----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: A historical walk on the wild side
Horace Heffner wrote:
A walk on the wild side:
<http://www.facebase.com/rhodes.html>
Robert Bass addresses Rhodes Scholars at Caltech 5 yrs ago. Note link
at bottom of page.
Regarding the link: Wow. Impressive letter.
I don't know nearly enough to comment intelligently on Mills, but my gut
reaction has never been positive. I find Bass's insinuations very easy to
believe.
-------------------------------------------
I've been aware of Robert Bass for some years, and he is a brilliant
individual of considerable scope. For example, he taught astronomy at BYU. A
number of decades ago, I was following the Velikovsky affair rather closely.
One broad criticism of Velikovsky's 'Worlds in Collision' scenario is the
assumption that the planetray orbits have been observed to be stable for
centuries, and therefore could not possibly have undergone the perturbations
required by Velikovsky *and* settled into stable orbits within historical
time. Bass advanced an anlysis of celestial dynamics based on sophisticated
math which purported to prove that the orbital damping is much higher than
supposed by conventional analysis, and therefore that argument could not be
used against Velikovsky.
Bass was present a Cold Fusion colloquium in 2005, organized by Dr. Mitchell
Swartz. Bass did not speak, and I didn't have a chance to speak to him.
apparently he was there in his capacity as a technical patent attorney.
Steve Lawrence properly characterized Bass's letters as insinuating. I can't
speak to the mathematical analysis, which seems to parallel that made by
Connett and others. As for as the references to gyrotrons, Bass was very
superficial. Procurement of a standard gyrotron microwave amplifier from a
commercial source is in no way similar to the custom design that would be
required by Mills' speculations of the time, and Bass should have known
better if he had actually looked at the situation.
As far as the gyrotron thread, critics on HSG have thought me gullible, but
at the time I criticized the gyrotron idea as fundamentally unfeasible
because its operation requires a hard vacuum with long mean free paths for
electrons. Such is fundamentally incompatable with a BLP plasma as the
source of fast electrons.
Steve is quite ready to accept negative indicators about the Mills affair.
He should put the Bass comments into the context of their time and look more
carefully at the recent experiments for himself, not at other's opinions
about the experiments.
Mike Carrell
