Michael R Evans: Difference between revisions
Expand: Trion-Re', Geometry of Light, patents, Wertheim exhibition; fix ALL-CAPS sortkeys, add missing sortkey, show age |
Note his brief appearance in the documentary Einstein Wrong - The Miracle Year |
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His work was subsequently taken up by the science writer [[Margaret Wertheim]], who has argued that self-taught theorists working outside the academy constitute a genuine cultural phenomenon deserving serious attention — the argument of her book ''[[Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything]]'' (2011). In conjunction with that book, Wertheim curated the exhibition ''Physics on the Fringe'' at the Institute For Figuring in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles, running from 14 April to 10 November 2012. The Institute's own description lists the theorists featured as "outsiders [[James Carter]], Michael Evans and Stoyan Sarg, along with quintessential nineteenth century insiders P.G. Tait and William Thomson aka Lord Kelvin" — placing Evans's geometry alongside [[James Carter]]'s circlon theory, [[Stoyan Sarg]]'s Basic Structures of Matter models, and the Victorian vortex-atom tradition from which Wertheim draws her historical parallel. | His work was subsequently taken up by the science writer [[Margaret Wertheim]], who has argued that self-taught theorists working outside the academy constitute a genuine cultural phenomenon deserving serious attention — the argument of her book ''[[Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything]]'' (2011). In conjunction with that book, Wertheim curated the exhibition ''Physics on the Fringe'' at the Institute For Figuring in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles, running from 14 April to 10 November 2012. The Institute's own description lists the theorists featured as "outsiders [[James Carter]], Michael Evans and Stoyan Sarg, along with quintessential nineteenth century insiders P.G. Tait and William Thomson aka Lord Kelvin" — placing Evans's geometry alongside [[James Carter]]'s circlon theory, [[Stoyan Sarg]]'s Basic Structures of Matter models, and the Victorian vortex-atom tradition from which Wertheim draws her historical parallel. | ||
Evans also appears briefly in ''[[Einstein Wrong - The Miracle Year]]'' (2014), [[David de Hilster]]'s feature documentary about researchers working outside mainstream physics. | |||
Evans has also discussed the Trion-Re' in interviews, lectures and documentary video, and maintains a body of explanatory material on his own site. | Evans has also discussed the Trion-Re' in interviews, lectures and documentary video, and maintains a body of explanatory material on his own site. | ||
Latest revision as of 20:30, 20 July 2026
Michael R. Evans | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 7, 1942 Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Residence | Fallbrook, California, USA |
| Nationality | USA |
| Known for | The Trion-Re', "The Geometry of Light", Space Clusters |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Artist, Independent Researcher, Inventor |
Michael R. Evans (born May 7, 1942) is an American artist, inventor and independent researcher based in Fallbrook, California. He is known within the alternative-science community for a curved geometric form he named the Trion-Re, which he presents as a sixth basic solid alongside the five Platonic solids, and for the geometric framework he builds on it, "The Geometry of Light", which relates geometry, light, energy, space and time. He also holds patents for a construction system marketed as "Space Clusters" and makes glass and sculptural work intended to make his geometric claims physically visible. Evans works outside academic physics and presents his ideas as an artist rather than as a credentialed theorist.
Biography
Evans was born in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager he participated in the "Gifted Student Artist Program" at the Art Institute of Chicago (1955–1956). He studied business at the University of Illinois (1960–1961) and political science at the University of Miami (1961–1962), and much later returned to formal study, completing a Fine Arts degree at Laguna College of Art and Design (1998–2001).
He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1964, was commissioned a second lieutenant through Officer Candidate School (Class 4-65) at Fort Benning, Georgia, attended Airborne and Jungle Warfare schools, and received an honorable discharge in 1967.
Evans's working life ran through a series of trades that fed his later geometric practice. He worked for South Shore Glass & Mirror Co. in Chicago (1958–1967), giving him the hands-on glass experience later visible in his sculpture; he held an Illinois real estate license for design, syndication and construction work (1967–1971); he worked as a toy designer on "Space Clusters" and "Geometron" (1971–1976); and he was a partner in the couture fashion design firm D.N. Evans (1976–1992), handling design concepts, fashion photography, store design and finance. From 1992 onward he concentrated on inventing, designing, lecturing, painting, sculpting and writing. He has resided in Fallbrook, California.
Scientific contributions
The Trion-Re'
Evans's central claim concerns a form he calls the Trion-Re'. In his own description it has two vertices, three flexible edges and three equal faces, encloses an inside and an outside, occupies space, and possesses spin. Because its faces are curved rather than flat, it is not a polyhedron in the classical sense; it is closer to a closed, three-lobed vessel that can rotate about the axis joining its two vertices.
Evans presents this as a "sixth basic solid" alongside the five Platonic solids. It is worth being precise about what that claim is and is not. The classical enumeration of exactly five regular solids — tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron — is a theorem, and it follows from a definition that requires flat faces meeting at congruent angles. Evans does not dispute that theorem. Instead, in "The Geometry of Light" he proposes changing the defining rule: if curved surfaces are admitted, he argues, a solid emerges that is more rudimentary than the tetrahedron, since it closes space with three faces rather than four. On his account the Trion-Re' is therefore an extension of the Platonic classification into curved space, not a refutation of it. He further argues that the five classical solids can themselves be generated from the Trion-Re', making it, in his framing, the first regular solid rather than merely a sixth one.
Evans's motivation for admitting curved faces is physical rather than purely formal. He holds that space is curved and that, in consequence, "no straight lines exist" — from which he concludes that the distance between two points should be treated not as a line but as a volume bounded by a minimum of three curved lines. The Trion-Re' is his candidate for that minimal volume. He identifies it with the Planck scale and, on his site, gives a calculated volume of 8.889386 × 10−36 cubic metres.
The Geometry of Light
"The Geometry of Light" is the name Evans gives to the wider framework built on the Trion-Re'. In the paper of that title, presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the Natural Philosophy Alliance and published in the Proceedings of the NPA (2010), he describes the Trion-Re' as "a fundamental structural unit of 3-D space on the basis of which a new geometry of 3-D space can be built: namely, the 3-D space in which no straight lines exist," and argues that admitting curvature into the definition of a regular solid makes it "a unique structure of space/time."
The earlier paper "Light, the Common Denominator" (1999) sets out the same structure under the heading "Space Clusters — Theory of Everything," which Evans offers as a possible bridge between relativity, string theory and what he calls universal spirituality. There he describes the Trion-Re' as the form of "a single ray of light," notes that Polynesian tradition may have called such a form a "Star Seed," and states the framework's premises as three principles: that there are no straight lines, that "from the one comes the many," and that light is a regular solid and the basic building block of the universe.
The claim doing the most work in both papers is that light is not merely wave or particle but has a definite solid geometry — that a ray of light, examined closely enough, is a Trion-Re'. Evans keeps these as geometric and philosophical propositions rather than deriving quantitative predictions from them; the papers are short, and the argument is carried by construction and figure rather than by calculation.
Art as the medium of the argument
Evans is unusual among the researchers catalogued on this wiki in that his primary output is physical objects rather than papers. He describes his practice as "a synthesis of science, history, and artistic expression," and writes of light as a sculptural material: "I twirl it between my fingers, manipulating it until I can pluck a single ray and examine its form, like a stop-action photo, but in 3-D sculpture."
The glass "Optic Clusters" are the clearest case. Built around clustered spherical forms, they direct attention to the interstitial space — the volume between the spheres — which is precisely where Evans locates the curved-faced forms his geometry is about. The sculptures are, in effect, demonstrations: rather than asserting that such shapes exist in curved space, he builds objects in which a viewer can see them. He has also produced monumental sculpture, with work shown at sites including MIT, San Diego, Singapore, Grant Park and the Tenerife concert hall. This makes his contribution as much a matter of visualisation and physical modelling as of theory, and it is the reason his work travelled into an art-exhibition context (see below) rather than a scientific one.
Patents and construction systems
In 1970 Evans was awarded a U.S. mechanical patent for a construction system marketed as "Space Clusters," with corresponding patents granted in England, Japan, Italy, France and Sweden. He worked as a toy designer on the system from 1971 to 1976, and also developed a related product called "Geometron." Space Clusters is the practical ancestor of his later geometry: a modelling kit for assembling the clustered forms he would go on to treat as the structural units of space. In 1969 he received an earlier U.S. patent for a medical prosthesis, which was sold to Jung Products, a subsidiary of Wilson Sporting Goods. (Evans's own curriculum vitae records the grant years and countries but not the patent numbers, which have not been independently verified here.)
Reception and exhibitions
Evans presented on the theme "Art, Light and Physics" at the 17th Annual Conference of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, held at California State University, Long Beach, in June 2010.
His work was subsequently taken up by the science writer Margaret Wertheim, who has argued that self-taught theorists working outside the academy constitute a genuine cultural phenomenon deserving serious attention — the argument of her book Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything (2011). In conjunction with that book, Wertheim curated the exhibition Physics on the Fringe at the Institute For Figuring in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles, running from 14 April to 10 November 2012. The Institute's own description lists the theorists featured as "outsiders James Carter, Michael Evans and Stoyan Sarg, along with quintessential nineteenth century insiders P.G. Tait and William Thomson aka Lord Kelvin" — placing Evans's geometry alongside James Carter's circlon theory, Stoyan Sarg's Basic Structures of Matter models, and the Victorian vortex-atom tradition from which Wertheim draws her historical parallel.
Evans also appears briefly in Einstein Wrong - The Miracle Year (2014), David de Hilster's feature documentary about researchers working outside mainstream physics.
Evans has also discussed the Trion-Re' in interviews, lectures and documentary video, and maintains a body of explanatory material on his own site.
Honors
- Laguna Beach Beautification Award for landscape design (1984 and 1993).
Abstracts
- 2010 - "The Geometry of Light" (Read in full)
- 1999 - "Light, the Common Denominator" (Read in full)