Proofs of Authorship
for
"Can Gravity be induced?" 1979
by
Stephen P. Goodfellow
“Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small" - Oscar Wilde

09/27/09

Introduction
I have created these pages proving date of authorship of my paper after a particularly unpleasant episode in which I was accused by a Mr. C Leshan of plagiarizing an individual who, as it turned out, published sixteen years after my paper was written and distributed.

Expending considerable energy in an effort in gather proofs of date and content, the individual has since - grudgingly -  retracted their accusation. After this disgraceful behavior, said person attempted to justify not referring to the very paper they had accused of being pirated arguing that it was not an original idea, essentially reverse engineering their own argument.
Because of this episode, I have decided to create these pages so that the veracity of date and content will not be in dispute.
I am quite comfortable with the possibility that some earlier author may have had a similar idea and that I might have merely expended my energy re-inventing the wheel. If that is the case I will reference them in my paper. Since its writing, I have come across papers and explanations that approximate some aspects of "Can Gravity be Induced?", but nothing to date has been brought to my attention that parallels the content of said paper.

Until this of accusation of plagiarism, I have never heard of said individual or their work. Having read the papers offered as "proof" of my piracy, aside from being sixteen years too late, said individual never once mentions the nature of high energy plasmas in the work.

• Paper published sixteen later than mine.

• No predictions on natural observations.

• No laboratory/repeatable tests proposed.

• My paper does all these.

 
Frankly, I found it hard to understand how the accuser could even find common ground in my writings, let alone accuse me of stealing.

The episode prompts me to post this warning to scientists and academics who publish without making reference to the original concept:
Publishing  concepts pertaining to "Can Gravity be Induced?"  in a scientific or academic journal without giving credit to the author will result in discovery. An inability to perform a rudimentary web search for said subject before publishing is no excuse.

Conception of "Can Gravity be Induced?"
In1976 I was starting to tinker with materials that was to culminate in a medium of my own invention, and that of my co-researcher Lowell Boileau. We named this invention Micropointillism, and this unique medium was to become my chief source of income for over two decades.
The income and the leisure time it afforded, allowed me to pursue parallel interests which I hitherto could not summon the resources to explore.
My main interest of leisure had for some time been astrophysics, and with the extra free time I threw myself with greater enthusiasm in this direction.

Through my studies, I came slowly to realize that the Sun could not possibly function as a nuclear furnace in which energy emanates from a dense central core. Gradually, the shock and conflict which had battled for dominance within me began to yield to another realization.
The basic gravitational physics made sense, but the observations did not. I could not understand how wiser and more knowledgeable individuals could still believe in the contemporary solar model, when the exterior temperature of the Sun was hotter than its interior. It is a violation of thermodynamics. Sunspot depressions in the photosphere ought not be darker and cooler, they ought to be hotter and brighter.
These are elemental observations had simply been swept under the carpet of physics in the hope that somehow, someday, the observations would be supplanted by newer, more favorable ones that would lend validity to the core model. And if not? Where was always eloquent theory, perhaps devoid of observation, but with no lack of scientific peers to review and validate conjectures, so-called scientific papers bordering on mediocre fantasy, but certainly not with any foothold in the world of empiricism.

Many individuals have passed through the crucible of fire and lost their faith in a god.
My fall from grace was a gradual loss of faith in the tenants of astrophysical science, because scientific method was simply not being practiced. I had become aware that large sections of the science community were devolving into a priesthood, bent on devoting itself to its own self-perpetuation, even at the cost of eschewing observational evidence.
This was not a house in which to worship, my god was dead. 
There was a choice to be made. Should I put faith in a physical doctrine that I had understood and was comfortable with, or should I strip it all away and study the observational evidence through new eyes - to create a paradigm, wholly my own?
I was my own outcast.
Once across that border into the unknown, observation is the only guide, and the vista that unfolds is a pathless plain. Where the outcast walks, this becomes the path. I was young, I was excited by the possibilities.

My first attempt at an explanation took close to three years, reading a voracious amount and cajoling my mathematical friends to perform calculations for me -  all, as it turned out - towards a frustrating dead end.
The idea was simple and elegant: Was the sum total of the tidal output of our solar system equal to the Sun's energy output? It is a fairly simple Newtonian calculation,
F = G Mm/r2
Take into account all the planets in the solar system, figure the amount of F and convert it into E.

It was not to be.

The results fall short, being only 1/60th of the energy needed to equal the solar output. I produced a shot paper on the subject named "Solaria" and then, frustrated, filed the results away and concentrated on my artwork.
As it turned out, this exercise had not been in vain. In the course of my first attempt I spent a lot of time absorbing fascinating concepts, becoming familiar with the work of Laplace and his work pertaining to vortices, his opinions on pressure and gravity. I also became intrigued by the Sun's lack of angular momentum, why should the Sun be rotating so slowly, while the gaseous outer planets are rotating so fast? I read and reread books on Johannes Kepler, Tyco Brahe, Newton, Eddinton - and got on with my life as a fine artist.   


In 1979, I was exhibiting at the "Bastard Gallery" in Chicago. My philosophy of exhibiting was to circumvent the established galleries by finding a vacant space, convincing the landlord to let me use the space for a month, paint the walls, hang clamp-on lights and have an exhibition of work, complete with an opening. I was poor, and to save money I would sleep and live in the space for the duration of the exhibition. (I suddenly realize I have approached astrophysics the same way!)
This particular space had very rudimentary plumbing so during my stay, a friend of mine by the name of Alan Foster was kind enough to let me take a bath at his apartment. On this particular bath day I noticed a Sky & Telescope magazine in the rack by the tub so while taking a luxurious soak, I thumbed through it and stumbled upon the spectacular, breath-taking pictures shot by Voyager I.

Emerging from cold bathwater two hours later my universe was turned inside-out, It was as if I had been baptized. In those two short hours, I had become the recipient of an epiphany.
Although the pictures were of Jupiter and its moons, I felt for the first time how intensely dynamic was the firmament. Years later, I came across the term, 'Gaian' which very much fits the mindset and framework around which the reasoning for my paper was constructed.

My reasoning is simple. All matter in the universe is animate and follows the tenants of life: Survival, food, reproduction.
Our biosphere, the thin membrane shell that encompasses our planet, is merely a mirror, a mimic of the universal forces of nature. Mark Twain put it succinctly:
"The Nature, which delights in periodic repetition in the heavens, is the same nature which rules the affairs here on Earth. Let us not forget that lesson"

Looking into the firmament, it seems to me that matter - the stuff of stars - is of great import to them. It allows for the conversion from mass to energy. Assuming that solar systems are part of the life-urge that, like food, matter is the flesh and food of stars.

I reason that if a star could, with the matter at its disposal, be able to produce more gravity, this would be of great benefit, because it would be able to attract more matter than could be accounted for by its given mass. If this is the case - and the Universe has had a long time to figure this out - it is being done.

But how, and by what means?

In 1977 I started reading about the nature of high energy plasmas, gasses so hot that the electrons are stripped away from the protons and changing the behavior and nature of the gas to such an extreme as to designate it as a fourth state of matter. The work of Anthony Peratt came to my attention and I came to realize how truly enigmatic high energy plasmas were - and still are. High energy plasmas confound fusion researchers on a daily basis, their generated magnetic fields effortlessly  escaping across the confining magnets of frustrated physicists.

It dawned on me that here was a possible means by which a sun might induce gravity. Within a dynamo effect, what if stripped electrons and protons joined into like camps, protons with protons, electrons with electrons.
If these individual particles are able to contribute their magnetic moment to the whole, would that not be a significant amount of force?
If they were able to rush away from one another with significant force, would those camps perhaps be able to tease the fabric of space apart?
I imagined a handful of marbles of the same charge and polarity suddenly let go. Would they not fly apart with terrific force?
The best vacuums available to science come in the form of ion vacuum pumps, there the vacuum chamber is continually swept clean with ions which pass through the space, removing larger particles.
Although the ion pump is a crude attempt at obtaining an absolute vacuum, what if this were to be done on a much, much larger scale where you had a sizable amount of matter in the form of a rapidly rotating high energy plasma?

"Can Gravity be Induced?" was first written and circulated in 1979. It has since had minor revisions, chiefly dealing with means with which to verify the hypothesis. Further editions of the paper were distributed in 1987 and being an early communications enthusiast,  I placed a copy of the paper on Compuserve that year.

You can also find my earliest upload to my website of "Can Gravity be Induced?" at archive.org, going back to December 20th, 1996.
 

"Solarium" Exhibition December 17th 1980 at Alvins, Detroit, MI was a venue for "Can Gravity be Induced?"

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