'New Energy' and Hodowanec's Rhysmonic Cosmology

Scientific Paper
Title	'New Energy' and Hodowanec's Rhysmonic Cosmology
Read in full	Link to paper
Author(s)	Bill Ramsay
Keywords	New Energy, Hodowanec, Rhysmonic Cosmology
Published	1999
Journal	Journal of New Energy
Volume	4
Number	2
No. of pages	16
Pages	137-147

Read the full paper here

Abstract

Four decades ago-then employed and now retired-research physicist Gregory Hodowanec (pronounced Hoe-doe-wahn-eck) began his thinking about and conceptualizing of a new cosmology. One which did not then and does not now use as a starting point, as other approaches seem to, an obsession with 'unifying' the various 'forces'; forces which became separate and apart not because that is the way they occur in nature but simply because that is the way they were perceived by the prominent practitioners of the also separate and apart, fragmented, sciences. After reading an aside in a reprint of Max Planck's THEORY OF HEAT RADIATION, Hodowanec decided that author's suggestion that his derived Universal Constants could be used as Universal Natural Units had the potential to form a new cosmological perception of the workings of this universe at the most fundamental, causative, level. The level at which resides the prime moving force which results in the structure, the fabric, out of which all else that is is crafted. Indeed an ambitious undertaking by Hodowanec! But not one without many encouraging confirmations on this decades long journey; some from his and others hands-on experiments and some from theoretical excursions; that in fact there were many, many artifacts attesting to the actual existence of such. Some of these artifacts were implicit in, if not usually seen, the findings of the many, many conventional sciences practitioners. Some were to be experienced first hand, if often ignored, in the daily lives of all, scientist or not, as those considered 'mystics' have, over the eons, tried to convey.

The heart of this paper is Hodowanec' s most recent, and possibly last, detailed "Cosmology Note;" the last in a series of many over the years sent to a handful of interested colleagues. It was his intention when he composed it and mine in offering it here that sane will find some inspiration here. I urge the reader to approach the reading and consideration of both the content and spirit with an open and uncluttered mind, one which might find in this the beginnings of new insights and understandings; perhaps even some practical applications? What can it hurt to look carefully and see?

Overview

This is a hybrid document. Bill Ramsay, the editor and compiler of Hodowanec's Rhysmonic Cosmology, supplies an introduction, a table of units, a set of postulates and definitions, and running bracketed commentary; the body is Gregory Hodowanec's Cosmology Note of 28 October 1998, written in his 78th year and offered as possibly his last. The title question — how does any of this relate to 'New Energy'? — Ramsay answers in a sentence: the aether "is everyplace present and everyplace active so how can it NOT relate?"

Rhysmonic Cosmology began in 1959, when a Dover reprint of Planck's Theory of Heat Radiation mentioned in an aside that the universal constants could be used to build a system of natural units. Hodowanec noticed that the natural unit of length over time agreed closely with the measured Speed of Light in vacuum, and took this as a hint about the structure of the universe itself. The resulting theory postulates a mechanical, absolutely stationary substratum built from a single particle — the rhysmon, from the Greek for "ever-moving" — carrying exactly one quantum of action h. Its central claim for a 'New Energy' audience is that the vast intrinsic energy of this matrix might be tapped with a small external perturbation, and that the free-energy devices already reported to show power gain are doing exactly that without knowing it.

The break with the standard account is complete and deliberate. Hodowanec restores absolute space and absolute time "as had been expounded on by Newton but which was denied by the Relativists", makes gravity propagate effectively instantaneously rather than at c, treats the Casimir Effect as a shielding effect of the gravitational field rather than a vacuum-fluctuation force, and holds that the universe is finite, Euclidean, spherical, and bounded by a perfectly reflecting edge.

The argument

Units and postulates

Ramsay's table gives the Planck quantities Hodowanec builds on: h ≈ 6.624×10⁻²⁷ erg-sec, ħ ≈ 1.054×10⁻²⁷ erg-sec, Planck length L* ≈ 1.616×10⁻³³ cm, Planck time T* ≈ 5.391×10⁻⁴⁴ sec, Planck velocity L*/T* = C* ≈ 2.997×10¹⁰ cm/sec, Planck mass M* ≈ 2.177×10⁻⁵ gm, Planck volume ≈ 4.22×10⁻⁹⁹ cm³, Planck density ≈ 5.157×10⁹³ gm/cm³. Rhysmon parameters follow: radius ≈ 1.62×10⁻⁶⁶ cm, volume ≈ 1.78×10⁻¹⁹⁷ cm³, number density ≈ 2.37×10⁹⁸ rhysmons/cm³.

The derived rhysmon units are the working quantities of the theory: A* = ħ ≈ 1.054×10⁻²⁷ erg-sec (action); E* = M*C*² ≈ 1.956×10¹⁶ ergs (energy); F* = E*/L* (force); f* = 1/T* (frequency); a* = L*/T*² ≈ 5.56×10⁵³ cm/sec². For the visible universe: radius ≈ 1.14×10²⁸ cm, volume ≈ 6.2×10⁸⁴ cm³, number of rhysmons ≈ 1.47×10¹⁸³, mass ≈ 3.2×10¹⁷⁸ gm, energy ≈ 2.9×10¹⁹⁹ ergs.

The four postulates are stark. (1) The universe is a finite spherical matrix structure with finite energy content, a function of its size. (2) It is Euclidean. (3) Its edge is a perfect reflector of radiant energy, so the universe is a perfect black body. (4) Matter particles form only in its central region.

The definitions do the conceptual work. The rhysmoid is the total collection of rhysmons — "a perfectly interlocking mechanical structure forming our so-called vacuum." A rhysmonic impulse is a directed vector about 10⁻³³ cm long carrying one quantum of action; in an undisturbed rhysmoid these cancel exactly "and no phenomena exist." Particles are local excesses or deficiencies of rhysmons; fields are uncancelled directed impulse vectors; charge is the same thing acting as source or sink.

Third and fourth dimensions

Hodowanec distinguishes the "third dimensional universe" revealed by the senses and instruments from the "fourth dimensional" substratum, describable only in L, M and T and knowable "only by our minds in conjunction with our senses and instrumentations." He explicitly compares this to the terms spirit or soul, while treating the brain as a corporeal computer programmed by a non-corporeal mind.

The matrix is stationary — a unit cell "cannot be broken up and be moved as in a fluid" — but distortable, hence an elastic solid medium. It contains "the sole intrinsic energy of the universe", which becomes visible to us only as density variations (particles) and directed fluxes (fields). Because each cell is fixed, "we can speak of 'in respect to the aether' since this aether is in reality a fixed reference. Thus we have absolute space and absolute time."

The structure has a linear and a rotary aspect, and oscillates at the Planck frequency. The linear aspect gives Inertia and linear momentum; the rotational aspect gives angular momentum. Hodowanec identifies the resulting dynamic structure with a "universal G-field", defined by Newton's G and distinct from the local g-fields that masses such as the Earth impose on it, and also distinct from the zero-point energy flux, which he attributes to perturbations of the G-field by novae and other disturbed masses.

Energy extraction

The mechanism section opens with a definition of energy as "the ability to do work", mechanical in nature and involving motion with respect to the fixed aether. Active energy is kinetic, E = 2 K.E. = mv², the factor ½ in the usual formula being "a mathematical artifice used to simplify the more practical applications". The intrinsic energy of the rhysmoid is a scalar, depending on speed and not velocity, and is given by E* = M*C*² — "or the more familiar E = MC²".

The experimental claim is specific. On seeing McClain and Wootan's Magnetic Resonance Amplifier material in December 1995, Hodowanec judged that a series-resonant system driven by a low-level oscillator could be interacting with the Earth's g-field. He built his own version from parts on hand and reports "a strong interaction at about 83.6 KHz", with weaker interaction at adjacent frequencies, all of which he "later determined to be sub-harmonics of the Universal Rhysmonic (Planck) frequency of about 1.855×10⁴³ Hz." Some circuits, he says, "achieved a self-sustaining action where the power gain kept the rechargeable cells powering the solid-state oscillator fully charged over several thousand hours" of continuous operation, when the batteries should have discharged. Initial attempts to orient the inductor along the Earth's g-field turned out not to matter; only the frequency did. He concludes that this mechanism "is at the heart of all 'free energy' devices which were reported to have had significant power gains."

Because the universe is a closed black body, extraction is not creation: energy is taken out, used, and returned to the rhysmoid. Rhysmonics accordingly predicts no heat death and no cold death.

Gravitational speed and the universe-wide vector

The most consequential claim in the Note concerns propagation. A single directed cell vector has speed L*/T* = C*. But in the universal G-field the gravitational flux speed is nL*/T*, where n is the number of unit vectors summed head to tail — two vectors give 2C*, three give 3C*, and so on. "Put another way, gravitational effects are 'propagated' any distance in the same time frame of T*."

Light is different because it is transverse: the reversals of the E and H components can only take place within T*, so EM propagation goes at L*/T* = c. Hodowanec adds that this holds only in undisturbed aether — near other particles or fields, L* and T* could change and the speed of light with them.

From the reflecting edge he draws the "clothes-line with loss-less pulleys" picture: a universe-wide instantaneous vector reflects from the edge and returns, so that a push at the front of a mass produces a push at the back at the same time, and this is what mass movement consists of. He remarks that a person with "Gravitational field 'eyes'" would be able to see the back of his own head instantly, from any position in the universe.

Signalling through the aether

Hodowanec claims that moving a mass modulates these universe-wide vectors, that the Earth's rotation then stores the modulation "in time in the aether", and that his gravity detectors read it back. He reports recording Morse code sent by swinging a several-pound lead weight, received up to 20 miles away, and speculates that Tesla saw the effect in Colorado. Ramsay's own contribution was more elegant: RC oscillators tuned to a musical scale, keyed from a keyboard and mixed into an audio amplifier driving loudspeaker inductors — "a Cosmic Organ." After he stopped playing, he reports, "the universe would keep on playing his tune" for hours, with the range from about 100 Hz to 1 kHz relatively unchanged and the high notes distorting first.

Asides

Several conventional results are reinterpreted. Relativity: relative motion is simply motion with respect to the stationary aether; a charge at rest in the lab shows only static charge, while a moved charge develops linear and rotational flux movements; and in the magnet-and-coil test it does not matter which is moved because "a relative flux movement was involved in either case." Casimir force: not a new force and not zero-point energy, but a gravitational shielding effect — the plates block the universal G-fields normal to their surfaces and hardly at all transversely. Charge clusters: Hodowanec doubts Shoulders' clusters are collections of electrons, suggesting instead super-particles or vortices, a negative one being "essentially a large 'hole' in the aether", while conceding this is conjecture. Angular momentum: the flywheel stores energy in the circumferential vectors of the fixed aether, which is why gyrocompasses and the Foucault pendulum refer to the universe at large; and if a stopped flywheel is restarted soon enough, restart should require much lower drive — "Is this the 'Aspden Effect?'"

Finally, weather. Hodowanec had predicted from changes observed at the Galaxy Center in December 1986 that Earth would see an extended period of unusual weather. Between 6 and 9 January 1999 he found what he calls good correlation between his own weight on a spring-type electronic scale and the position of the northern jet stream: nominally 163 pounds, his scale reading varied between 150 and 170 pounds, reading low when the jet stream plunged to Alabama and Florida and high when it retreated to Canada. Ramsay's bracketed comment: "That's a 12-13% change! Can this be accounted for, 'rationalized' away, by any combination of the 'usual' mundane factors?" Hodowanec urges readers with such scales to try it themselves: "verification by others would be nice!"

Assessment

There is something genuinely attractive in the starting move. Planck's natural units are constructed from c, G and h alone, and asking whether they describe an actual granularity of the Vacuum rather than a mere dimensional accident is a legitimate question — it is close in spirit to what quantum-gravity programmes ask, though they answer it very differently. The insistence that a cosmology should be mechanical, and that fields ought to be made of something rather than posited as brute mathematical objects, is the classic aether-theorist's demand and it is honestly held here. Hodowanec is also unusually generous as a dissident writer: everything was placed in the public domain, the postulates are stated explicitly and up front rather than smuggled in, the tone is undogmatic — "my reports to you are not intended to be dogma" — and he repeatedly asks others to check him. The arithmetic in the units table is internally consistent where it can be checked: the rhysmon number density really is the reciprocal of L*³, the visible-universe rhysmon count really is the volume divided by L*³, and E* = M*C*² gives the quoted 1.96×10¹⁶ ergs.

Against that, the difficulties are severe and several are internal. The Planck frequency is quoted as 1.815×10⁴³ Hz in Ramsay's table and as 1.855×10⁴³ Hz throughout Hodowanec's text; 1/T* = 1/(5.391×10⁻⁴⁴) is 1.855×10⁴³, so the table is simply wrong. The rhysmon force is given as "1.22×10⁴⁹ ergs/sec" in the table — wrong units, since E*/L* is dynes, not ergs per second — and then as "1.21×10⁹⁹ dynes" in the body, fifty orders of magnitude larger. E*/L* = 1.96×10¹⁶/1.616×10⁻³³ = 1.21×10⁴⁹, so the figure in the text is the erroneous one. In a paper whose whole method is the manipulation of derived natural units, a fifty-order-of-magnitude discrepancy in one of the six basic quantities is not a typographical detail.

The visible-universe figures are the deeper problem. A mass of 3.2×10¹⁷⁸ gm follows correctly from N⁰M*, but it exceeds the observed mass of the visible universe — roughly 10⁵⁶ gm, from the measured critical density and the Hubble volume — by some hundred and twenty orders of magnitude. Hodowanec would presumably reply that this is aether mass and not matter mass, but the postulates give the rhysmoid ordinary Mass in grams and treat it as gravitating (it defines G), and a mass density of 5×10⁹³ gm/cm³ filling all space is flatly excluded by the fact that the universe is not inside its own Schwarzschild radius by an enormous margin. The paper never confronts this, which is the classic difficulty of the vacuum-energy calculation restated in mechanical dress.

The claim that gravitational effects propagate at nC*, effectively instantaneously and independently of distance, is the most directly testable proposition in the Note, and it has since been tested. The 2017 coincidence of GW170817 with the gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A fixed the speed of Gravitational Waves equal to the speed of light to within about one part in 10¹⁵ over a path of some 130 million light-years. There is no room in that measurement for a gravitational impulse crossing the universe in one Planck time. The same measurement removes the physical basis for the "clothes-line" account of mass movement and for gravity signalling over any distance.

The experimental reports are the weakest link, and Ramsay's own framing invites the objection. The MRA self-sustaining circuit is described qualitatively — no input power, no output power, no measurement of either, no independent load, no explanation of how "fully charged" was assessed. A battery that stays charged is not a power measurement; alkaline cells under very light intermittent load can hold voltage for thousands of hours without any anomaly, and voltage is not state of charge. The identification of 83.6 kHz as a subharmonic of 1.855×10⁴³ Hz is not a constraint at all: the ratio is about 2.2×10³⁸, and given a free choice of integer divisor every frequency whatsoever is a subharmonic of a high enough one. The gravity-signalling and Cosmic Organ results describe no controls, no blind protocol and no null runs, in an apparatus whose detectors are acknowledged to respond to ordinary electrical noise.

The weight-scale correlation is where the Note is most clearly refuted by its own numbers. A 12–13 % variation in weight means a 12–13 % variation in local g. Absolute gravimeters routinely measure g at the 10⁻⁹ level and record the real terrestrial variations — solid-earth tides of order 10⁻⁷ g, barometric loading smaller still. A swing of 150 to 170 pounds is nine orders of magnitude larger than anything gravimetry sees, and would have been detected by every geodetic and metrological laboratory on Earth. The mundane explanation Ramsay invites the reader to dismiss — that consumer spring scales and load cells drift with temperature, humidity, placement and time of day, and that a person's mass varies by several pounds over days — accounts for the observation completely, and is exactly what a comparison against a balance-type scale, which Hodowanec explicitly excludes, would have shown.

What survives, then, is the framing rather than the physics: a coherent statement of what a mechanical, absolute-space aether cosmology would have to look like if one were built from Planck units, offered generously and without dogma by a man who wanted others to test it. Tested, it has not held.

See also

• Bill Ramsay
• Gregory Hodowanec
• Aether
• Free Energy
• Zero Point Energy
• Planck Constant
• Casimir Effect
• Inertia
• Nikola Tesla
• Harold Aspden