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Non-technical philosophy from the book http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anomp.htm 18june07 animations relate to pulse not step, but still illustrate the physics of "The Catt Question". The Catt Anomaly Science
beyond the Crossroads Ivor Catt Westfields Press, 121 Westfields, St. Albans AL3 4JR, England 1996,
2001 First published in 1996 http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/wbbanbk1.htm Republished with additions in 2001 Computer files nos. 19manbk1, 19nanbk1, 166anbk2, 16danbk3, wa8anbk4 16ganbk5, 074anbk6, 16kanbk7, 178anbk8 18sanbk9, w98jakv, w9aspine, w9ajaku Copyright Ivor Catt 1996 [Original ISBN was 0 906340 13 6] British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data Catt, Ivor The Catt Anomaly : science beyond the crossroads - 2nd ed. 1. Electromagnetic theory I. Title 530.1'41 ISBN: 0 906340 15 2 19nanbk1 Contents Page iv Preface
to 2001 Edition Meeting with
Huxley 1 Introduction 3 The
Question Definitive
formulation of The Catt Anomaly 4 University
of Cambridge Letter from Pepper 6 University
of Bradford Letter from McEwan 9 Institution
of Electrical Engineers Letter
to the I.E.E. 10 Reply
from Secker 13 The
repeat experiment Letter
to the I.E.E.E., New York Reply
by Mink 15 Sundry
letters to Mink 17 The
background Why
did I latch onto the Catt Anomaly? 18 The
Earlier Background My
career 20 Knowledge
is Property He
who brings new knowledge is a vandal Definition
of new knowledge 22 Strategy 23 Philosophy Relativity 25 The
Remedy 26 AIDS:
The failure of contemporary science 27 Black
is White Theocharis 28 The
End of Error 29 The
Description Theories
become Descriptions 31 Appendix
1 The Rise and Fall of Bodies of
Knowledge 38 The
scientific reception system as a servomechanism 41 Appendix
2 Battery
drives load via long transmission line. Mathematical analysis. 44 Appendix
3 What Conspiracy? Letter to Wireless World 46 Appendix
4 I.E.E. Review of my 1994 book 47 Appendix
5 The Betrayal of Science by 'modern
physics' 49 Appendix
6 The Conquest of Science 55 The
log-jam identified 56 1999
letter to Establishment members. p62,
McEwan reply 58 Further
Reading 59 Lynch/Catt
1998 I.E.E. paper on The Catt Anomaly 62 McEwan's
Snow Job 67 Letter
from Andrew Huxley 68 Catt's
reply 70 Footnote [71 Invitation
to speak to Cambridge University Engineering Society] Preface to 2001 Edition On 6th May 2000, Sir Andrew Huxley, Master of Trinity 1984 - 90;
President of the Royal Society 1980 - 85; (joint) Nobel Prizewinner for
Physiology or Medicine 1963, was Master of Ceremonies at Trinity College High
Table. Ivor Catt, as a member of
Trinity, is allowed to bring a guest to High Table once per year. Although
Sir Andrew invited me to sit next to him during dinner, I placed my
Physiology guest from Dublin next to him instead. Later, upstairs, where I sat next to him, while the Combination
Wines; Ch Guiraud 1988, Ch Lynch Bages 1982, and Warre 1970, went round with
the Stilton, I began by regaling Sir Andrew with the contents of my article
"The Clever take the Brilliant" (on my website), which he found
very interesting. I said that my special interest was censorship in science,
and that I had lectured on it to the Ethical Society in London. Sir Andrew
said it had not occurred to him that professionals might block scientific
advance because it threatened their careers. However, he then volunteered
that, to his great regret, a great deal of very good work in his field early
in the twentieth century had been suppressed, and had disappeared from the
record. He also cited the neglect of Mendel, also in his field. I then took him through the case of the Catt Anomaly. He told me
that he knew Pepper. After half an hour to an hour, when I said that I did
not need to tell him more, because my book The Catt Anomaly was in the
library of Trinity College, he said he would get the book out. That night, back at home in St. Albans,
I put what he had said onto my website, and sent him a copy. He replied by
letter, see p67. [sep01
Catt was invited to speak to the Cambridge University Engineering
Society on The Catt Anomaly on 15nov01. See p71 and www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/07091.htm ] 1caanbk2 Introduction "Although the principle of free communication of ideas is a
basic tenet of the scientific community, there are numerous examples of their
suppression. Professor Herbert Dingle, who wrote a book on relativity in the
1920s as well as the section on relativity for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and
was the man chosen by the BBC to give the eulogy on Einstein when he died,
developed doubts about the special theory of relativity around 1955. To his
astonishment, he found that the scientific journals and institutions suddenly
closed their pages and doors when he wanted to say something unorthodox; that
is, heretical. A scientist might say, 'something that was incorrect'. He
describes his experience in his book, Science at the Crossroads, pub. Martin
Brian O'Keefe, London, 1972." The above paragraph is the start of my 1978 article "The
Rise and Fall of Bodies of
Knowledge", reprinted here in appendix 1. The present book takes us forward 25 years from the experience
of Dingle, a Quaker like me, with whom I once talked briefly on the
telephone. Dingle's centrepiece was the Twin Paradox, which I argue is a
kosher argument; the one argument that is allowed at the fringe of relativity
theory. Louis Essen, elected FRS for developing the Caesium clock, told me
that Dingle queered the pitch by making a mistake. Essen also told me that he
himself had been suppressed. His most exciting story was that the Institute
of Physics broke its contract with Essen to publish an article of his even
after he had checked the galleys. The Inst. Phys. also broke its contract
with me to publish the article which later appeared in Wireless World in
March 1979. The case of the Catt Anomaly goes to the heart of elementary
electrical theory. It is much simpler and much more important than Dingle's
Twin Paradox. The best introduction to the politics of knowledge in science,
and the best scientific demonstration that the scientific Age of Reason is
over, is to study the present status of the Catt Anomaly. The reader can stop
here and test the following proposition for himself. No scientist is willing
to take a scientific approach to the problem of suppression in science - the
allegation of widespread censorship, to be tested by the usual criteria of
repeatability, corroboration, Popper's falsification and the rest. Try to get
a scientist to remain a scientist when addressing these matters! He will
start talking about Catt's paranoia or egotism, which are not scientific
concepts. Perhaps more properly called 'The E-M Question', the Catt
Anomaly is an elementary question about classical electromagnetism which
experts refuse to answer in writing. We will first consider the contradiction
between Pepper and McEwan, and the response of London's Institution of
Electrical Engineers (IEE) to the problem created by this contradiction. It is important for the reader to keep struggling with the
problem until absolutely convinced that it is beyond his comprehension.
Unlike the Twin Paradox, the Catt Anomaly is an elementary problem in
electricity which most people with a B grade pass in GCSE Physics should be
able to understand well enough for the purpose of reading this book. When a battery is connected to a resistor via two parallel
wires, a current flows which depends on the voltage of the battery and the
resistance of the resistor. Also, electric charge appears on the surface of
the wires, and we concentrate on the electric charge on the bottom wire. In
the case of a 12 volt car battery and four ohm car headlight bulb, the
electric current is three amps and the resulting power in the lamp is 36
watts. Consider the case when the battery and lamp are connected by two
very long parallel wires, their length being 300,000 kilometres. When the
switch is closed, current will flow immediately into the front end of the
wires, but the lamp will not light for the first second. A wave front travels
forward between the wires at the speed of light, reaching the lamp after one
second. This wave front comprises electric current, magnetic field, electric charge and electric field. Negative
charge appears on the surface of the bottom wire. All of this is agreed by
all experts. The question asked by
the Catt Anomaly is where this charge on the bottom conductor comes from, and
the answers given to this elementary question are contradictory, with the
academic establishment split down the middle. Half of the academics, led by
McEwan, say that the charge comes from the battery to the west and reaches
its proper place along the bottom conductor without having to travel at the
speed of light. The other half of the
academics, led by Pepper, say that it is impossible for the charge to
come from the west because it would have to travel at the speed of light,
resulting in the charge having infinite mass. Pepper says that at the moment
when charge is needed to help the wave front along, it comes to the surface
of the wire from inside the wire, travelling at right angles to the direction
of the wave front. More technical discussion of battery and lamp, taken from my
book "Electromagnetics 1", is in Appendix 2. The standard version of the Catt Anomaly, as presented to Pepper
and McEwan and the IEE, is on page 3. January 2000. In 1998 the IEE published
a paper discussing the Catt Anomaly. See page 59 and http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/y7aiee.htm For more information, see www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk and www.ivorcatt.com Ivor Catt is at ivorcatt@electromagnetism.demon.co.uk Animation of the Catt Anomaly http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/catanoi.htm p3 CATT'S ANOMALY The
Question
Traditionally. when a TEM step (i.e. logic transition
from low to high) travels through a vacuum from left to right, guided
by two conductors (the signal line and the 0v line), there are four
factors which make up the wave; - electric current in the conductors - magnetic field, or flux, surrounding the
conductors - electric charge on the surface of the conductors
- electric field, or flux, in the vacuum
terminating on the charge. The key to grasping the anomaly is to concentrate
on the electric charge on the bottom conductor. During the next 1 nanosecond,
the step advances one foot to the right. During this time, extra negative
charge appears on the surface of the bottom conductor in the next one foot
length, to terminate the lines (tubes) of electric flux which now exist
between the top (signal) conductor and the bottom conductor. Where does this new charge come from? Not from the
upper conductor, because by definition, displacement current is not the flow
of real charge. Not from somewhere to the left, because such charge would
have to travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. (This last sentence is what
those "disciplined in the art" cannot grasp, although paradoxically
it is obvious to the untutored mind.) A central feature of conventional
theory is that the drift velocity of electric current is slower than the
speed of light. [Published in Electronics & Wireless World sep84,
reprinted sep87. For further information on the Catt Anomaly, see letters in
the following issues of Wireless World; aug82, dec82, aug83, oct83, dec83,
nov84, dec84, jan85, feb85, may85, june85, jul85, aug85.] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ p4 1caanbky Trinity College, Cambridge, wrote to
past members of the college including myself asking for money to finance
their expansion programme. They argued that Trinity had been in the forefront
of academic advance, and my money would help to keep them there. I replied that Trinity and Cambridge had
for twenty-five years refused to comment in any way on Catt's theories on
electromagnetism, and for ten years on the Catt Anomaly, a problem in
classical electromagnetism, of which I enclosed a copy (above). I suggested
to Atiyah, Master of Trinity, a mathematician, that he cause his leading
expert to comment. The result was the following letter from Pepper. I also
include a part of his later letter to my colleague Raeto West, which
clarifies his position; UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS CAVENDISH LABORATORY MADINGLEY ROAD CAMBRIDGE CB3 0HE From: Professor M. Pepper,
FRS June 21, 1993 Ivor Catt, Esq., 121 Westfields, St Albans AL3 4JR Dear Mr Catt, As a Trinity physicist the Master suggested that I
might provide some comments on the questions raised in your recent letter to
him on aspects of electromagnetic theory. If I understand the position correctly, your
question concerns the source of the charge at a metal surface which by
responding to the presence of the EM wave ensures that the reflectivity of
the metal surface is virtually unity, hence providing waveguide action and
related applications. If I may restate the basis of your question, what is
the maximum frequency of radiation which is reflected? It is this parameter
rather than light velocity which is important. The solution lies in the
maximum frequency response of the electron gas, which is the plasmon
frequency w p and is calculated in a
straightforward way. If light frequency is greater than w p
then the electron gas in the metal can no longer respond and the
reflectivity tends to zero. The problem you are posing is that if the wave is
guided by the metal then this implies that the charge resides on the metal
surface. As the wave travels at light velocity, then
charge supplied from outside the system would have to travel at light
velocity as well, which is clearly impossible. The answer is found by considering the nature of
conduction in metals. Here we have a lattice of positively charged atoms
surrounded by a sea of free electrons which can move in response to an
electric field. This response can be very rapid and results in a polarisation
of charge at the surface and through the metal. At frequencies greater than w p
the electron gas cannot respond which is the reason for the
transparency of metals to ultra-violet radiation. However for frequencies
used in communications the electron gas can easily respond to the radiation
and reflectivity is unity. If a poor conductor is used instead of a metal, i.e.
there are no freely conducting electrons, then there is no polarisation, and
as you point out charge cannot enter the system, and there can be no surface
field. Consequently reflection of the radiation will not occur at these low
frequencies and there is no waveguide action. I hope that these comments provide a satisfactory
explanation. Yours sincerely, [signed] M Pepper cc: Sir Michael Atiyah - Trinity College [Master] Mr. A Weir - Trinity College Telephone: 0223 337330 August 23, 1993 Dear Raeto West, I write with reference to
your letter of August 19. Your description of the process is correct; as a
TEM wave advances so charge
within the conductor is polarised and the disturbance propagates at right
angles to the direction of propagation of the wave .... .... Yours sincerely, M Pepper The portions of Pepper's letter which strike you as either too
erudite for your comprehension or else as drivel, are drivel. Generally, he
has copied out irrelevant slabs of material from text books. Portrait of a Drivelmaster;
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/annualreport/1996-7/c.html This was an exciting development. For the previous decade, all
experts, when trapped into commenting, had insisted that the charge came from
the west, and did not have to travel at the speed of light. Now we had an
accredited expert, writing under instruction from his boss, saying that the
charge could not come from the west, but came from the south. There the matter rested for two years, until a group of mature,
dissident Combined Humanities undergraduates at Bradford University organised
a week-end conference entitled "What is Education For?" I offered
to give a paper entitled "The Politics of Knowledge in Science".
This was accepted, Kathy Symonds telling me that I served a useful function,
because apart from me they had failed to link up with science, and also
because the lecturers who asked to speak all turned out to be Establishment,
which I was not quite. This was the second time that I became kosher for a short period
in a university, admittedly only Bradford, and so had more power to elicit
rational comment on science. As part of my presentation, I asked Kathy
Symonds in advance to ask the appropriate official to instruct the top expert
to comment on the Catt Anomaly. Here is her letter, and McEwan's reply. Dear Professor John
Gardner [Dean of Engineering] As part of our program,.
"What is Education For?", we need comment from the accredited Bradford
University expert on the subject below. I shall be very grateful if you send
me written comment before the start of our seminar on 22apr95. Thank you very much for
your time and trouble [signed] Kathy Symonds. P.S. I enclose an S.A.E. for your reply. p6 To Kathy Symonds 20 April 1995 Phone 01274-384006 Dear Kathy, John Gardiner has passed
this on to me - I think I can claim to be reasonably competent to discuss it. To deal first with the
problem raised in "Catt's Anomaly", there is definitely a correct
answer, and it is just that the new charge required in the one foot of cable
DOES flow from somewhere to the left! The charges DON'T have to travel at
anywhere near the speed of light to do this! The sentence that begins
"Not from somewhere to the left ....." is fallacious ... such charge would NOT have to travel at the
speed of light in a vacuum! The reason that the sentence cannot be grasped by those
"disciplined in the art" is because it happens not to be true!!! It
may be obvious to the untutored mind because they haven't had the theoretical
training to see why it is wrong. It is exactly at the point where the
assertion seems really obvious that you need to think most clearly to see
where the logical deduction is unsound - and perhaps this is where the lesson
for educators lies. The heart of the fallacy is as follows: (a) If the voltage step
originally at a transverse plane "A" on the conductors moves one
foot to the right to a plane "B" (indeed about one nanosecond
later) then it is true that a certain amount of charge must have entered the
portion of the conductors between A and B. What is not true, however, is that
any of the electrons that were in the neighbourhood of A actually had to
travel to B to keep up the wave! (b) The charge that appears
between A and B is required to be uniformly distributed along the length
between A and B. This charge really does enter at plane A - so how is it
possible that the electrons didn't have to rush to the right at the speed of
light? - I will now explain:- (c) When the wires are
electrically neutral, they are actually composed of vast numbers of positive
charges and negatively charged electrons in equal densities - the total
charge balances out. The thing we call the "charge on the line",
which is required to account for the voltage wave is actually the unbalance
between the two sets of charges. (d) Imagine that, between A
and B, you have 100 electrons and 100 positively charged nuclei arranged
uniformly in pairs along one foot distance. There is no net charge. (e) Now imagine that you
push in one extra electron in at the left hand side A, and you squash the
electrons up a bit so that they remain evenly spaced but now 101 electrons
fill the distance that was previously occupied by 100. There is now a total
of one unit of "charge on the line" between A and B, and, rather
surprisingly, this unbalanced charge actually appears to be fairly uniformly
distributed between A and B. The electron originally at A would only move
about 1/100 of a foot as you squeezed the electrons closer together, and it
would have to move this distance in the one nanosecond it took for the
voltage wave to move from A to B. The electrons further to the right would
move even less. (f) If you imagine that you
did this again with a larger number of positive and negative charge pairs -
say 1000 becoming 1001, then as you squeezed in the extra electron the one
next to it would only have to move up about 1/1000 of a foot in the one nanosecond - and so on. If you go on increasing the
density of available charges, you can easily see that the velocities required
of the electrons to produce one unit of unbalance becomes smaller and
smaller. (Also, the one unit of unbalance appears to be more and more uniformly
distributed across the one foot of distance.) It turns out that when you
"put the numbers in" that the real number of free electrons in the
one foot wire is colossal, and that consequently they only need to move at
walking pace or less! You can summarise all this
by saying that the "charge" that is required to account for the
voltage across the line is not produced simply by a small number of charges
moving in to the section of line but by a very slight redistribution of a vastly
larger number of charges that were already in that section! Putting it in
still another way again, there has been a confusion over the identity of the
charges that account for the voltage across the line. You can go on describing
this problem at deeper and deeper levels and it will go on revealing more and
more interesting physics - which soon gets very hard. For example, there is a
quite noticeable effect because you do need some force to keep the electrons
moving against the collisions with the stationary atoms. This appears as
resistance in the line and it can cause the advancing voltage step to become
distorted, ie it smears out into a more gradual step. At a higher level of
precision there is even a very small effect from the finite acceleration of
the electrons. As the voltage step passes over them, the local electrons in
the conductor are accelerated (very rapidly!!!) to the very small speed that
is needed. There is no paradox about the rapid acceleration of the particles,
they are very light. This produces an extremely small effect on the velocity
of the wave travelling down the line, but you would not be able to detect it
at the frequencies used in ordinary electronics. I hope this has helped and
given you something to think about. The "anomaly" is very instructive
educationally, it is a real challenge for the teacher to explain clearly, and
a very good example of how fruitful it can be to be wrong about something! Turning more generally to
your 2 - day event, I am extremely intrigued about how "Catt's anomaly"
came into the discussion. I do realise that progress has often been made by
challenging orthodoxies, but in the case of Catt's problem I happen to think
that the accepted theory gives a pretty good account, but you can learn a lot
if you are really made to set out how. I would be very interested to hear
what you make of my comments, and how they have been used in your event. Best wishes [signed] Neil McEwan (Dr.),
Reader in Electromagnetics [University of Bradford] [Copy typed by I Catt, 1oct95] p8 1caanbk3 McEwan was the orthodox response that I
had been waiting for. I had not previously had it styled 'ex cathedra'; that
is, stated by the accredited expert from an institution (Bradford
University), under instruction from the appropriate top official of the
institution (Dean of Engineering). I was now in a position to approach the
accredited learned institution and ask them to help. This was a better chance
to get rational comment on scientific fundamentals than I had had during the
previous quarter of a century of searching. I had to tackle it in the best
possible way, using comprehension and techniques that had developed since
Dingle's day, as the whole of twentieth century science slid deeper into the
morass of its own careful devising. Here was the best chance to
scientifically establish the facts about today's science; possibly the last
chance. I took the Pepper/McEwan contradiction
to the head of the IEE. Ivor
Catt, 121 Westfields, St.
Albans AL3 4JR, England (01727
864257) 26may95; Second copy sent 27june95 Third copy sent 18aug95 Fourth copy sent 3sep95 The
Secretary, Institution
of Electrical Engineers, Savoy
Place, London. WC2R 0BL (0171 240 1871) Dear Dr.
J. C. Williams, The Catt Anomaly. An
essential component of classical electromagnetism remains unstated. There is
disagreement about this feature by accredited experts, Professor Howie FRS,
Professor Pepper FRS, McEwan Reader in Electromagnetics, but no discussion by
them to resolve the matter. Is the IEE
the accredited institution with a primary responsibility for Electromagnetic
Theory? How does the IEE proceed in a situation like this, where the theory
which is the basis for its raison d'être turns out to be unstated and
unclear? Yours
sincerely, Ivor Catt encl. 21june93
statement on the Catt Anomaly by Pepper 20apr95
statement on the Catt Anomaly by McEwan apr95 Half
page note from Symonds to McEwan plus description of the Catt Anomaly Catt
letter to Electronics and Wireless World, May95 [end of encl.] Summary of
disagreement, or confusion, in classical electromagnetism, below. Summary of disagreement. "Dear Professor John Gardiner, As
part of our [Bradford university] program, 'What is Education For?', we need
comment from the accredited Bradford University expert on the subject
below" - Kathy Symonds, 4apr95. "[Professor] John
Gardiner has passed this on to me - I think I can claim to be reasonably
competent to discuss it.... .... the
new charge required in the one foot of cable DOES flow from somewhere to the
left! The charges DON'T have to travel anywhere near the speed of light to do
this! .... It may be obvious to the untutored mind [plus Pepper FRS]
because they haven't had the [Bradford univ.] theoretical training 1.... The [Catt] 'anomaly' is very instructive
educationally...." - Neil McEwan
(Dr), Reader in Electromagnetics [Bradford University], 20apr95. "....
As the wave travels at light velocity, then charge supplied from outside the system [i.e. from the left, or
west,] would have to travel at light velocity as well, which is clearly
impossible. ....we have a lattice of
positively charged atoms surrounded by a sea of free electrons which ....
move in response to an electric field...." - Pepper, 21june93. "....
as a TEM wave advances so charge within the conductor .... propagates at right angles to the
direction of the wave. ...." Professor
M. Pepper, FRS., Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, 23aug93. "Institution of Electrical
Engineers - to promote the general advancement of electrical science and
engineering and their applications, and to facilitate the exchange of
information and ideas on those subjects; 130,000 members." President Sir
David Davies - from p1557 of
"The World of Learning 1995", Europa Pubs. Ltd. (italics by I.C.) As you will see from the dating of my
letter, the reply, from Williams' deputy, was long in coming. I learned later
that Williams and Secker were new men, anxious to show more willing than
their predecessors. This led them into the quagmire. The new broom got stuck
in old, sticky cobwebs. p11 Dear
Mr Catt Thank
you for your letter of 18 August, to which the Secretary, Dr Williams, has
asked me to respond. Firstly,
I should mention that we have had your book reviewed and that the resulting
report will be published in the Electronics and Communication Engineering
Journal - either in the October or December issue. [Actually oct95.] The
Institution has a responsibility to 'promote the general advancement of
electrical science and engineering and their applications and to facilitate
the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects to the members of the
Institution'. The general view of the experts within the IEE is that the
so-called 'Catt anomaly' is not an anomaly at all, and does not, therefore,
require discussion or exposition. The favoured explanation aligns with the
statement to which you refer, attributed to Professor Pepper, namely that as
a TEM wave advances, so charge separation occurs close to the conductor
surface effectively giving a transitory current flow at right angles to the
direction of wave propagation. Yours
sincerely [signed] Professor Philip E Secker Deputy
Secretary IEE 4sep95 Secker was politically inept to admit
that the IEE had a responsibility in this matter, and in so doing he betrayed
the forces of darkness. However, he showed better obfuscatory tactics by
introducing the irrelevant question of the review of my latest book, which
had been hanging over the IEE for more than a year. (Up to that date, there
had been no evidence in IEE literature that Catt had ever contributed to
electromagnetic theory. Except for the belated admission, fifteen years too
late, of his contribution in another field, Wafer Scale Integration, Catt
remained a non-person. The reader can learn about all these matters in Catt's
may95 letter to Electronics World + Wireless World, reprinted here as
appendix 3. Its present editor Eccles has since turned chicken and will not
publish anything more by Catt.) The important point is that Secker wrote
that his IEE experts had backed the wrong horse, opting for Cambridge with
its aberrant Pepper; (defying Gauss's Law by) producing charge from the south
from inside the conductor like a rabbit from a hat. The IEE opted for
prestige rather than for the more tenable explanation from lowly Bradford;
that the charge came from the west, and somehow managed to do so even though
it travelled too slowly. The IEE did not know that Pepper's boss Howie FRS
was a Westerner, or they would have gone for his revered Cavendish seniority,
and avoided the quagmire. The Westerner view could have been brazened out,
and had been for the previous decade since the discovery of the Catt Anomaly
in aug81, for instance in many letters to Wireless World. Pepper's ingenious
but mad Southerner view could not. I now no longer had to take sides, but
only to get Westerners and Southerners to resolve their differences, a task
which was to prove Herculean, as I expected. That is, I knew that the forces
of darkness in today's science were entrenched, strong and determined. Much activity followed during the next
few weeks, but first we should jump to two further comments by Secker, to
give a brief taste of what followed. Whereas above, on 4sep95, Secker wrote "....The favoured explanation
aligns with the statement to which you refer, attributed to Professor Pepper,
....", seven weeks later, on 25oct95, he wrote; "Dr. McEwan really has the answer;
....". Thus, he was backing both the views whose
contradiction was the cause of Catt writing to Secker's boss in the first
place, and his boss instructing Secker to reply! Further, although on 4sep95
Top Dog in the IEE chose him as the appropriate expert to reply, after seven
weeks of repeated pontification and obfuscation, Secker wrote on 26oct95; "I should explain that I am no
expert in the area to which the 'Catt Anomaly' refers....".
He repeated this claim on 19dec95. This earned the riposte on 15nov95 from
Luca Turin, lecturer in biophysics in London University; "To claim, as Professor Secker does, that this is a
problem requiring unusual erudition and expertise is disingenuous. It belongs
in chapter One of all the textbooks." It also raises the
question as to why Top Dog Dr Williams delegated to Deputy Dog Professor
Secker the task of replying to Catt's letter. Was Professor Secker Emeritus
Professor of the London School of Ducking and Weaving, not of
Electromagnetism? Had Top Dog from the start seen the Catt Anomaly as a
political, not a technical, problem, to be handled by his most senior
political, rather than technical, Deputy Dog? Who then was Top Dog's most
senior expert on electromagnetism? We get a clue from Secker writing on
19dec95; "I asked a number
of 'experts' familiar with Ivor Catt's views if they would .... [review his
book], but all declined." This leads us to a statement on
8nov95 by Wilson of the IEE; "The
Institution does not have Technical Committees which address scientific
principles." In turn, we compare this with Secker's
original 4sep95 letter, above, which quoted; "The Institution has a responsibility to 'promote the
general advancement of electrical science and engineering and their
applications and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these
subjects....'", which Catt had copied to Top Dog in his
original 18aug95 letter. Also we note Secker 25oct95; "The reason that the Catt Anomaly has been around so
long is that the 'experts' have not thought it of sufficient standing to take
the trouble to demolish it!" p13 The repeat experiment Membership of the London I.E.E. totals
130,000. That of the New York Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE) totals 300,000. All other electrical and electronic
engineering institutions in the world have tiny memberships of around 6,000.
Thus, a repeat of the experiment - finding that the institute 'top expert'
disqualifies himself after a period - could only be usefully made with the
other large institute, the New York IEEE. I wrote to the Chief Executive of the
IEEE; John D
Powers, 12sep95 Executive
Director, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 345 East
47th St., New York, NY10017, USA Dear Dr.
John Powers, The Catt
Anomaly. A hiatus
has recently become apparent in classical electromagnetism, described in the
attached sheet. This is a matter of growing concern. I enclose
the 'Southerner' viewpoint presented under instruction by M Pepper FRS in his
21june93 and 23aug93 letters. On the reverse side you will find a description
of the Catt Anomaly, followed by the 'Westerner' view, presented under
instruction by Neil McEwan, Reader in Electromagnetics at Bradford
University. Please
would you instruct your leading expert(s) on electromagnetism to comment on
the matter, with a view to resolving a worrying uncertainty? As you know, the
IEEE is the leading learned institution in the world in this field, and so
will carry very great weight. Its high status is backed up by its massive
320,000 membership. Yours
sincerely, Ivor
Catt Powers caused his top expert, Mink, to write the following
letter to me. I have retained Mink's errors and exotic punctuation. However,
the key point is that his letter is drivel, much on the lines of Pepper's
drivel. Since Pepper came from the semiconductor theory stable, not Mink's
microwave stable, their drivel does differ somewhat. (Compare Anglican with
Catholic liturgy.) Dear
Mr. Ivor Catt, As
chairman of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society committee on
Microwave Field Theory, MTT-15, I have been asked to respond to your request
to Dr. John Powers, Executive Director, Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers. I
reviewed the previous responses you received from Professor M. Pepper and
Neil McEwan. I am in general agreement with their assessment of the
"Catt Anomaly". I
will limit my comments to the region of the electromagnetic spectrum
corresponding to "microwave" frequencies. Hence, the wavelength of
electromagnetic waves are very much greater that the atomic and hence,
electron spacing in a good conductor. Our, view is one of looking at the
macroscopic effects, not microscopic. Conductors are material whose atomic outer shell (valence) electronics are not held very tightly and can migrate from one atom to another. These are known free electrons and for metal conductors they are very large in number. Assuming, one valence electron per atom, then the number of free electrons equals the number of atoms in the material since the material maintains charge neutrality. Hence, we have a "sea" of electrons in the metal. With no applied external field, these free electrons move with different velocities in random directions producing zero net current through the conductor. If an electric field is applied, there is a net migration of electrons parallel to the electric field, hence current flows. However, if we consider individual electrons, when an electron is added at one end of a structure (e.g. a transmission line), one leaves the other end of the structure and charge neutrality is maintained. If we tag the entering electron, we find that it is not the electron that leaves the structure. The electron that leaves, is one that was already near the output and was forced out by the addition of an electron at the input. This is the same phenomenon that we see in fluid flow. When a liquid flows through a pipe, adding a droplet of fluid at the input of the pipe causes an immediate expulsion of a droplet of fluid from the output of the pipe, however, it is not the same droplet. When viewed from the input and output the system |