Tom Bearden disagrees that there are transverse waves outside of the antenna of your transmitter or receiver. Like Nikola Tesla, he holds to the model of a longitudinal propagation (electrical "sound" waves) of "ripples" in the charge density of the 'aether' or vacuum. He credits Frank Golden, his engineer/scientist friend, with pointing this out to him. (Incidentally, Bearden is NOT referring to what he calls a 'scalar' wave only, when he holds to a longitudinal- only view. He states emphatically that this applies both to his special "scalar" stress waves, per se, AND to what we call a normal EM wave, which he considers to be a 'special' subset of a scalar wave.)

Well then, why do our instruments appear to MEASURE these right- angled components if they're not even there?

Bearden invokes the analogy of a gyroscope. Spin a gyroscope, then try to tilt it in a given direction. What happens? The gyroscope PRECESSES and tries to tilt on an axis 90 degrees away from the direction you intended for it.

Bearden says that that's what happens inside a wire. The electrons in a conductor are "free", capable of being knocked down the wire from atom to atom as a "current". Physicists refer to them as an "electron gas" in the wire. But one more thing: They're spinning, just like little gyroscopes. So when a "force" pushes on them from a certain direction, they precess at right angles, forming "precession waves" whose instantaneous direction or polarity depends on the changing density of the incoming longitudinal wave that caused them to precess.

Invoking the Quantum Mechanics "paradox", if you will, that whenever we MEASURE something, we cannot help but perturb it (and screw up the measurement to that extent), and thus we NEVER ACTUALLY MEASURE ANYTHING in an UNBIASED WAY, Bearden maintains that we are, in fact, measuring ONLY WHAT GOES ON INSIDE OUR INSTRUMENTS AS A REACTION TO WHAT'S GOING ON OUTSIDE OF THE PROBE; we never measure things directly. So we THINK we see transverse waves in the vacuum, when actually all we're doing is seeing the transverse PRECESSION of the electrons in our measuring devices. Interesting, right? Well, is Tom correct? He may well be.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

BUT WHAT ABOUT POLARIZATION?

If Bearden is correct, that there is no electrical "field" going "up and down" (using the example of vertical polarization), and there is no magnetic field going "back and forth" at 90 degrees to the E- field, both TRANSVERSE or at 90 degrees to the direction of propagation ("out" from the antenna), but that there is ONLY a COMPRESSION/RAREFACTION (longitudinal) action on the density of the 'aether', spreading out from transmitter to the surrounding space, then my question is:

WHY DOES THE VERTICAL OR HORIZONTAL ORIENTATION OF THE RECEIVING ANTENNA, WITH RESPECT TO THE ORIENTATION OF THE TRANSMITTING ANTENNA, AFFECT THE RECEPTION OF THE TRANSMITTED SIGNAL AT ALL?

A longitudinally oriented wave CONTAINS NO INFORMATION THAT WOULD "TELL" THE RECEIVING ANTENNA THAT IT OUGHT TO BE ORIENTED ONE WAY OR THE OTHER, yet that is precisely what we find in the real world! Does Tom Bearden deny this?

Let's refresh ourselves quickly on what we mean by Polarization. Simply this: Following the Classical EM model, we define the polarization of a wave by measuring the ORIENTATION OF THE ELECTRIC FIELD COMPONENT at the antenna of the transmitter.

Simply put, if the antenna consists of a horizontal wire, parallel to the ground, we have a horizontally polarized wave. Rotating the wire into the vertical makes the wave polarization vertical.

Is this just theory, based on Maxwell's transverse concept? No. It is an observable phenomenon in radio and TV transmission/reception. In fact, if you've ever worn a pair of Polaroid sunglasses, you've experienced the effect yourself. Much of the glare outside in the sun can be cut by wearing these glasses, since they filter out all light waves that are scattered about with different polarizations than the one they're designed to respond to. If you don't mind popping a lens out of your glasses, place it in front of the other lens, look through it, and rotate it. You will find a place where all the light is shut out -- you're looking at a black, opaque lens. Continue turning the popped out lens, and you'll begin to see the view through the lenses re-appearing, first dimly, then back up to normal brightness.

When you had the polarizations of the two lenses at 90 degrees apart, your view went black. Light could not penetrate the lens pair.

This same effect happens at radio frequencies (RF, of course, is an EM wave just as light is). When a transmitting antenna is oriented in the vertical direction, and the receiving antenna is horizontal, a MINIMUM of energy is received at the receiver. TV stations' antennas are usually horizontally polarized -- that's why your home TV antenna is a series of horizontal metal tubes mounted on a boom at right angles to the vertical mast holding it up.

Other services, such as AM radio stations, use vertical towers (vertical polarization).

It is even possible to produce circularly- and elliptically-polarized EM waves using suitable antennas.

Even more exotic is POLARIZATION MODULATION, used in some advanced systems, where the polarization of the carrier wave varies in step with the information, just as in AM the Amplitude of the carrier is modulated.

My point is that polarization OCCURS, like it or not, and the Transverse Wave Model seems to explain it most satisfactorily, as far as I am aware.

How does Bearden's denial of the transverse wave in vacuum square with this known phenomenon of polarization?
--------------------------------------------------------------------

BEARDEN WANTS US TO UNDERSTAND AND BELIEVE; SO I'LL CALL HIM!

Well, my 3rd call was cut short because Mr. Bearden was having a meeting that night and he had no time. Already feeling a bit guilty, I said I'd call back in a few days when he wasn't busy.

About 3 days later, feeling just a little bit like a pest, I dialed Bearden's number again on Sunday evening, April 4th. Bearden answered the phone. As politely as I could, I announced who I was and that I just had one more question that I needed help with, and that I'd promise not to call too often after that. Not that Bearden had indicated that I was becoming a nuisance; just that I'd talked to him for a half-hour the previous week, and maybe three days after that, I'd called him again, only to have him tell me he was too busy to talk -- he was in a meeting at the moment. So here I thought I'd try one more time on this fine Sunday evening to ask Tom Bearden how he would reconcile the phenomenon of radio wave polarization with his view of a solely LONGITUDINAL wave propagation through the "vacuum" between a standard radio transmitter and receiver.

Bearden began by asking me if I knew what Newton's Third Law was. I answered that I thought it was the 'action-reaction' law, which he agreed that it was. He then began saying that the present electromagnetics is flawed because it violates that Newtonian law. That we DO detect transverse waves-- but only in the electron gas of our antennnas and instrument probes. That 'not one of the equations attributed to Maxwell were actually written by him' etc., etc. Having read three of his books and all of his papers as downloaded from the BBS's, I'd heard these phrases many times before. I understood the phrases. Bearden knew who I was by now, and therefore didn't need to keep parroting them every time we talked. What I wanted to know was, How does the longitudinal propagation theory account for the KNOWN FACT that EM waves are polarized one way or another, and so your receiving antenna's polarization (or, ORIENTATION) must match that of the transmitter for optimum reception.

That's all I wanted to know. I just wanted Bearden to explain polarization in terms of his longitudinal model.

Evidently I pissed him off.

He told me that I was just regurgitating what "they" had taught me in the standard electromagnetics courses. That I shouldn't believe them. That I should read and re-read his books to get straightened out on these points.

I felt he was evading my question. I was asking about polarization. If he didn't know the answer, or if he hadn't considered the question before, or even if he didn't feel like talking to me about it, he could have politely told me so. I would have accepted that. Everyone who has a theory is allowed to develop it. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Next, Tom Bearden was attempting to tell me that polarization itself was "a bunch of bullshit"! Trying to get a word in edgewise, while trying to remain polite (after all, I was making the phone call, intruding on his time), I reminded him that his books didn't DEAL with polarization. He said he didn't HAVE to, because it was all bullshit. That I needed to THINK (emphasis his), and that if I were really paying attention to what he was saying, I would understand and wouldn't be asking these ILLOGICAL questions!

Still hearing no attempt to answer my question about polarization, I tried to define what I meant by it. I tried to use the illustration of a TV station, whose antenna is usually horizontally polarized -- and thus your home TV antenna on your roof is also horizontally polarized.

But Bearden doesn't let you finish most of your sentences. Instead, he is parroting more phrases such as you find throughout his books.

By this point, he was actually telling me that, sorry, but when a caller such as myself constantly repeats the same question over and over, or from a different angle, then he must get tough with the caller and tell him point blank that his questions are bullshit questions. And that I was 'not going to get him to ADMIT' to there being such a thing as wave polarization, as if doing so was to 'surrender' to those people who hold to the Transverse EM wave theory. God forbid!

Now I was beginning to wonder if this guy was paranoid. I thought of ufologist Jacques Vallee who would try and try to ask simple, polite but firm questions of people like Bill Cooper or Bob Lazar. When they would begin to squirm, he would press them just a little bit more. Not to be an S.O.B., just to cut through the fluff and get to see if there was really anything to the whole thing. Vallee recounts how he would sometimes be accused, afterwards, of working for the CIA or some other "government" group hated by the UFO 'true believers'.

So now, here I was, being informed by Tom Bearden that I was attempting to get him to 'admit' to a 'doctrine' of classical EM, which he would not. I was a Roman Catholic Inquisitor trying to get Galileo to recant his position and admit that the heavens do revolve around a stationary earth. Oy vay!

Feeling exasperated, I paused for a moment. Bearden paused, too. I then said, "Mr. Bearden, I am not trying to get you to 'admit' anything. I'm just trying to understand how to fit polarization into your longitudinal view..."

"It's NOT just my view. Nikola Tesla himself held to 'sound waves' in the aether..."

"I didn't mean that it was just YOUR view, Mr. Bearden..."

"It is the CORRECT view..."

Now I was thinking of my boss at work. He never lets me finish what I'm saying, either.

Finally I asked him, "Mr. Bearden, may I make a REQUEST of you then? In your future writings, would you please at least ADDRESS this problem of how polarization is explained in the longitudinal model..."

"No I will NOT!" Bearden said with some conviction. "I get letters all the time from people with fifty questions and who want all their questions answered..."

I interrupted HIM this time: "Yes, and when you go public as you have and write books that challenge the present 'system ', and encourage a new generation of bright young physicists to embrace this Scalar EM and thereby "overturn the present Physics", YOU HAD BETTER EXPECT TO ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS TO BACK UP YOUR ASSERTIONS when people call or write, asking for more detail..."

He told me once more to read his books again, because he would not answer anyone's questions if (like mine) they were repetitions of an ILLOGICAL question to begin with.

There was no more to be gained by pressing this conversation. I said, with a sigh, "Thank you for your help, Mr. Bearden", and hung up the phone.

Obviously, I won't be 'pestering' the honorable Mr. Tom Bearden with my silly phone calls again, unless he decides to lower himself down to my humble intellectual level and, in his great mercy, throw me but a crumb from the table on which sits the bounteous feast of Beardenian Electromagnetics.

[1997 update: Bearden and I have corresponded a couple of times since 1996, and he wrote a lengthy and gracious response to my second "ping" file, ANDERSEN.ASC, in which I critiqued several of his concepts; that file went onto the KeelyNet, and I guess Tom got a copy of it... and finally realized that my motives were positive. He has been very good-spirited in his treatment of my "pings" since that time, and I state here and now that our phone conversation in 1993 should not be taken as an indicator of his attitude in general. Maybe he was having a bad day; maybe I was too aggressive over the phone. Whatever the case, I respect him highly and my position is one of honest inquirer. That being said, back to the 1993 file!]

I guess since I'm not a member of the Mensa Society, as Bearden is, I can only be classified as lower than a "degenerate semiconductor". I suppose it's the slow "drift velocity" at which knowledge propagates through the electron gas in my cerebral cortex. And it keeps precessing sideways, instead of sinking in.

Anyway, Be it known both to Mr. Tom Bearden and to you, good reader, that I hold nothing against Bearden personally. The man definitely seems to be a genius in many ways, even if his table manners could use some polishing up.

I believe he is on to something real and with big consequences for 21st Century Physics, once we take up his challenge to test his theories in the lab. Just don't call him up with any questions that tend to rock his boat, or you may be branded "illogical". He is a rugged Pioneer; we 'young-uns' are going to have to be the ones who bring methodical, point-by-point analysis and proof to bear on this Scalar Electromagnetics.

Pioneers are lone trail-blazers who have had to fight off the establishment for all of their pioneering careers, and they've got to be committed to their cause, even to the point of religious dogmatism. The upside of this is that lesser souls have a shining light to follow. The down-side is that the pioneer creates a dogma that rivals the one he broke away from and made a career of criticizing. It's human nature, I guess.

It seems to me that, even if Bearden (and, yes, Tesla also) is wrong on the mode of propagation-- if EM does have transverse components through the vacuum, and not solely longitudinal-- most of his other gripes with classical EM have the solid support of Quantum Physics behind them and show the classical EM model to be useful, yet quite wrong in many of its fundamentals.

In the meantime I want to remind those of you who, like me, think that Bearden is mostly correct and that the scientific community needs to re-examine the foundations of Electromagnetics: This "copping an attitude" bullshit as exhibited by Tom Bearden just won't wash with the real world. We need to come up with an electromagnetic theory that properly explains empirical observations, such as the phenomenon of wave polarization. As of this writing, April 1993, the Transverse Wave model of Maxwell's Electromagnetics continues to be the best explanation of wave polarization. I was hoping to find out that Bearden's EM theory explains it better; unfortunately, he refuses to discuss it at all. This is kid stuff and has no place in a respectable scientific theory. As long as honest inquirers keep getting rebuffed the way I did by Bearden, he cannot expect to be taken seriously by anyone.

Can anyone explain wave polarization via Tom Bearden's Scalar EM theory?

I welcome correspondence on this and related subjects. I also promise to treat you politely!