoveries, doing crucially important government work; and knowing or being related to or endorsed by important people, some have reacted with scorn.

Sarfatti was given the Victor von Frankenstein Weird Science Award in December 2004 by the denizens of the alt.usenet.kooks newsgroup [2].

Sarfatti has, on occasion, referred to his claims of doing sensitive government work in order to attempt to silence critics. Typically, he claims that any public criticism of himself or his work can disrupt this work and hence is harmful to the national security. He has also threatened to report critics (including owners of Web sites with articles about him not to his liking) to various governmental agencies (local, state, and federal), often for "harrassment" but occasionally for "aiding the terrorist cause." He has been known to contact employers of his critics to call for their dismissals. He claims that he has only responded in this way to "personal attacks," and asserts that he welcomes "responsible" criticism.

Published works

• Sarfatti, 1963 "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," in Nuovo Cimento, Journal of the Italian Physical Society.
• ----, 1967, "The Goldstone Theorem in the Jahn-Teller Effect," with Marshall Stoneham, Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, cited as a major paper in AIP Resource Letter on Symmetry in Physics, 1980 (done at United Kingdom Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Didcot, Berks. UK)
• ----, 1967, "Laser Self-Focusing Analogue to the Landau-Ginzburg Equation of Type II Superconductivity, Physics Letters.
• ----, 1969, "Destruction of Superflow in Unsaturated 4He Films and the Prediction of a New Crystalline Phase of 4He with Bose-Einstein Condensation", Physics Letters, Vol 30A, No 5, p. 300
• ----, 1970, "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Helium," with Fred Cummings, in Physica (Switzerland)
• - --- 1971, On mini black holes, short note in Nature Physical Science
• ----, 1973, Regge Trajectories as Rotation Black Holes in Strong Gravity, Collective Phenomena, H. Frohlich & F.W. Cummings editors
• ----, 1974, "The Dirac Equation and General Relativity," Foundations of Physics.
• ----, 1975, Co-author with Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben, Space-Time and Beyond., Dutton.
• ----, 1975, chapter "The Physical Roots of Consciousness" in The Roots of Consciousness, by Jeffrey Mishlove, 1st edition, ISBN 0-394-73115-8
• ----, 1977, "Higher Intelligence is Us in the Future", in Spit in the Ocean, Fall, 1977, No. 3. Published by Ken Kesey, edited by Tim Leary
• ----, 1991, "Design for a Superluminal Communications Device," Physics Essays
• ----, 1998, "Beyond Bohm-Vigier Quantum Mechanics," pp 403-410, Causality & Locality in Modern Physics, Vol 97, Fundamental Theories in Physics, ISBN 0-7923-5227-0, Kluwer
• ----, 1998, "Are the Bader Laplacian and the Bohm Quantum Potential Equivalent?", pp 353-358, with M.C. Levit, Causality & Locality in Modern Physics, Vol 97, Fundamental Theories in Physics, ISBN 0-7923-5227-0, Kluwer
• ----, 2002, "Progress in Post-Quantum Physics and Unified Field Theory", pp 419-430, "Gravitation and Cosmology: From the Hubble Radius to the Planck Scale", Vol 126, Fundamental Theories of Physics, ISBN 1-4020-08885-6, Kluwer
• ----, 2002, Destiny Matrix (autobiography), Authorhouse, ISBN 0-7596-9689-6
• ----, 2002, Space-Time and Beyond 2: Dark Energy, Authorhouse, ISBN 1-4033-9022-3
• ----, 2003, Papers at APS Austin & Philadelphia published in APS Abstracts for those meetings.
• ----, 2004, "Wheeler's World" (pp 41-84) Developments in Quantum Physics, ISBN 1-59454-003-9 NOVA Scientific Publishers
• ----, 2004 "Einstein Gravity with Dark Energy and Dark Matter as Sakharov Metric Elasticity" p. 181, GR 17 Dublin, 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation "Book of Abstracts" (also available online).
• ----, 2005, Super Cosmos, Authorhouse, ISBN 1-4184-7662-5

Media

Sarfatti is on several TV Shows on Learning Channel & Wisdom Channel. More videos available at The Sound Photosynthesis Online Catalog.

Paramount Pictures "Star Trek IV" DVD has commentary on time travel by Sarfatti:

"Time Travel: The Art of the Possible runs eleven minutes and 14 seconds and provides information from “three prominent quantum physicists”. We get comments from Dr. Nick Herbert, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, and Dr. Jack Sarfatti." [3]

Sarfatti is interviewed periodically on R. U. Sirius's IPODCAST Radio Network.

External links

• Reality check, an essay by physicist Milton Rothman, reviewing for the skeptic group CSICOP the (apparently defunct) website of something called the Internet Science Education Project, a "corporation" apparently created by Jack Sarfatti
• Crank dot net, a very extensive list of cranky websites
• Part 1 of the net-legends FAQ
• Is Jack Sarfatti a kook or a genius.., a thread from sci.physics
• Disformation (an interview of Sarfatti)
• A Sarfatti website
• a Sarfatti web page containing some snippets of an autobiography by Sarfatti, including photographs of himself on the flight deck of a carrier; see what appears to be Sarfatti's own account of the phone calls mentioned above
• a Sarfatti blog