Models

(StealthSkater)

Now for my own views of Engineering versus Science

... and I have a BS and MS in chemical engineering, minored in nuclear

engineering and numerical analysis, and worked 20 years for the 2 biggest

chemical companies in the U.S., both in production facilities and in their

corporate "think tanks".

Behind every machine is a theory that proposes a Mathematical Model in

terms that our intellect and senses can comprehend. It is important to realize that

completely different theories can predict the same results within certain

boundaries or under given conditions. That doesn't help the "purists" decide

which one is the 'correct' one in the absolute sense, and more "tie-breaking"

experiments will have to be designed.

In the meantime the engineer could really care less about these math

models. As long as they can yield accurate results in their simulations, it is "overkill" to a nuts-and-bolts type which one is the absolute 'right-est'. Now if

one is to design machines that will operate outside of the regimes for which these

models were developed, then that's another story. Else it is perfectly acceptable

to use simple curve-fitting regression models when it is too difficult to

experimentally obtain parameters to plug into these theoretical models. It works

GREAT and saves a heck of a lot of time!

I actually started out as a chemistry major before switching. And my grades

suffered in undergraduate school because I was always trying to understand

the fundamental processes to heat/mass/momentum transport and kinetics.

Until I finally realized that this understanding -- though noble and "pure" -- was

absolutely unnecessary and even counter-productive to 'engineering'.

I'll give you some examples. The most complicated heat exchanger designs

use convective transport models, which themselves are based on simple laminar

flow diagrams. We know this isn't what is taking place. There are more precise

precise theories ("surface renewal" heat transfer, for instance). But a crude

mathematical model is made and then subjected to thousands of experiments

that produce constants for these semi-empirical equations that are valid for a

certain size, shape, flow regimes, temperature/pressure, and all those parameters

like the Reynolds number. They enable engineers to accurately design

commercial-sized units right-on-the-button with the least possible expense.

The chairman of my chemical engineering department was world-renowned

for his catalytic fluidized-bed expertise. Once an engineer from industry gave a

talk about a particular reactor's performance. Dr. Wen was interested to know

how well it fit his model. But when asked what were the sizes of the gas bubbles

as they percolated through the "bed", the engineer said they don't take such

measurements. Dr. Wen appeared dumbfounded. (Maybe that company used

simple regression techniques based upon hundreds of lab tests.) The elegant

models one sees in academia are not always used nor required in the real world.

Now one could make a case that a more rigorous model would maximize profit

by less energy consumption, greater yields, etc. Maybe yes, maybe no. But that

would be belaboring the point here.

My nuclear engineering courses emphasized 'engineering' and not physics. I

was taught that there were more precise models that described a nuclear

reaction. But engineers consistently used a "diffusion" model which they knew

did not represent the kinetics as well as other theories. BUT this model lent itself

to experimentation very well; it was almost impossible to determine numerical

values of the parameters in these other more accurate models.. Hundreds of

fictional diffusion regimes were created to created to model a reactor and -- as in

the case of heat exchanger design -- constants and coefficients in these diffusion

equations could be easily determined. And any size reactor could be designed

at optimum cost. No need to know what is REALLY going on inside. From an

engineering standpoint and the utility power companies. Who cares?!

In the glory days of Heathkit and electronic projects, I did my share of

prototyping and even publishing some of these (the old Popular Electronics and

Radio-Electronics magazines). One project involved a new EXAR-2240 chip.

(I had the civilian and not the military version.) I used a solderless breadboard

to test my design. And I employed the usual test instruments like a VOM and

oscilloscope. I ran into something weird where I could not get the chip to

"re-trigger" when the scope probe was removed. It was driving me crazy. As a

last resort (after a couple of days), I guessed the probe's input impedance was

about 1-Meg and substituted a same value resistor for it. The circuit then

performed as expected. If the resistance was even 820K or 1.2-M, it failed to

work under a 9-volt supply. It was just a 1-M resistor going to (plus) and

another one going to (ground) off the pin-2 input. Shouldn't have mattered in the

slightest. It almost seemed like a microamp of current was being wasted. After

some exhaustive cussing subsided, I wrote Forrest Mims -- who authored all

those Radio Shack IC books -- and he couldn't figure it out either. We ended

up calling the configuration the "stealthskater trigger". But in "proper"

engineering mentality, I could care less as long as it worked.

Once as a process chemical engineer, I was charged with finding out what

was causing color variations in a "catalyst" that was spray-painted onto walls

of portable "self-cleaning" ovens. When I asked the PhD chemist at

corporate headquarters, he said they really didn't know if the materials acted

as a true catalyst (and oxidized the grease) or as a "sponge" with a tremendous

amount of internal surface area. After so many years, the oven walls would

not oxidize (or absorb/adsorb) any more grease and the customer would have

to buy a new oven. Again -- from an engineering standpoint -- nobody cared

what actually was going on. It would be theoretical overkill and would

probably not contribute a penny of profit.

And with the other large corporation, I was modifying a very complex

business model of one of their petrochemical plants in Texas. It started with

the usual kinetic/thermodynamic models and then the economic stuff was

superimposed on top of that. They retained MIT and Case Western researchers

to formulate a customized non-linear global optimization routine. Anyway, the

R&D labs had just produced a new batch of yield data from a new catalyst

formulation in the "cracking" reactors. My job was to produce a model that

could be used in the computer programs. Although I had taken the standard

homogenous fixed-bed and heterogeneous fluidized-bed courses in school --

all producing mathematical models that would tax any PhD on the planet --

we ended up dividing the reactor into fictitious zones (just like in nuclear reactor

design) and using "cubic splines" to regression-fit the data. More than sufficient

for our purposes. And it worked like a charm. Didn't need any of those

graduate-level courses. But I'm sure this approach would appall any

theoretical chemist.

If things proceeded "logically" in this world, physics would give engineers a

hint of the processes to be used to achieve some goal as well as the energy

requirements. Frequently the reverse happens: researchers discover

something which confounds the theorists and the physics books are patched-up.

It even happens in the medical world. It wasn't too long ago when chiropracty

and acupuncture were considered "voodoo" and taboo. Now doctors grudgingly

acknowledge these even they though they still don't know how they work.

Now to the topic of this site. I am not criticizing any of the world-class

theorists who put my intellect to shame. Nor am I going to dwell on the fact

that they're divided into separate "camps" which don't agree with one another.

In the quest to unite General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, there

seems to be several "camps" with their own world-class scholars. Each makes a

good argument as to why their mathematical model/theory is the 'correct' one.

But each has its shortcomings and is constantly being "patched up" with

wrinkles here-and-there. The Higgs and graviton particles may not exist in

reality but the Standard Model can be "fudged" to compensate. If the extra

dimensions predicted by superstring and M-brane theories can't be found,

however, that may spell the end for that theory although it to-date is the only one

that can contain both G-R and Q-M under one mathematical "umbrella" (after

paying the "price" of allowing these extra dimensions). Loop Quantum Gravity

theories are strong competitors here. And for decades alternative physicists have

been arguing the merits of not "conveniently" subtracting Heaviside parameters

from equations believing there is nothing "fictional" about accessing the Zero-

Point Energy field via "scalar time domains".

The Standard Model needs gravitons and Higgs to make it "complete", and it

appears less likely that those particles exist. But the Standard Model has been

"patched" to where it can reliably predict all subatomic events up to such-and-

such energy levels. From an engineering view, that's all that is important

regardless of whether it is based on sound theory, semi-empiricism, or a

plain old regression equation. Nobody cares except the "purists" who don't

have to build working machines.

Critics of the new superstring/M-brane theories say it is a mathematical

"trick". One famous/infamous nuclear lab tech said that "when physicists

don't understand something, they always add another dimension." The

University of Washington just completed one of a series of experiments to

detect these extra dimensions with no success. Maybe they exist and maybe

they don't. But if the model -- which has its roots in Kaluza-Klein theory -- can

predict consistent results, that's all we engineers care about! We want to

BUILD ... not contemplate on the underlying mechanisms. Who knows,

maybe 'reality' depends on more than our normal senses anyway; and the

best we can do is "simulate" it based on what we can measure.

On the flip side, it does irk me when alternative theories are put down by

so-called mainstreamers because they sound too "crackpot-ish". In the final

analysis all of these are just Mathematical Models. Even their's! None of

them may be "correct" in the purest sense. But it doesn't matter to an engineer.

Whatever works to build a machine is the "right" model (whether it

accurately represents reality or not). Somebody "extrapolates" a laboratory

observation and the theorists are challenged to figure out 'why' this works. The

experimentalists want to have some idea on the necessary energy and material

requirements to take it to the next step. They could care less if the phenomenon

involves black holes, pink holes, red energy, 11 dimensions or 11,000

dimensions. Whatever "model" that accurately simulates the phenomena is the

one to use; "reality" is secondary. Then the purists can spend the next 50 years

fine-tuning while everybody has been using these fantastic machines. There may

be times when theories are proposed that cannot be currently validated in any

laboratory. But those should not be used to automatically label other

experimental claims as "crackpottery". Perhaps I'm biased, but I always give

the edge to a visual demonstration over a mathematical model no matter how

elegant it is. How many of our discoveries were "prohibited" by the best

theories of yesteryear?!

A few theories can explain some UFO behavior. Others lie in the advanced

theoretical realm and are awaiting experimental confirmation to decide if they

are appropriate to describe other UFO performances. And yet I am entirely

convinced -- as written above by Dean and others -- that some of these

UFOs exhibit things which are TOTALLY BEYOND our best science

and would reside in the world of "science-fiction". In my opinion, Corso,

Lazar, and others were successful in back-engineering certain "pieces" of UFO

technology based upon present-day Earth materials-engineering and science.

Other things -- such as the remaining items in Corso's "nut file" -- will have to

await for advances in both of these areas.

So when I read about companies like TransDimensions

( http://www.tdimension.com ) and UNITEL

( http://www.stealthskater.com/UNITEL_background.htm ) that propose

laser-based propulsion by generating a Bose-Einstein "distortion" (like a "tractor

beam" in reverse, pulling the vehicle toward a black hole of sorts), I don't dismiss

them just because present-day theories don't understand how it can be done.

Nor do I dismiss the (admittedly disinfo-laden which doesn't help their cause)

claims of "outlandish" things like the Philadelphia Experiment and Montauk

Project, time-travel, remote-viewing and paranormal phenomena. Or Tom

Bearden's stance on scalar waves and reports of rare successes by Tesla, Priore,

Rife, Keely and others. And we might as include the way-out stuff like "orgone

energy" and "ORMEs", too. The one thing these have in common are claims of

removing radioactivity; and I suspect it's really more akin to those effects of

atomic detonation that are still classified long after Hiroshima and which the ETs

seem to be concerned about. I have no clue as to what they are. Only that

there is a one-to-one correspondence with UFO sightings and nuclear weapons

production. And what about von Braun's comments about a pyscho-reactive

or "organic" hull material? And statements made by alleged Project Pounce

participants about viewing the immense inside volumes of a crashed discs that

were impossible by its outside dimensions? (Maybe the mind-machine

interface of these craft and crew was doing a lot more than just navigating

by thought control; maybe the craft itself was being physically altered

inside and out.) And former ELINT Sgt. Dan Sherman who reported that

some of his Project Preserve Destiny "comms" with the "Greys"

( http://www.stealthskater.com/Sherman.htm ) alleged they didn't travel in

time but "through and around time", somewhat reminiscent of Oberth's

alleged observation that some of these craft function more like a "time machine".

(Could this be similar to what Corso last talked about in the above

DATELINE interview?)

I myself have been guilty of being so immersed in a course-of-study that I

couldn't see "outside the box" and view the forest because of all the trees. These

incidents may be another example of Theory lagging Experiment. Whether we

live in a superstring universe, or one governed by LQG, or even reactive to such

obscure notions as "phase density shifting" ( <click> here ) is not as

important to the engineering task of building such machines as whatever

mathematical MODEL does the best job in predicting results that can be

CONFIRMED by experiment. Although mainstreamers are always necessary to

safeguard precious resources including money and manpower, they should not

automatically ridicule something just because it challenges their "common sense"

and formal education. Rather put the burden-of-proof on the claimant and

always be prepared to rewrite the text books. "The proof will be in the pudding"

an operating machine. (Since it doesn't appear that gravitons will be

found, and first results of finding "extra" dimensions have been unfruitful,

and LQG theories have their own problems, maybe a good alternative is

the one Ray Kramer suggests in his"The Equation" made famous by his

famous Missing Person son Philip Taylor Kramer ( <click> here ).

I'll close this discourse with another personal experience. The Professor

Emeritus of our department would always recount the following true story to each

graduating class as a "humility lesson". A master brewer was contemplating

early retirement. His company had many "apprentice" brewers but none of them

could make as fine a batch of beer as he could. He wanted to be used as a

part-time consultant but the company balked. So he remained equally as

stubborn and refused to divulge his secrets that he had discovered over years of

trial-and-error.

The company brought in many engineers and chemists who took notes and

measurements while he made batch after batch. But when they tried to do it

themselves, they were unable to make as "good" a batch as he did. After months

of complex thermodynamic calculations, alternative food chemistry mechanism

proposals, and advanced reaction kinetic models, the company gave in and

granted him a consultant contract in addition to his pension. So he did his part

and told him what his "secret" was:

"I let the temperature rise until just the point when it produces so much

steam that I cannot see the nail pounded halfway into that stud across the

room." The moral, of course, is not to look with disdain on the claims of

"amateur experimenters" -- they just might have uncovered something that

doesn't agree with anyone's best theories!

It wouldn't surprise me to see these new patents and inventions work but by

another mechanism/model than what their proponents propose. And I foresee a

collaboration where -- like the aforementioned medical authorities and "old wives

remedies" -- present-day theorists revise their stance to come to grips what the

"crackpot" experimenters are demonstrating. Then statements like "I cannot

create what I don't understand" (already disproved in the examples cited

above as well as in a million more that take place all-the-time) are reworded to

"I created something which my best theories say is 'impossible' !"

"No door is closed to an OPEN mind !"

"Nothing is impossible ... only mathematically Improbable"