Jack Sarfatti

Dr. Jack Sarfatti

Jack Sarfatti (born September 14, 1939) is an American theoretical physicist and the author of a number of popular works on quantum physics and consciousness. He is known for his iconoclastic ideas, and is interested in what he sees as the breakdown of the paradigm that posits science and the humanities as separate disciplines, arguing that physics — which he calls "the Conceptual Art of the late 20th Century" — weird science has replaced philosophy as the unifying force between science and art. The Universe, As Seen From North Beach

Sarfatti's main interests lie in space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension.weird science His views include speculation that UFOs may be of extraterrestrial origin or could be "terrestrial time ships" originating from our own future; that parapsychological phenomena may be real; that faster-than-light communication may be possible; and that space travel could be achieved by warping spacetime.UFOs and the New Physics

He is the author of Super Cosmos (2005), Destiny Matrix (2002), and Space: Time And Beyond Ii (Dark Energy) (2002), and co-author with Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben of Space-Time and Beyond: Toward an Explanation of the Unexplainable (1982). He is a frequent contributor to Usenet Googl Groups search and has set up a website where he discusses his ideas. Stardrive His views are not accepted by the mainstream scientific community.

Academic background

Sarfatti was born in Brooklyn, New York to Hyman Sarfatti, an Italian Sephardi Jew from Macedonia and his wife Mildred.UFOs and the New PhysicsStephen Schwartz liesMy Story by Hyman Sarfatti (pdf)

He completed his B.A. in physics at Cornell University in 1960, where he wrote an honors thesis under the guidance of Hans Bethe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967. His first published paper, "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," appeared in 1963 in Nuovo Cimento, the journal of the Italian Physical Society.

He obtained his Master's, also in physics, from University of California, San Diego in 1967, and in the same year, "The Goldstone Theorem in the Jahn-Teller Effect," which he co-authored with Marshall Stoneham, was published in Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, and "Laser Self-Focusing Analogue to the Landau-Ginzburg Equation of Type II Superconductivity" in Physics Letters. The Universe, As Seen From North Beach

From 1967-71, he worked as an assistant professor of physics at San Diego State University, obtaining his Ph.D from University of California, Riverside in 1969, where he wrote his thesis under the supervision of Fred Cummings. In 1970, he and Cummings co-authored "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Helium," which was published in Physica Scripta in Switzerland.The Universe, As Seen From North Beach

From 1971-2, he was employed as a research fellow under David Bohm, the American quantum physicist, at Birkbeck College, London.The Universe, As Seen From North Beach

From 1973-4, he worked with Abdus Salam, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. He then left academia. Thereafter, he worked at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, and in 1999-2000 at Joe Firmage's ISSO exotic propulsion group in San Francisco with a budget of several million dollars.

Observation of Uri Geller

Jack Sarfatti with Uri Geller, 2004

On June 21, 1974, Sarfatti was one of a number of scientists and other interested parties — a group that included Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Koestler, David Bohm, and John Hasted — who conducted observations of Uri Geller while the latter displayed what he said was telekinetic energy.

Sarfatti was 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, July 20, 1974, p. 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, December 6, 1975, p. 355). More recently, Sarfatti has retracted his previous retraction and says "I support Uri Geller 100%".

Extra-terrestials

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

Speed of light

Sarfatti filed a patent disclosure on a device to transmit coded information faster than the speed of 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." ("Magic and Paraphysics" reprinted as Chapter Eight of Science, Good, Bad and Bogus, Avon 1981, p.111) Sarfatti subsequently withdrew his support for this particular design, saying that it would not work because it assumed orthodox quantum theory that has the "no-cloning" theorem.

Supersolids

Sarfatti says that he originated the idea of supersolids in a 1969 paper that has recently received praise from physicists including George Chapline, Jr. of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and David Finkelstein for foreshadowing developments in the 2000s.

Glogower Susskind paper

Leonard Susskind of Stanford University has said that discussions with Sarfatti in the early 1960s contributed significantly to a 1963 paper Susskind co-authored. Susskind, who is the author of The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and The Illusion of Intelligent Design (2005), wrote in 2004 that the Glogower Susskind Paper of 1963, which introduced phase operators for a quantum oscillator, ought to have included a credit to Sarfatti.

Criticism

A graduate seminar taught by University of Campinas, Brazil mathematics professor Waldyr Rodrigues, which looked for mathematical errors and inconsistencies in physics papers published in scientific journals or posted on the arXiv online physics preprint archive, recently focused on some of Sarfatti's concepts and methods. In his paper "A Comment on Emergent Gravity," posted on arXiv, Rodrigues cited alleged mathematical inconsistencies in the first version of Sarfatti's recent paper "Emergent Gravity: String Theory Without String Theory," Emergent Gravity: String Theory Without String Theory calling it a "potpourri of nonsense Mathematics," and said that later revisions of the paper also contained errors. A Comment on Emergent Gravity

Publications

Written works

*Sarfatti, Jack. 2006, "Emergent Gravity: String Theory Without String Theory", ArXiv.org.
*, 2005, Super Cosmos, AuthorHouse. ISBN 1-4184-7662-5
*, 2004, "Einstein Gravity with Dark Energy and Dark Matter as Sakharov Metric Elasticity", GR17 Dublin 2004: 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation: Book of Abstracts, p. 181.
*, 2004, "Wheeler's World", Developments in Quantum Physics, NOVA Scientific Publishers, pp 41-84. ISBN 1-59454-003-9
*, 2003, "Macro-Quantum Origin of Gravity and Quintessence", Papers at APS Austin & Philadelphia published in APS Abstracts for those meetings. Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Vol 48, No 1, Part II, N35-6, p. 832.
*, 2002, Space-Time and Beyond 2: Dark Energy, AuthorHouse. ISBN 1-4033-9022-3
*, 2002, Destiny Matrix, AuthorHouse. ISBN 0-7596-9689-6
*, 2002, "Progress in Post-Quantum Physics and Unified Field Theory", Gravitation and Cosmology: From the Hubble Radius to the Planck Scale (Series: Fundamental Theories of Physics, Vol 126), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp 419-430. ISBN 1-4020-08885-6
*, 1998, with M.C. Levit, "Are the Bader Laplacian and the Bohm Quantum Potential Equivalent?", Causality & Locality in Modern Physics (Series: Fundamental Theories in Physics, Vol 97), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp 353-358. ISBN 0-7923-5227-0
*, 1998, "Beyond Bohm-Vigier Quantum Mechanics", Causality & Locality in Modern Physics, (Series: Fundamental Theories in Physics, Vol 97), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp 403-410. ISBN 0-7923-5227-0
*, 1991, "Design for a Superluminal Signaling Device,", Physics Essays, Vol 4, No 3, Sep 1991, pp 315-336.
*, 1977, "Higher Intelligence is Us in the Future", in Spit in the Ocean, Fall 1977, No. 3, Ken Kesey, pub., Tim Leary, ed.
*, 1975, "The Physical Roots of Consciousness" in Mishlove, Jeffrey, The Roots of Consciousness, pp 279-290. ISBN 0-394-73115-8
*, 1975, Space-Time and Beyond, with Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben, E. P. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-47399-8
*, 1974, "The Dirac Equation and General Relativity," Foundations of Physics.
*, 1973, "Regge Trajectories as Rotation Black Holes in Strong Gravity", Collective Phenomena, H. Frohlich & F.W. Cummings, eds.
*, 1971, "On mini black holes", short note in Nature Physical Science.
*, 1970, "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Helium," with Fred Cummings, in Physica Scripta (Switzerland).
*, 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, Nov 1969, pp 300-301.
*, 1967, "Laser Self-Focusing Analogue to the Landau-Ginzburg Equation of Type II Superconductivity", Physics Letters.
*, 1967, "The Goldstone Theorem in the Jahn-Teller Effect", with Marshall Stoneham, Proceedings of the Physical Society|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).
*, 1963 "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," Nuovo Cimento (journal of the Italian Physical Society).

Broadcast

*Sarfatti appears on several television shows on the Learning Channel & Wisdom Channel, and is interviewed periodically on R. U. Sirius's IPODCAST Radio Network. Videos of his appearances are 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." Star Trek IV commentary
*Sarfatti's ideas on physics and consciousness have been cited in a number of popular and scholarly books, including Bohemia by Herbert Gold, Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension by mathematician Rudy Rucker, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will edited by philosopher Robert Kane, White Holes by physicist John Gribbon, Rocket Dreams by Marina Benjamin, books by Stanislav Grof, Dancing in the Light by Shirley MacLaine, and The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav.

Jack Sarfatti: Encyclopedia BETA

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