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Jack Sarfatti (born September 14, 1939) is an American theoretical physicist and the author of a number of popular works on quantum physics and consciousness. He is known for his iconoclastic ideas, and is interested in what he sees as the breakdown of the paradigm that posits science and the humanities as separate disciplines, arguing that physics — which he calls "the Conceptual Art of the late 20th Century" — has replaced philosophy as the unifying force between science and art.

Sarfatti's main interests lie in Timothy Leary's "SMI²LE" program of space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension. His views include Colonel Phillip J. Corso's speculation that UFOs may be of extraterrestrial origin or could be "terrestrial time ships" originating from our own future; that parapsychological phenomena may be real; that "retro-causal" (future-to-past) faster-than-light communication may be possible; and that space travel could be achieved by a controlled, possibly "psychokinetic" (mind manipulating matter), local warping of "emergent curved and torsioned" spacetime. in "the fuselage of the flying saucer using nano-engineered 2D quantum wells with anyon condensates" ("Super Cosmos").

He is the author of the self-published books Super Cosmos (2005), Destiny Matrix (2002), and Space: Time And Beyond II (Dark Energy) (2002), and co-author with Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben of Space-Time and Beyond: Toward an Explanation of the Unexplainable (1982). He is a frequent contributor to Usenet and has set up a website where he discusses his ideas.

Academic background

Sarfatti was born in Brooklyn, New York to Hyman Sarfatti, an Italian Sephardi Jew from Macedonia and his wife Mildred.

He completed his B.A. in physics at Cornell University in 1960, where he wrote an honors thesis under the guidance of Hans Bethe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967. His first published paper, "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," appeared in 1963 in Nuovo Cimento, the journal of the Italian Physical Society.

He obtained his Master's, also in physics, from University of California, San Diego in 1967, and in the same year, "The Goldstone Theorem in the Jahn-Teller Effect," which he co-authored with Marshall Stoneham, was published in Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, and "Laser Self-Focusing Analogue to the Landau-Ginzburg Equation of Type II Superconductivity" in Physics Letters.

From 1967-71, he worked as an assistant professor of physics at San Diego State University, obtaining his Ph.D from University of California, Riverside in 1969, where he wrote his thesis under the supervision of Fred Cummings. In 1970, he and Cummings co-authored "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Helium," which was published in Physica Scripta in Switzerland.

From 1971-2, he was employed as a research fellow under David Bohm, the American quantum physicist, at Birkbeck College, London.

From 1973-4, he worked with Abdus Salam, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.

He then left academia. In 1975, Dr. Sarfatti founded the Physics Consciousness Research Group to do research on parapsychological phenomenon such as telepathy. This research group was funded by Werner Erhard.

Thereafter, he worked at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. In 1999-2000 at Joe Firmage's ISSO exotic propulsion group in San Francisco with a budget of several million dollars.

Observation of Uri Geller

On June 21, 1974, Sarfatti was one of a number of scientists and other interested parties — a group that included Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Koestler, David Bohm, John G. Taylor, and John Hasted — who conducted observations of Uri Geller while the latter displayed what he said was telekinetic energy.

Sarfatti was impressed by Geller, and commented: "My personal professional judgement as a Ph.D. physicist is that Geller demonstrated genuine psychoenergetic ability at Birkbeck, which is beyond the doubt of any reasonable man, under relatively well-controlled and repeatable experimental conditions." He later revised this opinion after discussing the matter with James Randi. He wrote in a letter: "On the basis of further experience in the art of conjuring, I wish to retract my endorsement of Uri Geller's psychoenergetic authenticity."

Publications

Written works

• Sarfatti, Jack. 2006, "Emergent Gravity: String Theory Without String Theory", ArXiv.org.
• ----, 2004, "Einstein Gravity with Dark Energy and Dark Matter as Sakharov Metric Elasticity", GR17 Dublin 2004: 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation: Book of Abstracts, p. 181.
• ----, 2004, "Wheeler's World", Developments in Quantum Physics, Nova Publishers, pp 41-84. ISBN 1-59454-003-9
• ----, 2003, "Macro-Quantum Origin of Gravity and Quintessence", Papers at APS Austin & Philadelphia published in APS Abstracts for those meetings. Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Vol 48, No 1, Part II, N35-6, p. 832.
• ----, 2002, Space-Time and Beyond 2: Dark Energy, AuthorHouse. ISBN 1-4033-9022-3
• ----, 2002, "Progress in Post-Quantum Physics and Unified Field Theory", Gravitation and Cosmology: From the Hubble Radius to the Planck Scale (Series: Fundamental Theories of Physics, Vol 126), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp 419-430. ISBN 1-4020-0885-6
• ----, 1998, with M.C. Levit, "Are the Bader Laplacian and the Bohm Quantum Potential Equivalent?", Causality & Locality in Modern Physics (Series: Fundamental Theories in Physics, Vol 97), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp 353-358. ISBN 0-7923-5227-0
• ----, 1998, "Beyond Bohm-Vigier Quantum Mechanics", Causality & Locality in Modern Physics, (Series: Fundamental Theories in Physics, Vol 97), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp 403-410. ISBN 0-7923-5227-0
• ----, 1991, "Design for a Superluminal Signaling Device,", Physics Essays, Vol 4, No 3, Sep 1991, pp 315-336.
• ----, 1977, "Higher Intelligence is Us in the Future", in Spit in the Ocean, Fall 1977, No. 3, Ken Kesey, pub., Tim Leary, ed.
• ----, 1975, "The Physical Roots of Consciousness" in Mishlove, Jeffrey, The Roots of Consciousness, pp 279-290. ISBN 0-394-73115-8
• ----, 1975, Space-Time and Beyond, with Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben, E. P. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-47399-8
• ----, 1974, "The Dirac Equation and General Relativity," Foundations of Physics.
• ----, 1973, "Regge Trajectories as Rotation Black Holes in Strong Gravity", Collective Phenomena, H. Frohlich & F.W. Cummings, eds.
• ----, 1971, "On mini black holes", short note in Nature Physical Science.
• ----, 1970, "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Helium," with Fred Cummings, in Physica Scripta (Switzerland).
• ----, 1969, "Destruction of Superflow in Unsaturated 4He Films and the Prediction of a New Crystalline Phase of 4He with Bose-Einstein Condensation", Physics Letters, Vol 30A, No 5, Nov 1969, pp 300-301.
• ----, 1967, "Laser Self-Focusing Analogue to the Landau-Ginzburg Equation of Type II Superconductivity", Physics Letters.
• ----, 1967, "The Goldstone Theorem in the Jahn-Teller Effect", with Marshall Stoneham, Proceedings of the Physical Society|Proceedings of the Physical Society of London]], cited as a major paper in AIP Resource Letter on Symmetry in Physics, 1980 (done at United Kingdom Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Didcot, Berks).
• ----, 1963 "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," Nuovo Cimento (journal of the Italian Physical Society).

Broadcast

• Paramount Pictures "Star Trek IV" DVD has commentary on time travel by Sarfatti: "Time Travel: The Art of the Possible runs eleven minutes and 14 seconds and provides information from 'three prominent quantum physicists'. We get comments from Dr. Nick Herbert, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, and Dr. Jack Sarfatti."

=Book references

• Sarfatti's ideas on physics and consciousness have been cited in a number of popular and scholarly books, including "Cosmic Trigger" by Robert Anton Wilson, Bohemia by Herbert Gold, Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension by mathematician Rudy Rucker, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will edited by philosopher Robert Kane, White Holes by physicist John Gribbon, Rocket Dreams by Marina Benjamin, books by Stanislav Grof, Dancing in the Light by Shirley MacLaine, The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav and Exo-Psychology (Reprinted in second edition as Info-Psychology) by Timothy Leary. Sharon Weinberger, an editor at Aviation Week, mentions Sarfatti in her book Imaginary Weapons, in reference to his early work with Hans Bethe at Cornell on the idea for a nuclear isomer gamma ray laser.

Notes

1. weird science
2. The Universe, As Seen From North Beach
3. weird science
4. UFOs and the New Physics
5. Google Groups search
6. Stardrive
7. UFOs and the New Physics
8. Stephen Schwartz lies
9. My Story by Hyman Sarfatti (pdf)
10. The Universe, As Seen From North Beach
11. The Universe, As Seen From North Beach
12. The Universe, As Seen From North Beach
13. CNN - Silicon Valley CEO continues alien quest despite skeptics - January 12, 1999
14. Science News, vol. 106, July 20, 1974, p. 46.
15. Science News, December 6, 1975, p. 355.
16. Star Trek IV commentary

Further reading

• destinymatrix Sarfatti's blog
• Rothman, Milton. "Reality check" at CSICOP site
• Zukav, Gary. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, 1979, ISBN 0-06-095968-1
• A webpage about Sarfatti at qedcorp
• Talbot, Michael. "Mysticism and the New Physics",1993, revised, updated, ARKANA, Penguin, pp 2,25,28-9,36,40,42,56,57,59,67,87,89,97,122,125 on "behavior of particles", "consciousness". "fields", "gravitons, "participator", "quantum principles", "time ordering", "wormhole connections."

References

• Burns, Alex. "Weird Science", Disinformation, January 28, 2001
• Rodrigues, Waldyr. "A Comment on Emergent Gravity", arXiv.org, gr-qc/0602111
• Schwartz, Stephen. "The Universe, as seen from North Beach", San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 1997

External links

• Sarfatti's website
• Another of Sarfatti's websites
• Among the Fringe
• The Other History of Star Wars

Template:Persondata

• 1939 births
• Living people
• Usenet people
• American physicists
• Theoretical physicists
• Pseudophysics
• American science writers
• Science teachers
• Academics of Birkbeck, University of London
• San Diego State University faculty
• University of California, San Diego alumni
• Cornell University alumni
• University of California, Riverside alumni