One of the topics presented in the first semester of the course is relativity from a historical perspective. Topics such as stellar astrophysics and cosmology are presented in the second term. I structured the course so that in the first term students are exposed to historical aspects of physics and astrophysics and the astronomy of the solar system. When I finally obtained my tenure-track teaching position in 2003 with the physics Department of New York City College of Technology, a division of the City University of New York, one of my responsibilities was to develop and teach a core-curriculum, two-semester astronomy course for liberal arts students. Starting in 1990, I tried to translate Harris’ quantum equations for my artist wife C Bangs, who began to use his equations in paintings as a sort of “sacred writing.”Ī second pivotal event in my development as a scientist occurred many years later in a more prosaic context. I was fascinated by Harris’ theoretical work on quantum consciousness although I never suspected that I could advance his cause. Although Al, who sadly passed away a few years ago, had an excellent background in fundamental physics, I gravitated more towards applied physics. Harris co-authored a number of papers with Al and me on aspects of deep-space travel and extra-solar planet detection. He was an expert in plasma and quantum physics and published widely on quantum mechanical aspects of human consciousness. Harris, who sadly died in 2006, worked a day job for much of his career as a physicist at the U.S. The kind and constructive reviewer became our friend and co-author. Our concept became a magnetic scoop proposal for use with the interstellar ramjet and eventually morphed into the “magsail,” a method of reflecting interstellar ions to decelerate a speeding spacecraft that was investigated in depth by Dana Andrews and Robert Zubrin. No, we had not stumbled upon the doorway to the universe! One reviewer rejected the manuscript outright explaining why it was the concept was a “dud.” The second reviewer, in a much kinder mode, discussed how we could retrieve something useful from the concept and publish it in one of the first Interstellar Studies issues of The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. We submitted the manuscript to Science, a foremost journal and eagerly awaited the reviewers’ comments. With a colleague, the late Al Fennelly, I had written a paper describing a magnetic method of interstellar travel that we hoped was a conceptual breakthrough. During the 1970s, when I was a young graduate student pursuing his Ph.D., I had such an encounter. When one engages in such a ”magical” quest in a computer game, he or she often encounters a wise person as guide or teacher. But during the last year or so, this is the quest I have been engaged in. Never did I suspect that I would uncover a clue hinting at the possible emergence of stellar consciousness from myth and science fiction into the realm of speculative science. Never in my wildest dreams that I expect that I would someday consider consciousness-the most researched and least understood topic of contemporary science and ancient philosophy. I have spent most of my scientific career investigating in-space propulsion, interstellar travel, SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), methods of imaging extra-solar planets and planetary atmospheres. What’s more, Matloff lays out the evidence for testing a hypothesis that is perhaps made tongue-in-cheek-but perhaps not. Gregory Matloff examines the paradigm-shifting proposition that the stars might be moving in non-Newtonian manner of their own volition. Is dark matter the twenty-first century’s version of the ether? If so, could a radical alternate explanation be not only plausible, but testable? Renowned space scientist Dr.
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