(c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 42)  | |||
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Another layer of cover
Nick Cook's The Hunt for Zero Point examined
David Hambling
Nick Cook is a defence journalist of high repute, having been an Aviation Editor for the authoritative Jane's Defence Weekly for fourteen years. When he says that UFO reports conceal a new technology with the potential to change the world, a technology kept secret by the US military-industrial complex for decades, he should be worth listening to.
Zero Point (8) starts with a news clipping from 1956 turning up on Cook's desk. The article, 'The G-Engines Are Coming', describes how US aircraft companies are working on an antigravity drive which will make jet engines obsolete. When he tries to follow the story up, Cook draws a blank. The only source he can trace is too scared to talk to him. His archive searches turn up electrical anti-gravity experiments in the US by Thomas T. Brown in the 1920s, and a secret 1947 memorandum on disc-shaped UFOs by Lt. General Twining. This states that 'it is within the present US knowledge.....to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object above which would be capable of an approximate range of 7,000 miles at subsonic speeds.' At this point Cook spills his coffee.
The Legend
Delving deeper, he is drawn into The Legend, the story that flying saucers were developed by the Nazis and taken over by the US after the war. There is plenty of information but much of it is contradictory. The lack of corroboration and hard evidence forces Cook to conclude: 'This stuff is unverifiable.' Another strand considers allegations that the B-2 bomber utilises an electrogravitic anti-gravity drive originally developed in the 50s under the code name Project Winterhaven.
Cook travels to Warsaw looking for evidence of SS General Hans Kammler, who was in charge of one of the German projects. He is shown the remains of a Nazi scientific research installation, which his guide claims was used for antigravity tests. (How does he know?). Cook comes to believe Kammler was spirited away to work in the US and that Nazi antigravity was also acquired by the Soviets, where it ended up in the hands of Dr Evgeny Podkletnov. Podkletnov's work, involving the effect of rotating superconductors on gravity, was later been taken up by NASA in their Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program.
The secret at the heart of this is Zero Point Energy. Predicted by quantum theory, ZPE could in theory be extracted from empty space. It opens up the prospect of unlimited free energy, not to mention weapons a thousand times more powerful than the hydrogen bomb. This is strong stuff indeed. The mixture is made even headier with the addition of the Philadelphia Experiment (in which the USS Eldridge was apparently rendered invisible), the Roswell flying saucer crash, and self-styled Area 51 anti-gravity engineer Bob Lazar. Cook admits that there may be embellishment or downright lying involved, but insists that there is a kernel of truth in all of them. He maintains that even if they are disinformation they contain some useful data and his guiding principle is that there is no smoke without fire. Smoke and fire go together in the ordinary world but in the weird and wonderful realm of flying saucers and strange phenomena, different rules apply. Wonderful stories have the power to shake off ugly accretions of fact. Along with the 'aliens must have built the pyramids' theory, the Philadelphia Experiment, Bob Lazar and the rest were discredited some time ago. Cook is aided by a number of sources who, though seemingly very well informed, choose to remain anonymous and uncheckable. None of this helps the credibility of Zero Point.
Flying saucers Of the Third Reich
Cook does not examine the pedigree of Nazi flying saucers, a topic covered by Kevin McClure whose Abduction Watch newsletter was a heroic battle against all forms of UFO lunacy. No Nazi saucers as such were seen during the war, only balls of light known as Foo Fighters. These never seemed to be structured craft and were identical in appearance to ball lightning. Recent research has shown that ball lightning effects can be produced by overlapping beams of radio frequency equipment. Given the many ground and aerial radars in operation at the time, these are a plausible source of Foo Fighters.
Claims that the Nazis were developing circular aircraft date from 1950 - three years after 'flying saucer' had entered the lexicon and speculation was rife. The claims originate from people like Rudolph Lusar (cited in Cook's bibliography) wishing to show that 'the achievements of the German people in the Second World War are almost beyond belief'. Another enthusiast is Ernst Zundel, author not only of UFOs - Nazi Secret Weapons? but also Did Six Million Really Die? which brought him a prosecution under Canada's Holocaust Denial laws.
Many German secret aircraft have been documented. Last Talons of The Eagle by Gary Hyland and Anton Gill lists more than thirty, including an amazing coal-burning interceptor designed by Lippisch who went on to work for the Americans. Nazi aircraft continue to be a source of interest for aviation buffs, partly because the Germans built craft far too dangerous to be considered elsewhere. The infamous Me-163 Komet, for example, was rocket-powered and tended to explode on landing. However, in the aviation press there is not a saucer to be found; they are confined solely to Nazi/UFO fringe literature.
Uncle Sam's own UFOs
General Twinings memorandum from 1947 is misleading, perhaps intentionally so. He lists six traits for the flying discs sighted in UFO encounters: metallic or light reflecting, no trail, circular or elliptical, formation flying, no associated sound, level speed above 300 knots. If Cook had made a few connections he would have realised that the US did build such craft; and antigravity had nothing to do with it. The craft, under projects Gopher, Grandson, Genetrix and Moby Dick, were high-altitude balloons which were sent into the jetstream to overfly the Soviet Union. Launched from Scotland, Norway and Germany, they drifted over the USSR taking photographs. They were recovered in the Pacific, some 7,000 miles away. The balloons match the traits listed in every aspect except speed, though they can exceed 200 knots in the jetstream. Unsurprisingly, they were sometimes mistaken for flying saucers. The man in charge of the balloon spying program was one General Nathan Twining.
Zero point
The evidence for real antigravity or practical use of Zero Point Energy is slight. NASA continues its attempts to replicate Podkletnov's work without success. Ron Koczor, assistant director for science and technology at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre is in charge of the project:
'There is a nearly exact correspondence between the peak gravity effects reported by Podkletnov and the well-known peak in AC resistance in super-conductors. This suggests that.......trapped magnetic fields in the superconductor may disperse partially into the measuring equipment's local environment.'In other words, Podkletnov's device may simply be interfering with the scales. Koczor is keen for the work to continue, although, in his words, 'To say that this is highly speculative is putting it mildly.' NASA are spending $600,000 on antigravity, or about 0.003% of their annual budget.
Cook meets Hal Puthoff, one of the scientists behind the CIA's remote viewing program among other things. Puthoff is a strong believer in ZPE and has a workshop full of ZPE generators - none of which can produce energy. Cook ends up with a man called Hutchinson, who has invented an assemblage of electromagnetic gear that supposedly produces random poltergeist effects, transmutes metals and performs other wonders. This equipment is later confiscated by the dastardly Canadian government for 'safety reasons'.
ZPE appears to be the modern version of the perpetual motion machines and the engines running on water so beloved of backyard inventors. Try an Internet search on 'zero point energy' and you will see what I mean.
Disinformation
In addition to Nazi mythology and an optimistic approach to science, there is a third strand here: deliberate disinformation. The US spends some $30 billion a year on classified aircraft. Secrecy is important as once their capabilities become known, countermeasures can be planned. They are protected not just by a wall of secrecy, but also with a bodyguard of lies.
The B-2 antigravity rumour has its origin in the emerging field of plasma aerodynamics, mentioned briefly and rather inaccurately by Cook. Researchers have shown that it is possible to reduce the drag on an aircraft by surrounding it with electrically-charged gas. This also reduces the shockwave it produces and increases its stealthiness by absorbing radar energy. Northrop, who make the B-2, have been experimenting with this technology since at least 1968, with no results officially announced. It is significant that Ben Rich, working for rival Lockheed, challenged the performance figures quoted for Northop's B-2 design because the drag given was significantly less than it should be for the aircraft's shape. An article in Aviation Week & Space Technology also credited the B-2 with a charged leading edge. A closer look at Project Winterhaven by aviation writer Bill Rose shows that it also involved creating positive charge on the leading edge of the wing to improve airflow and reduce radar cross section. Plasma aerodynamics again, not some kind of electrical antigravity.
The 1956 G-Engine article is not supported by any other documents. In the depths of the Cold War what is more likely: that the US would be publicising important new technology, or that it was simply disinformation?
Plasma aerodynamics is now coming more into the open, having featured in New Scientist in October 2000; and the Russians are offering a system to anyone with the necessary hard currency. However, much remains secret and little has been published on the effect of plasma in the subsonic regime - exactly the kind of work carried out by Northrop. Although perhaps not as exciting as antigravity it opens the possibility for quieter, faster, more fuel-efficient aircraft in the future.
Some scientists have proposed grander ideas. In the 1980s, as part of the SDI program, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute put forward plans for a saucer-shaped craft using plasma technology. Glowing brightly as it flies, this proposed vehicle would be extremely manoeuvrable and almost silent, as well as being faster than any conventional aircraft. Now that's what I call a UFO.
The power of a good story
The Rensselaer craft is probably twenty years away, if it gets funded. There are plenty of other black projects around, from ultra-quiet helicopters to VTOL tactical transports and unmanned strike aircraft. Nick Cook is ideally placed to talk about these, but they are forgotten in the pursuit of mirages. Or rather, decoys. At the beginning of the book, a witness describes seeing the crash of a secret F-117 stealth plane. The crash site is quickly surrounded by SWAT-types brandishing assault rifles, who drive off the spectators with threats and reduce the witness to hysteria. She is awe-struck by the scale of the cover-up afterwards:
'I read they sieved the dirt for a thousand yards from the impact point,' she says. 'They were damned thorough.'Her account gives Cook nightmares about being assassinated in his hotel room by masked commandos. A nice story, but there are much better ways to stop a journalist than bullets.
Ask yourself, did they really sieve twenty-seven million square feet of dirt? Unlikely, but by circulating the story they deterred most souvenir collectors. I found another story saying that after removing the wreckage the crash team sowed the ground with parts of a crashed F-101 Voodoo. Whether this is true is irrelevant: the story is enough to create doubt that any finds come from an F-117. Any traces of secret technology slip away into the shadows of deception and misdirection.
Perhaps the biggest criticism that could be levelled against Zero Point is that tales of USAF antigravity and back-engineered flying saucers have been rehashed so many times already. Much of the material appears in W. A. Harbinson's Projekt UFO (1995) which features Nazi saucers flying from secret bases in Antarctica. Another favourite is The Krill Papers (1988) by 'O. H. Krill' which describes giant underground alien base in New Mexico. In this scenario, the US government has gained saucer technology in exchange for permission for the aliens to mutilate cattle and abduct American citizens.
And why aren't there any aliens in Zero Point? Everybody knows the Nazi technology came from a crashed alien saucer which was recovered from Thuringia in the 1930s....
Zero Point fails to provide either new information or entertainment. Instead it adds another layer of cover, telling us more about the sophistication of the security apparatus protect-ing this subject than it does about the elusive aircraft themselves.
Notes
1 The Hunt for Zero Point, London: Century, 2001, £17.99
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