What's Bob Lazar Up To?, page 2

Gazrok:

The biggest problem with Lazar is that even if what he claims is mostly true, he's almost certainly not a PhD in physics, or even a masters / undergrad degree. Even if what he describes -- two different gravity waves, 115, etc., -- does in fact power some advanced aircraft, he just doesn't seem able to describe this in any manner a physicist or anyone with any mathematics / physics background would accept.

It's probably been brought up here before, but what are usually referred to by the term "gravity waves" are ripples in the action of the gravitational field; for example, say that I've got a super sensitve gravity measuring device and there's a star way far away that's moving back and forth, like this:

( ME ) <-----*----->

where the "<----*---->" is supposed to be a star moving close to me than back farther away, over and over. Since its pull on me is going to be stronger at the closer positions and weaker at the farther away positions, your gravitometer will be offset by a little sine wave, and that "rippling" in gravitational strength is what's usually a referred to as a gravitational wave. Such waves are predicted to be extremely weak, however, so detecting them is still a major challenge for experimental physics.

If i was going to give Lazar the benefit of the doubt on his gravity waves A and B, then I don't think he's talking about "gravitational waves" in the usual sense, but something else entirely. It may well be the case that a theory successfully unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity -- hence gravitation -- would have what we perceive as "gravity" emerge out of the behavior of a pair of interacting fields (say, Lazar's gravity A and B waves), and by manipulating those waves one might be able to do all kinds of things, say propel an object; we just don't know, for now, what a successful unified theory will look like until a successful unified theory has been developed and tested, and honestly breaking gravity down into two interacting fields is as good an idea as any.

So, what I'm trying to say is that I'm willing to give Lazar benefit of the doubt on his gravity waves, element 115, etc., stuff, in the sense that it could well be true; the problem I have is that his descriptions of how these things work are so inadequate from a physicist's standpoint -- really, anyone familiar with physics and knowing some math -- that I find it hard to believe he's had any real training or education in physics beyond an introduction, and if he has had such training he's definitely not showing it or using it to explain anything.

It's this in my mind that hurts his overall credibility the most. Just as an example by analogy, say I said that I had suddenly recovered the entire memories of my prior existence as an egyptian pharoah, but couldn't speak or read a word of ancient egyptian, and the account of my life as a pharoah was totally different than that in the historical record. Even if you gave me the benefit of the doubt, you'd have to admit that my inability to speak the language, etc., or even to know basic facts about my "past life", etc., would give you reason for doubt.

So, I really doubt Lazar's anything more than what the documented records show him to be: a technician/repair guy, etc., who probably got called in to fix stuff at S-4/Area51, etc.. He may even have been called in to do what he said he was called in to do, which was reverse engineer some stuff; I actually find that pretty plausible:

a) there's not a huge overlap between being good at science and being good at figuring out how devices work; I've known plenty of physics people who would have a hard time fixing a refridgerator, for example.
b) if you had a lot of crashed debris from outer space, some of it looking reasonably close things you could imagine people using -- say, the control devices for the saucer or whatever -- if your scientists aren't making good progress figuring it out I can totally see them saying "why not call in an electronics repairman, show him something, not tell him what it is, and see if he can figure it out". with good security and compartmentalization you don't risk much, and you might get lucky -- the basic kind of reverse-engineering (for fixing tvs, stereos, etc.,) is something where too much intelligence and education can backfire on you.

So, maybe Lazar was just a technician, got called in to do some reverse engineering, and overheard or saw some things he wasn't supposed to, and made as much sense of them as he could, and then reported them; all of that I would find plausible on its own terms, and not the kind of far-fetched stuff that should be rejected out of hand.

But, why claim the advanced training he claims to have had? If he has it, why not use it and actually develop a theory of gravity, etc., based on what he learned? (maybe his united nuclear company will do that, though I'm not holding my breath). If he doesn't have the training, why hurt his credibility by claiming to have gotten it?

That's my biggest beef with Lazar. If in fact he has the training and knowledge he says he has, I HOPE he's currently working on making something of it: a paper outlining how his gravity waves work, a device that uses that theory, or anything else that puts his claims to use. Otherwise, I'm not that interested; he's obviously not going to be getting any more invites to S-4/Area51 after going public, so there won't be any new revelations coming from him on those fronts, and if he can't elaborate on his theories his story's just another interesting but inconclusive piece of data.