INTRODUCTION


By October 9, 1983 science had progressed to a high degree of sophistication. It was so sophisticated that it enabled us to go to the moon and back. It also showed us how to split the atom and use the vast amount of energy in the nucleus, of the atom, for peaceful purposes as well as for destructive weapons of war. Progress was being made in all areas of science, but in spite of these great achievements there were cracks in the various methods and theories of science that were in use at that time.

In spite of all the knowledge accumulated and the vast amount of techniques available to solve problems, there were many unsolved problems that puzzled the scientists. Also, there were conflicts between the different theories and ideas that were known at that time. For example, there were conflicts between Newton's theories and Einstein's theories, and there were conflicts between classical physics and quantum mechanics. Newton's theory of motion assumes that mass is a constant. Einstein's theory assumes that mass increases with velocity. Newton's theory of gravity assumes that mass is attracted to mass. Einstein's theory of gravity assumes that mass warps space-time and the warped space-time is what causes masses to attract each other. Classical physics assumes that energy is continuous; quantum mechanics assumes that energy is not continuous, rather it travels in discrete bundles, and it is discontinuous.

There were also numerous paradoxes and riddles that puzzled the scientists. For example, scientists did not know what light was. There were two theories about light. Newton's theory which assumed that light was a particle, and Huygen's theory which assumed that light was a wave. Scientists are still trying to determine whether light is a wave or a particle. Any experiment that the scientists carried out showed that light was either a particle or a wave. One type of experiment would show the particle but not the wave. Another experiment would show the wave but not the particle. Therefore, depending upon the experiment performed either the particle nature of light would be detected or the wave nature of light would be detected. The scientists were unable to show both the wave and the particle nature of light in the same experiment.

Many other riddles of science appeared to have no solutions; such as, the riddle of the irresistible force and the immovable object. Science had no means to determine what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. All the known theories at that time were unable to solve this problem. Another riddle that appeared to have no solution and could not be solved with any of the known theories was the riddle of the chicken or the egg. The known theories didn't have any means for solving this paradoxical problem of what came first, the chicken or the egg. There was also the riddle of what happens if you continue to go straight up in space. Does the universe end? Or does it continue to go straight up forever? The known theories could not answer any of these questions, because they didn't have the laws, formulas or means needed for solving any of these riddles or paradoxical problems.

Each new theory formulated appeared to answer most of the unknown problems asked by the scientists at the time the theory was formulated. However, later other problems would occur that could not be handled by the theory. The theory was then altered or replaced by another theory. Each new theory appeared to be logical and capable of answering all of the problems being asked at that time.

There were times when the scientists believed that no further theories had to be derived, because all of the questions of physics could be answered by the present knowledge. As soon as this belief became generally accepted some new crack in the known theories would appear. Scientists were accumulating knowledge at an accelerated rate, resulting in their theories becoming more sophisticated and more complicated. When some of these popular theories began to show cracks, the scientists would try to save them with wild imaginative ideas, which even further complicated the theories.

Einstein, however, like many scientists, believed that science should be simple and beautiful. He worked for many years until his death in l955 trying to find a unified field theory that would combine all the known forces of nature in one equation. At that time, the electrostatic force and the electromagnetic force yielded to a single equation. However, the force of gravity did not seem to fit in with these two forces.

Scientists are presently spending a considerable amount of time, effort and money looking for the unified field theory which will include all of the known forces of nature in one equation, and hopefully this unified field theory equation could be used to solve any scientific problem. This is a small sample of how science was progressing by October 9, l983, and some of the cracks in the theories that I was aware of at that time.

Then, on Saturday October 8, my brother asked me to take a trip to Pennsylvania. He owned a house in Forest City, a small town located near Scranton and Carbondale. We were both born in Carbondale, and we would take frequent trips to Pennsylvania, sometimes for a vacation and sometimes to do work on his house.


During most of the trips, my brother, my cousin, who lived near Scranton, and I would get together and have a rap session until the wee hours of the next morning. We would talk about everything, from patents and patent law to science and theories of the universe. During our discussion, on the night of October 8, we talked about all the apparent conflicts of science and many of the paradoxes that existed which appeared to have no solutions using the known theories of physics that existed at that time.