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Re: catt anomaly

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Posted by john curl (i) on June 22, 2001 at 17:00:41

In Reply to: catt anomaly posted by Catt on June 22, 2001 at 07:29:50:

I have been asked about the CATT controversy. A few months ago, I was challenged by Steve Eddy to debate Ivor Catt's issues. I decided that I could not do much with it. Some on this website have dismissed CATT and his issues, outright. I personally have found the questions that Mr Catt has addressed to be important, but I don't know whether he is absolutely correct or not. I think that it is important to realize that there are many unresolved issues in E/M theory, that Maxwell's equations (so loved by engineers and physicists) were formulated approximately 150 years ago, even before the electron was discovered. This does not make them useless, just not necessarily 100% accurate in EVERY case. The same argument can be said about Newton's laws of motion, etc.
I do not think that most on the website at this time will understand much of what Ivor Catt is getting at, and that includes me as well to some degree.

 

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Re: catt anomaly

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Posted by 1366526650 on July 10, 2001 at 15:56:54

In Reply to: Re: catt anomaly posted by john curl on June 22, 2001 at 17:00:41:

"I do not think that most on the website at this time will understand much of what Ivor Catt is getting at, and that includes me as well to some degree." Not so.
Oliver Heaviside (who was then suppressed for more than fifty years) went up to Newcastle to help his brother to signal Morse pulses undersea from Newcastle to Denmark. He found that he could send a new pulse before the previous one had arrived in Denmark.
A pulse had energy, and a gap between pulses had no energy.
In the same way as we are allowed to say that a perfectly drawn triangle's angles add up to 180 degrees (even though a perfect triangle does not exist), so we are allowed to consider a two wire transmission line (e.g. coax) with perfect conductors and vacuum between them. It is then agreed by all eminent scientists that the pulses travel at the speed of light, one foot per nanosecond, guided by the two wires in the same way as a train is guided by two rails. Even the most stupid Nobel Prizewinner with the most august forbears will agree that the pulse comprises four constituents; electric charge, electric current, electric field, magnetic field.
Heaviside, like one of our intellectual leaders of today, Dr McEwan, Reader in Electromagnetism at Bradford University, could envisage this electric charge coming along the lower wire from the west, to take up its position in a further one foot section of the coax, to terminate the newly appearing electric field in the next foot of the cable, every nanosecond. Our esteemed Professor Pepper FRS cannot envisage that, saying that the charge would have to travel at the speed of light. (Heaviside, since electric charge in his time probably had no mass, had no problem with the charge travelling at the speed of light. Anyway, at that time, mass did not increase with velocity.)
Other very eminent professors and Nobel Prizewinners take up their places behind, either Pepper, or McEwan. I admire them all, without reservation. They are totally unconcerned about the inconsistency between them, and refuse to discuss it with each other, or with us.
Such persistent effrontry, spread as it is now over decades, deserves admiration. The ending of the Enlightenment, which is what they are attempting, will be a great achievement.
Recently, an expert historian of philosophy told me that the start of the Enlightenment was represented by the introduction of freedom of communication. He agreed that if communication were now blocked, as I asserted, it would follow that the Enlightenment was over. The implications flowing from the ending of the Enlightenment extend far beyond electromagnetic theory. The proof that the Enlightenment is over, which is what the book "The Catt Anomaly" shows, is a far greater achievement than any advance in electromagnetic theory.

"I do not think that most on the website at this time will understand much of what Ivor Catt is getting at, and that includes me as well to some degree." Anyone who claims to not understand the discrepancy between such learned scientists, and the scandal of their refusing to address the matter, is dissembling. Note that no mathematics is involved. Properly viewed, the Catt Anomaly is a politico-social phenomenon, not a technical one. It is the refusal of scientific leaders to address their science, and our failure to apply sanctions to them, and the implications for the survival of the Enlightenment. Whether Ivor Catt is polite or not, is a trivial detail.
To put the record straight, Catt was so very careful to avoid being impolite that he did not communicate directly with any of the key rogues in the saga for the initial many years, including McEwan and Pepper. Catt got their bosses to instruct them to write to Catt, and also to choose whom to so instruct. Thus, these rogues were unable to assert rudeness in Catt's communications, since Catt had not communicated with them, or even selected them. This research has been very carefully done by Catt.
In any case, I love the idea that, had Newton been rude, we would not now be using his three Laws of Motion. Similarly, we only use jet aircraft because the inventor had all the graces.
Ivor Catt 10july01.