[photo of John] AnalogScience Fiction & Fact Magazine
"The Alternate View" columns
of John G. Cramer
Subject Index
"The Alternate View" columns of John G. Cramer are short (~2,000 word) essays about cutting-edge science. They are aimed at readers (and writers) of "hard" science fiction, as exemplified by the SF stories of Analog, but are about real science, usually physics or astronomy. These columns are now published bimonthly in every issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine.
This index is current to the May-June-2021 issue of Analog
© John G. Cramer, 1984-2021; All rights reserved.
No part of these columns may be reproduced in any form
without prior explicit permission of the author.


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[Each underlined column title is a link to that column; click on the title to go there.]

Group 1 - Cutting Edge Science
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
The Other 40 Dimensions Klein-Kaluza compactification 04/85 AltVw06
Light in Reverse Gear I Optical reversal with a 4-Wave mixer  06/85 AltVw07
Light in Reverse Gear II Advanced radiation 08/85 AltVw08
Antimatter in a Trap Penning ion trapping 12/85 AltVw10
Super Atoms and Super Fields Positrons from Z>173 atoms 13/86 AltVw17
Warm Superconductors Ceramic BaYCuO superconductors 10/87 AltVw22
Report on NanoCon 1 NanoCon I - The 1st Nanotechnology Conference 10/89 AltVw35
Harnessing the Butterfly 
- The Steering of Chaos
Using chaos for control 03/92 AltVw51
Bose-Einstein Condensation: 
A New Form of Matter
Thousands of atoms in the same quantum state 03/96 AltVw77
The "Real World" and The Standard Model Effect on the universe of varying force strengths and quark masses 05/96 AltVw78
Burn Up the Nuclear Waste Particle accelerators for waste "burn-up" 07/96 AltVw79
The Atom Laser A laser that emits coherent atoms instead of coherent light 07/97 AltVw85
Planet of the Geezers Telomeres and the reversal of human aging 02/98 AltVw88
What We Don't Understand The major unsolved problems of contemporary physics. 07-08/99 AltVw96
A Century of Physics Highlights of the Centennial Meeting of the American Physical Society 10/99 AltVw97
Our Millimeter-Size Universe Superstring theory suggests that gravity is weak because its extra-dimensional loops are a millimeter in diameter. 12/99 AltVw98
"Interaction-Free" Quantum 
Measurements and Imaging
Quantum measurements that can produce an image of an object without the interaction of a single photon. 09/00 AltVw101
The "Rare Earth" Hypothesis A new book argues that complex life must be very rare in our galaxy. 11/00 AltVw102
Decoding the Ribosome Nature's nanotechnology "assembler", the ribosome, has been decoded and its structure revealed. 05/01 AltVw106
Carbon Nanotubes, A Miracle Material Carbon nanotubes can be conductors or semiconductors, super-strong materials, and could make possible a "skyhook". 12/01 AltVw109
Quantum Computing, 5 Qubits and Counting Quantum computing has made a step forward, with a 5 qubit computer that factors 15 into primes.  What's next? 06/02 AltVw112
Quark Stars Discovery of ultra-dense stars that are thought to be made of quark matter. 11/02 AltVw114
A Stroll Through the Lyman Alpha Forest The forest of absorption Lyman-a spectral lines seen in the light from quasars maps the hydrogen "lanes" of the universe and testifies that quasars are very distant objects. 03/03 AltVw116
A Mission to the Earth's Core A new "modest proposal" to send an instrument package to the core of the Earth by melting through the crust with molten iron.. 12/03 AltVw120

Dark-Energy Stars vs. Black Holes

Do black holes exist?  A new theory suggests that they do not, and suggests instead that collapsing supernovas create "dark energy stars". 10/05 AltVw129
The Big Rip at the End of Time Some new cosmological models suggest that the universe will expand at an ever increasing rate until ti tears itself apart, producing a "Big Rip" that tears apart stars, planets, atom, and particles, until nothing is left in a dark empty lonely universe. 03/05 AltVw126
Back in Time Through Other Dimensions A new variation of string theory in non-compartified dimensions provides a mechanism for creating timelike loops and suggests that such loops may exist in nature. 10/06 AltVw134
EPR Communication: Signals from the Future? An Innsbruck PhD thesis suggests a way in which one might use quantum nonlocality for communication, which would make possible superluminal and retro-causal signaling. 12/06 AltVw135
Extrasolar Planets and Occult Astronomy A new star-shade system may enable the Hubble Space Telescope and its successors to discover earth-like extra-solar planets and even detect the presence of life on them. 03/07 AltVw136
Real Nuclear Fusion on a Tabletop A UCLA group has used a heated ferroelectric crystal to produce d+d nuclear fusion on a tabletop, producing energy and lots of neutrons. 10/07 AltVw139
The Experimental Evidence against Objective Reality The results of recent EPR-type tests with elliptically polarized photons of the Leggett Relations of quantum mechanics have been used to argue against the existence of objective reality. 12/07 AltVw140
There's a Hole in Bottom of the Universe! Cosmic microwave background data from WMAP shows a "hole" in the emission pattern, suggesting an anomalous cold region in the early universe. 03/08 AltVw141
The Falling Dominoes: The Source of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays An analysis of AUGER project data indicates that the source of the most energetic cosmic rays is active galactic nuclei. Thus was one of my top 10 unsolved physics puzzles in 2000. 05/08 AltVw142
Noise as a Quantum Signal Noise in the GEO600 gravity wave detector may be providing evidence that space-time is holographic, with the three space dimensions mapped onto some two-dimensional surface.   Are 2D space shortcuts possible? 12/08 AltVw145
Radioactive Decay and the Earth-Sun Distance Data from radioactive decays collected over several years suggests a correlation with the Earth's varying distance from the Sun during its annual orbit. 05/09 AltVw147
Opus 150: Dark Forces in the Universe New results from potential dark matter detectors present a puzzling pattern of data that is not consistent with expectations.  A new theory postulating a 5th force that acts only between dark matter particles could explain what's going on. 12/09 AltVw150
The Nice Way to Make a Solar System The Nice Model suggests that the early history of the Solar System may have been very violent, with giant planets exchanging orbits and outer-system debris raining on the inner planets. 03/10 AltVw151
Bubbles of Broken Symmetry Results from the STAR Collaboration at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider provide evidence for a new kind of breaking of mirror-image symmetry (parity) in strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma systems. 07-08/10 AltVw153
The Deficiency of Black Holes at the LHC With a year of operation of CERN's LHC at half its design energy, the CMS Collaboration has reported that the mini-black-holes predicted by some "extra-dimension" gravity theories have not been detected. 07-08/11 AltVw158
A "New Physics" Bump at Fermilab? As the Tevatron Collider at Fermiiab is in its last few months of operation, the CDF Collabration has reported a 3.2 standard deviation "bump" in proton-antiproton collisions invollving Z-mason production that appears to be inconsistent wuth the Standard Model of particle physics and may signal "new physics". 10/11 AltVw159
Introducing the Higgs Boson Two experiments at CERN have announced the discovery of a particle that has the properties of the Higgs boson.  What are the implications of this discovery, and just what is a Higgs boson? 12/12 AltVw165
High-Z Helium: Is QED Failing? Quantum electrodynamics, our Standard Model of electromagnetic interactions,  seems to fail to account for recent observations of the behavior of two-electron atoms with a large nuclear charge Z. 05/13 AltVw167
Weighing the Neutrino with Cyclotron Radiation A new technique using radio-frequency cyclotron radiation permits the isolation, detection, and kinetic-energy measurement is single electrons.  Application of this technique to the beta decay of tritium promises improved determination of the mass of the e-neutrino. 03/15 AltVw176
Genome Editing: The CRISPR Revolution Description of CRISPR, a new genetic engineering technique for high-precision cutting, splicing, and editing of DNA, using the antivirus CAS-9 enzyme that has evolved in certain bacteria for targeted DNA cutting.. 10/15 AltVw179
Gravity with 4-Vector Potentials - A Theory Revolution? A mathematically simpler alternative to Einstein's general relativity that  predicts the same experimental observables, but predicts different gravity wave emission and detection profiles that can be critically tested with Advanced LIGO. 12/14 AltVw180
When Virgo Joined LIGO The recent addition of the Italy-based Virgo gravitational wave detector to aLIGO's pair of gravitational wave detectors gives the system new sensitivity to the location and polarization of gravitational wave events.  This has resulted in polarization observations that disfavor the "vector" alternatives to Einstein's tensor-based general relativity.  It has also made possible the study of a neutron star merger not only by LIGO/Virgo, but also by a huge number of telescopes and detectors in the radio, visible, and gamma ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. 03-04/18 AltVw193
Can We Cure Aging? Recent results from the Mayo Clinic suggest that many symptoms of aging result from the accumulation of senescent cells, and that many aging effects can be reversed by causing senescent cells expressing the protein p16 to "self-destruct".  A new company, Oisin Biotechnology, has developed a plasmid-based DNA technique using this approach that clears senescent cells from animals and humans, offering the possibility of a general treatment for aging.  A spin-off of this technology is a possible general treatment for cancer cells expressing the p53 protein. 05-06/18 AltVw194
Cryptocurrency and Quantum Computing Quantum computers are now emerging from the academic and industrial laboratories. We explain what quantum computers and cryptocurrencies are and consider the impact of quantum computing, with its potential for breaking cryptographic codes, on the emerging development of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. 07-08/18 AltVw195
Vacuum Birefringence and Neutron Stars Recently, a team of astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe the weak (magnitude 25.5) visible light from the neutron star RX J1856.5-3754, located about 400 light years from Earth. The group report observations that light at a wavelength of 555.0 nanometers had a linear polarization of 16.4±5.3%. This is a demonstration of vacuum birefringence produced by the high magnetic field near the surface of neutron stars. 09-10/18 AltVw196
IceCube and the Source of Cosmic Rays On September 22, 2017, the IceCube detector located in Antarctica observed a cosmic ray mu-neutrino from the northern sky having a kinetic energy of about 2.9 x 1011 electron-volts that passed all the way through the Earth before it was converted to a charged m-lepton within the IceCube detector volume and determined the direction of origin within a small circle in the northern sky spanning half a degree of arc and located at right ascension 77.33° and declination +5.72°. Within a few seconds the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope turned to examine this location and detected an outburst of x-rays and gamma rays coming from the so called "Texas Blazar".  This provides new evidence for the origin of cosmic rays. 11-12/18 AltVw197
Ghost Galaxies from an Older Universe? Sir Roger Penrose, Oxford superstar-theorist, has been developing  and promoting a radical new cosmological theory, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (or CCC), which is based on general relativity and which concerns itself with the origins of our universe and its predecessors.  Here we review CCC and find it to be a very interesting take on cosmology, but not without some fatal flaws. 03-04/19 AltVw199
Neutrino Relics from the Big Bang Our universe is full of dead neutrinos. Each cubic centimeter of the space around us contains at least 340 of them. They are Big Bang leftovers, ephemeral relic neutral particles and anti-particles that possess a half-unit of spin and a small mass, but almost no kinetic energy. We are fairly sure of their existence, based on the Standard LCDM Model of Cosmology.  However, there are now other ways of confirming the presence of these Big Bang neutrino products. 07-08/19 AltVw201
Bio-Reprogramming and Multi-Century Life Spans A group at Stanford University has reported that that infusing aged human cells with a six-protein cocktail (OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, c-MYC, LIN28 and NANOG) of messenger RNA caused the treated cells to be "reprogrammed" to a dramatically younger but still functional state.  In other words, they have discovered a way to rejuvenate old and damaged human cells, perhaps even in living humans. 09-10/19 AltVw202
Quantum Entanglement Across Time A recent experiment demonstrated the entanglement of a pair of photons, in a situation where the first photon had been detected and disappeared well before the second photon was even created.  We explain entanglement across time, an important aspect of quantum mechanics, in terms of the transactional interpretation describing advanced-wave plus retarded-wave handshakes. 11-12/19 AltVw203
Renormalization: 
Dodging Infinities
There are serious problems with two important theories of particle physics: quantum electrodynamics (QED), the relativistic quantum theory of the electromagnetic force, and quantum field theory (QFT), the relativistic quantum theory of particles and fields. The problems arise because both formalisms contained spurious infinities associated with self-energy that need to be subtracted away "by hand" using a procedure called "renormalization" before meaningful calculations and realistic predictions can be made.  We consider whether renormalization can and/or must be avoided in a better theory that is compatible with gravity. 01-02/20 AltVw204
The Inconstant
Hubble Constant
The ratio of recession velocity to distance is called the Hubble Constant.  It describes the expansion of the universe and it is one of the most fundamental parameters describing our universe.  Astronomy and astrophysics have made great strides in providing more accurate observations and measurements of this constant. However, along with these improved measurements, a problem has arisen: they don't agree.  We consider the methods of measurement and possible resolutions of the problem. 03-04/20 AltVw205
Is the Universe a Hypersphere? In the Cosmological Standard Model, the curvature parameter, which is related to the average mass density of the universe, determines whether the universe is open (>0), flat (=0), or closed (<0).  Recently analyzed cosmic microwave background data from the Planck Mission indicates a valua around -0.05.  This would imply that the early universe was a closed hypersphere.  That tentative conclusion, however, is in disagreement with data from later times.   05-06/20 AltVw206
Frame Dragging and Pulsars One of the testable predictions of Einstein's general relativity is frame dragging, an analog of magnetism in the domain of gravity.  The effect is normally very small, but was finally observed near Earth by the Gravity Probe B mission in 2004.  Recent radio-telescope observations of a binary pulsar system, however,  provide a dramatic example of framer dragging in a domain where the effect is much larger. 07-08/20 AltVw207
Where's All the Antimatter? Our universe is dominated by matter, yet the fundamental high-energy particle interactions tend to create particles and antiparticles in equal numbers.  So where did all the matter come from?  A new clue has just been provided by the Japanese T2K experiment, which demonstrates a sizable preference for matter over antimatter in the weak-interaction oscillation of mu-neutrinos into e-neutrinos. 09-10/20 AltVw208
The Lentz Soliton FTL Drive Erik W. Lentz has recently demonstrated that there is a positive-energy space-time soliton solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity. Using the Arnowitt, Deser, and Misner (ADM) formulation of general relativity and a hyperbolic rather than linear or elliptic relation for the ADM "shift vector", he has been able to construct a moving, possibly superluminal, soliton that involves only positive mass-energy. This seems to offer a more physically realizable alternative to the Alcubierre Warp Drive 11-12/20 AltVw209
Wave Function Collapse Revealed In  quantum mechanics, the abrupt change in the quantum wave function when a measurement is made, called wave function collapse, has been a mysterious process that has had to be put into the theory "by hand".  This column reports on work by the author in which the underlying mechanism behind wave function collapse is revealed to be a "handshake" between advanced and retarded wave functions, as suggested by the author's transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics.  This work has implications for placing Schrödinger's wave mechanics on a firmer basis by providing a basis for quantum nonlocality and permitting it to correctly predict the outcomes of EPR experiments and for providing a more physical alternative to QED and QFT. 01-02/21 AltVw210
Rejuvenation and the DNA Methylation Clock Cell biologists now understand that the mechanisms behind cell specialization and cell aging are epigenetic programming, at least partially implemented by the attachment of methyl (CH3) radicals to DNA to silence unwanted genes.  A Methylation Clock has been discovered that can accurately predict the ages of humans and animals, based on how their DNA is methylated.  Now, several methods of accomplishing epigenetic reprogramming by resetting the DNA methylation pattern to a younger profile have been developed.  It appears that such reprogramming has the effect of rejuvenating the subjects. 03-04/21 AltVw211
Intelligent Life in Our Galaxy? We know that intelligent life evolved on Earth, but it is an open question whether complex intelligent life has evolved elsewhere in out galaxy and with what probability.  We discuss and criticize a recent Monte Carlo simulation of life evolving in our galaxy, which suggests that the evolution of intelligent life is fairly common and may have occurred fairly early in a zone closer to the galactic center. 05-06/21 AltVw212
Pulsars, Super-Massive  Black Holes, and the Gravitational Wave Background Ultra-precise measurements of pulsar timing by the NANOGrav Collaboration are very close to providing a direct measurement of the gravitational wave background that would have been created in the hypothetical "inflation" period immediately after the Big Bang.  The measurements are also sensitive to gravitational radiation from ultra-massive black holes inaccessible to LIGO, and they are able to set upper limits. 07-08/21 AltVw213
Muon Flaws in the Standard Model Two new results, both involving the mu lepton, suggest inconsistencies with the Standard Model of Particle Physics.  In particular, the decay of the B meson into lepton pairs, as observed by the LHC-b detector shows about 15% fewer decays into the muon channel than into the electron channel, at the level of of 3.1 standard deviations.  Further, the g-2 experiment at Fermilab shows a disagreement between theory and experiment of 4.2 standard deviations.  Neither of these results is at the 5 standard deviations required for a real "effect", but they are very close and getting closer. 09-10/21 AltVw214
Kardashev Civilizations, Dyson Spheres, and Black Holes A recent publication argues that super-technology Kardishev Type-II civilizations would be likely to obtain energy by constructing a Dyson-sphere around a black hole rather than around their parent star. 11-12/21 AltVw215
Fermionic Transversable Wormholes A theoretical investigation shows that by using fermionic matter rather than bosonic matter to form a wormhole and by threading electric flux through it, the quantum effects of half integer spin stabilize the system without the need for exotic negative-mass matter.  This raises the possibility that such wormholes might have been produced in the early stages of the Big Bang, may exist today, and should be searched for. 01-02/22 AltVw216
You Can't Believe Those Lyin' AIs One of the most advanced deep-learning artificial intelligence systems currently available, GPT-3, has been tested for veracity when asked questions on a variety of subjects.  It was found that GPT-3 often lies, making things up instead of giving reliable answers.  Let users of artificial intelligence beware. 03-04/22 AltVw217
Life, RNA, and Asteroids A precursor to the appearance of  primordial life on cooling Planet Earth is self-replicating RNA molecules.  There is now some evidence that the needed RNA was produced on planetesimals, driven by the heat from radioactive decays, as the Solar System was forming.  05-06/22 AltVw218
Advanced Waves Detected There is fairly good evidence that advanced radio waves (waves carrying negative energy and going backwards in time) have been detected in a setup in which about 1-meter-wavelength radio waves are beamed in a direction is space in which there is little absorption.  If valid, this would be a confirmation of a prediction of Wheeler-Feynman electrodynamics. 07-08/22 AltVw219
Group 2 - Quantum Mechanics
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
Other Universes II Everett-Wheeler Many-Worlds interpretation of QM 11/84 AltVw03
The Quantum Handshake The Transactional Interpretation of QM 11/86 AltVw16
Watching The Quantum Jump Exciting single atoms in a trap 05/88 AltVw26
Paradoxes and FTL Communication The Calcutta QM Paradox  09/88 AltVw28
Einsteins' Spooks & Bell's Theorem The EPR paradox & nonlocality 01/90 AltVw37
Quantum Time Travel Time tricks with quantum mechanics 04/91 AltVw45
Quantum Telephones to Other Universes, to Times Past Non-linear quantum mechanics and communication 10/91 AltVw48
The Quantum Physics of Teleportation Transporting a complete quantum state 12/93 AltVw62
Tunneling through the Lightspeed Barrier Quantum tunneling and transit time 12/95 AltVw75
Bose-Einstein Condensation: A New Form of Matter Thousands of atoms in the same quantum state 03/96 AltVw77
Space Drives, Phased Arrays, and Interferometry Amplitude and intensity interferometry 01/97 AltVw82
The Atom Laser A laser that emits coherent atoms instead of coherent light 07/97 AltVw85
The Quantum Eraser Erasing quantum interference retroactively 06/98 AltVw90
"Interaction-Free" Quantum 
Measurements and Imaging
Quantum measurements that can "see in the dark", producing an image of an object without the interaction of a single photon. 06/00 AltVw101
Faster-than-Light Laser Pulses? Superluminal laser pulses with negative velocities that get there before they start. 03/01 AltVw105
Supernova in a Bose-Einstein Bottle Repulsion is changed to attraction in a Bose-Einstein condensate, with amazing and mysterious results. 10/01 AltVw108
Quantum Computing, 5 Qubits and Counting Quantum computing has made a step forward, with a 5 qubit computer that factors 15 into primes.  What's next? 06/02 AltVw112
A Farewell to Copenhagen? The Afshar Experiment brings Bohr's Principle of Complementarity into question by showing that in a quantum two-slit measurement, interference fringes are present even when the slit through which a photon passes is determined. 12/04 AltVw125
EPR Communication: Signals from the Future? An Innsbruck PhD thesis suggests a way in which one might use quantum nonlocality for communication, which would make possible superluminal and retro-causal signaling. 12/06 AltVw135
The Experimental Evidence against Objective Reality The results of recent EPR-type tests with elliptically polarized photons of the Leggett Relations of quantum mechanics have been used to argue against the existence of objective reality. 12/07 AltVw140
All About Teleportation The religious tradition, science fiction, and physics of teleportation. 07-08/08 AltVw143
Noise as a Quantum Signal Noise in the GEO600 gravity wave detector may be providing evidence that space-time is holographic, with the three space dimensions mapped onto some two-dimensional surface. 12/08 AltVw145
Connecting Gravity with Electricity Prof. Raymond Chiao's scheme for producing and detecting high frequency gravity waves in the laboratory by creating a quantum connection between the gravitational and electromagnetic forces using charged droplets. 10/09 AltVw149
High-Z Helium: Is QED Failing? Quantum electrodynamics, our Standard Model of electromagnetic interactions,  seems to fail to account for recent observations of the behavior of two-electron atoms with a large nuclear charge Z. 05/13 AltVw167
Entanglement, Spooks, and Superluminal Signals Theoretical work in quantum optics showing that the "influences" of quantum entanglement cannot propagate faster (or slower or at) than the speed of light. 03/14 AltVw171
Cryptocurrency and Quantum Computing Quantum computers are now emerging from the academic and industrial laboratories. We explain what quantum computers and cryptocurrencies are and consider the impact of quantum computing, with its potential for breaking cryptographic codes, on the emerging development of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. 07-08/18 AltVw195
Vacuum Birefringence and Neutron Stars Recently, a team of astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe the weak (magnitude 25.5) visible light from the neutron star RX J1856.5-3754, located about 400 light years from Earth. The group report observations that light at a wavelength of 555.0 nanometers had a linear polarization of 16.4±5.3%. This is a demonstration of vacuum birefringence produced by the high magnetic field near the surface of neutron stars. 09-10/18 AltVw196
Quantum Entanglement Across Time A recent experiment demonstrated the entanglement of a pair of photons, in a situation where the first photon had been detected and disappeared well before the second photon was even created.  We explain entanglement across time, an important aspect of quantum mechanics, in terms of the transactional interpretation describing advanced-wave plus retarded-wave handshakes. 11-12/19 AltVw203
Renormalization: 
Dodging Infinities
There are serious problems with two important theories of particle physics: quantum electrodynamics (QED), the relativistic quantum theory of the electromagnetic force, and quantum field theory (QFT), the relativistic quantum theory of particles and fields. The problems arise because both formalisms contained spurious infinities associated with self-energy that need to be subtracted away "by hand" using a procedure called "renormalization" before meaningful calculations and realistic predictions can be made.  We consider whether renormalization can and/or must be avoided in a better theory that is compatible with gravity. 01-02/20 AltVw204
Wave Function Collapse Revealed In  quantum mechanics, the abrupt change in the quantum wave function when a measurement is made, called wave function collapse, has been a mysterious process that has had to be put into the theory "by hand".  This column reports on work by the author in which the underlying mechanism behind wave function collapse is revealed to be a "handshake" between advanced and retarded wave functions, as suggested by the author's transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics.  This work has implications for placing Schrödinger's wave mechanics on a firmer basis by providing a basis for quantum nonlocality and permitting it to correctly predict the outcomes of EPR experiments and for providing a more physical alternative to QED and QFT. 01-02/21 AltVw210
Group 3 - Neutrinos and Other Particles
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
Neutrinos and WIMPs The Solar Neutrino Problem 05/86 AltVw13
Heavy Neutrinos: Who Ordered That? Reports of a 17 kilovolt neutrino 12/91 AltVw49
Neutrino Physics: Curiouser and Curiouser SAGE neutrino detector results 09/92 AltVw54
Neutrinos, Ripples, and Time Loops Tachyonic neutrinos, cosmic string effects 02/93 AltVw57
Massive Neutrinos The Japanese Super-Kamiokande detector discovers that mu-neutrinos have mass. 01/99 AltVw93
Physics Goes Underground Plans for a new low-background physics laboratory 1.5 miles below the surface of the Earth. 09/02 AltVw113
Neutrino Results from SNO, KamLAND, and WMAP New neutrino results indicate that neutrinos have mass, show neutrino oscillations, and set limits on how large the neutrino mass can be. 07-08/04 AltVw123
Mu Neutrinos as Tachyons? The OPERA Collaboration has reported the observation of superluminal muon neutinos?  Could this mean that they are tachyons?  It appears that the numbers do not work. 03/12 AltVw161
Another Look at FTL Neutrinos and Wormholes The OPERA Collaboration has found problems with their analysis of muon neutrino data.  Evidence for superluminal neutrinos has gone away.   07-08/12 AltVw163
Weighing the Neutrino with Cyclotron Radiation A new technique using radio-frequency cyclotron radiation permits the isolation, detection, and kinetic-energy measurement is single electrons.  Application of this technique to the beta decay of tritium promises improved determination of the mass of the e-neutrino. 03/15 AltVw176
Testing the Neutrino Hierarchy There are three neutrino species, e, m, and t.  Measurements of neutrino oscillations provides mass differences between pairs of species, but we don't know the hierarchy, i.e., which is heaviest and which is lightest.  Two double-beta decay experiments, GERDA and Majorana Demonstrator, are pushing measurement limits down to the region in which the hierarchy can be determined. 03-04/17 AltVw187
IceCube and the Source of Cosmic Rays  On September 22, 2017, the IceCube detector located in Antarctica observed a cosmic ray mu-neutrino from the northern sky having a kinetic energy of about 2.9 x 1011 electron-volts that passed all the way through the Earth before it was converted to a charged m-lepton within the IceCube detector volume and determined the direction of origin within a small circle in the northern sky spanning half a degree of arc and located at right ascension 77.33° and declination +5.72°. Within a few seconds the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope turned to examine this location and detected an outburst of x-rays and gamma rays coming from the so called "Texas Blazar".  This provides new evidence for the origin of cosmic rays. 11-12/18 AltVw197
Neutrino Relics from the Big Bang Our universe is full of dead neutrinos. Each cubic centimeter of the space around us contains at least 340 of them. They are Big Bang leftovers, ephemeral relic neutral particles and anti-particles that possess a half-unit of spin and a small mass, but almost no kinetic energy. We are fairly sure of their existence, based on the Standard LCDM Model of Cosmology.  However, there are now other ways of confirming the presence of these Big Bang neutrino products. 07-08/19 AltVw201
Where's All the Antimatter? Our universe is dominated by matter, yet the fundamental high-energy particle interactions tend to create particles and antiparticles in equal numbers.  So where did all the matter come from?  A new clue has just been provided by the Japanese T2K experiment, which demonstrates a sizable preference for matter over antimatter in the weak-interaction oscillation of mu-neutrinos into e-neutrinos. 09-10/20 AltVw208
Muon Flaws in the Standard Model Two new results, both involving the mu lepton, suggest inconsistencies with the Standard Model of Particle Physics.  In particular, the decay of the B meson into lepton pairs, as observed by the LHC-b detector shows about 15% fewer decays into the muon channel than into the electron channel, at the level of of 3.1 standard deviations.  Further, the g-2 experiment at Fermilab shows a disagreement between theory and experiment of 4.2 standard deviations.  Neither of these results is at the 5 standard deviations required for a real "effect", but they are very close and getting closer. 09-10/21 AltVw214
Group 4 - Cosmology and Astrophysics
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
Antimatter in the Universe The possibility of antimatter galaxies 08/79 Analog-1
Other Universes I GUTs cosmology  09/84 AltVw02
In The Fullness of Time The universe in the far future 10/85 AltVw09
Children of the Swan Cygnus X-3 cosmic ray particles 03/86 AltVw12
SN1987A - Supernova Astrophysics Grows Up Supernovae, neutrinos, and gravitational collapse 12/87 AltVw23
Supernova Duds and Toothpaste Neutrinos and fluorine nucleosynthesis 02/89 AltVw31
The Mouse that Boomed Fast object seen with radio-astronomy 08/89 AltVw34
Cosmic Voids and Great Walls The large-scale structure of the universe 08/91 AltVw47
Searching for MACHOs (massive compact halo objects) The gravitational lensing of brown dwarfs 05/94 AltVw65
Stretch Marks on the Universe - Quantized Redshift Puzzle of clustered galactic red-shifts 11/94 AltVw68
GRS1915+105: The Fastest Fireball in the Galaxy A quasar-like object in our galaxy 04/95 AltVw71
"Texas" in Munich, Part 1: The Constants of the Universe Closing in on the universe's parameters 08/95 AltVw73
"Texas" in Munich, Part 2: Gamma Ray Bursts The gamma ray burst puzzle 10/95 AltVw74
Ultra-Energetic Cosmic Rays and Gamma Ray Bursts Correlation between cosmic rays and gamma bursts? 01/96 AltVw76
Using DNA to Search for WIMPs Breaking DNA strands to detect weakly interacting particles 09/98 AltVw91
`The Music of the (Neutron) Spheres Audio-modulated X-rays and neutron star masses 11/98 AltVw92
Before the Big Bang Pre-Big-Bang cosmology from superstring theory 03/99 AltVw94
Our Runaway Universe and Einstein's Cosmological Constant The discovery that the universe is accelerating in its expansion and that the vacuum has energy 05/99 AltVw95
Our Millimeter-Size Universe Superstring theory suggests that gravity is weak because its extra-dimensional loops are a millimeter in diameter. 12/99 AltVw98
BOOMERanG and the Sound of the Big Bang Measurements of small angle fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background pin down the Big Bang 01/01 AltVw104
Quark Stars Discovery of ultra-dense stars that are thought to be made of quark matter. 11/02 AltVw114
The New Recycling Universe A new alternative to Big Bang cosmology in which the universe recycles between claps of  extradimensional "branes". 01/03 AltVw115
A Stroll Through the Lyman Alpha Forest The forest of absorption Lyman-a spectral lines seen in the light from quasars maps the hydrogen "lanes" of the universe and testifies that quasars are very distant objects. 03/03 AltVw116
Watch the Skies:  The LSST Project Plans for a new telescope that watches the skies for fast-changing astronoomical phenomena. 07/03 AltVw118
The Universe as seen by WMAP A new study of the small-angle structure of the cosmic microwave background nails down the parameters of the universe. 10/03 AltVw119
The Sound of the Big Bang - Reloaded WMAP data is used to synthesize the "sound of the Big Bang" in the early universe, producing a sound file that can be played on an mp3 player. 05/04 AltVw122
The Big Rip at the End of Time Some new cosmological models suggest that the universe will expand at an ever increasing rate until ti tears itself apart, producing a "Big Rip" that tears apart stars, planets, atom, and particles, until nothing is left in a dark empty lonely universe. 03/05 AltVw126

The Universe of Choice

String theory now seems to be predicting a vast "landscape" of possible universes with differing cosmological constants and physical laws.  Which one is ours and why? 03/06 AltVw131

The Universe as a Watermelon

An analysis of WMAP data indicates that the initial Big Bang may not have been spherical, but instead was slightly elongated along one axis, giving the early universe a "watermelon" shape. 05/07 AltVw137
There's a Hole in Bottom of the Universe! Cosmic microwave background data from WMAP shows a "hole" in the emission pattern, suggesting an anomalous cold region in the early universe. 03/08 AltVw141
The Falling Dominoes: The Source of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays An analysis of AUGER project data indicates that the source of the most energetic cosmic rays is active galactic nuclei. Thus was one of my top 10 unsolved physics puzzles in 2000. 05/08 AltVw142
Radioactive Decay and the Earth-Sun Distance Data from radioactive decays collected over several years suggests a correlation with the Earth's varying distance from the Sun during its annual orbit. 05/09 AltVw147
Opus 150: Dark Forces in the Universe New results from potential dark matter detectors present a puzzling pattern of data that is not consistent with expectations.  A new theory postulating a 5th force that acts only between dark matter particles could explain what's going on. 12/09 AltVw150
The Nice Way to Make a Solar System The Nice Model suggests that the early history of the Solar System may have been very violent, with giant planets exchanging orbits and outer-system debris raining on the inner planets. 03/10 AltVw151
The Icy Reservoirs of the Solar System A new picture is emerging of the quantities of ice and other volatiles in the outer solar system, which may be relevant to terraforming Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. 05/10 AltVw152
Pulsar Timing and Gravitational Wave Detection A new technique that offers to detect low-frequency gravitational waves from the variations they induce in the arrival time of radio pulses from distant pulsars. 10/10 AltVw154
What is a "Typical" Solar System? Numerical studies of planet formation indicate that planetary systems may be very different when they form around stars lacking sufficient proto-planetary material to form dominant Jupiter-size planets. 12/10 AltVw155
"Goldilocks" Gleise 581 g: a Fairytale? Is the "just right" Earth-like planet supposedly orbiting the star Gleise 581 real, or is it an artifact of problematic data analysis? 05/11 AltVw157
The Start and Finish of the Universe New theoretical work on cosmology provides new views on the way the universe gets its start and comes to an end. 10/12 AltVw164
Planck: "Big Bang Sound" in High Fidelity New data from the ESA's Planck satellite gives high-resolution measurements of the angular structure of the cosmic microwave background, providing high-accuracy determinations of the parameters of the universe and making possible a new hi-fi "Sound of the Big Bang" audio recording. 10/13 AltVw169
When WIMPs Collide Recent data and calculations suggesting that radiation from WIMP/anti-WIMP annihilation may have been observed. 05/14 AltVw172
Gravity with 4-Vector Potentials - A Theory Revolution? A mathematically simpler alternative to Einstein's general relativity that  predicts the same experimental observables, but predicts different gravity wave emission and detection profiles that can be critically tested with Advanced LIGO. 12/14 AltVw180
Inflation and the Swirls of Gravity The BICEP2 detector at the South Pole has reported swirls in the linear polarization pattern of the cosmic microwave background radiation, an indication of the presence of intense gravitational waves caused by "inflation" in the early universe. 10/14 AltVw174
The Discovery of Planet Proxima b Planet Proxima b has been discovered orbiting roughly in the middle of the habitable zone around the star Proxima Centauri, which has the distinction of being our Sun's nearest stellar neighbor, only 4.25 light years away.  It is the "habitable" extrasolar planet nearest to Earth, but is it really habitable? 01-02/17 AltVw186
Our Leaking Universe Measurements of the Hubble constant by two methods give different results, suggesting that the expansion rate of the universe may be changing with time.   Theorists have suggested that cold dark matter may be decaying to neutrinos and photons.  Also "unimodular gravity", an alternative to general relativity, has been suggested as a remedy for the inability of quantum field theory to accurately calculate the cosmological constant.  05-06/17 AltVw188
Why Does Matter Exist? Some process in the early Big Bang favored the creation of matter over antimatter, resulting in the complete dominance of matter in today's universe.   The LHCb Collaboration at CERN reports  a strong CP violation in the decay of the Lambda-b-zero baryon, which may be the favored process. 07-08/17 AltVw189
Alien Microwave Sailing and Fast Radio Bursts Radio astronomers have detected fast radio bursts (FRB) that originate in distant galaxies and are not accompanied by energy releases in any other form.  Two astronomers have suggested that FRBs might be leakage from alien civilizations launching microwave-driven light sails. 09-10/17 AltVw190
Dark Matter Gets Darker: WIMPs or Axions? About 84% of the matter in the universe is "dark", but recent dark matter searches by the LUX and PandaX-II Collaborations have come up with negative results.  The hypothesis that cold dark matter takes the form of WIMPs looks questionable.  Are axions the answer, or is it something more elusive? 11-12/17 AltVw191
Do Black Holes Really Exist? General relativity predicts that time comes to an absolute stop at the event horizon of a black hole, but there are theoretical reasons for doubting that Nature can actually allow such stoppage of time.  Alternative theories avoid this problem by predicting that black holes with event horizons can never form.  The recent observation by aLIGO of black hole mergers offers a possible test, because the alternatives predict an "echo" following the "ringdown" observation. 01-02/18 AltVw192
When Virgo Joined LIGO The recent addition of the Italy-based Virgo gravitational wave detector to aLIGO's pair of gravitational wave detectors gives the system new sensitivity to the location and polarization of gravitational wave events.  This has resulted in polarization observations that disfavor the "'vector" alternatives to Einstein's tensor-based general relativity.  It has also made possible the study of a neutron star merger not only by LIGO/Virgo, but also by a huge number of telescopes and detectors in the radio, visible, and gamma ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. 03-04/18 AltVw193
IceCube and the Source of Cosmic Rays  On September 22, 2017, the IceCube detector located in Antarctica observed a cosmic ray mu-neutrino from the northern sky having a kinetic energy of about 2.9 x 1011 electron-volts that passed all the way through the Earth before it was converted to a charged m-lepton within the IceCube detector volume and determined the direction of origin within a small circle in the northern sky spanning half a degree of arc and located at right ascension 77.33° and declination +5.72°. Within a few seconds the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope turned to examine this location and detected an outburst of x-rays and gamma rays coming from the so called "Texas Blazar".  This provides new evidence for the origin of cosmic rays. 11-12/18 AltVw197
Ghost Galaxies from an Older Universe? Sir Roger Penrose, Oxford superstar-theorist, has been developing  and promoting a radical new cosmological theory, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (or CCC), which is based on general relativity and which concerns itself with the origins of our universe and its predecessors.  Here we review CCC and find it to be a very interesting take on cosmology, but not without some fatal flaws. 03-04/19 AltVw199
Neutrino Relics from the Big Bang Our universe is full of dead neutrinos. Each cubic centimeter of the space around us contains at least 340 of them. They are Big Bang leftovers, ephemeral relic neutral particles and anti-particles that possess a half-unit of spin and a small mass, but almost no kinetic energy. We are fairly sure of their existence, based on the Standard LCDM Model of Cosmology.  However, there are now other ways of confirming the presence of these Big Bang neutrino products. 07-08/19 AltVw201
The Inconstant
Hubble Constant
The ratio of recession velocity to distance is called the Hubble Constant.  IT describes the expansion of the universe and it is one of the most fundamental parameters describing our universe.  Astronomy and astrophysics have made great strides in providing more accurate observations and measurements of this constant. However, along with these improved measurements, a problem has arisen: they don't agree.  We consider the methods of measurement and possible resolutions of the problem. 03-04/20 AltVw205
Is the Universe a Hypersphere? In the Cosmological Standard Model, the curvature parameter, which is related to the average mass density of the universe, determines whether the universe is open (>0), flat (=0), or closed (<0).  Recently analyzed cosmic microwave background data from the Planck Mission indicates a valua around -0.05.  This would imply that the early universe was a closed hypersphere.  That tentative conclusion, however, is in disagreement with data from later times.   05-06/20 AltVw206
Frame Dragging and Pulsars One of the testable predictions of Einstein's general relativity is frame dragging, an analog of magnetism in the domain of gravity.  The effect is normally very small, but was finally observed near Earth by the Gravity Probe B mission in 2004.  Recent radio-telescope observations of a binary pulsar system, however,  provide a dramatic example of framer dragging in a domain where the effect is much larger. 07-08/20 AltVw207
Where's All the Antimatter? Our universe is dominated by matter, yet the fundamental high-energy particle interactions tend to create particles and antiparticles in equal numbers.  So where did all the matter come from?  A new clue has just been provided by the Japanese T2K experiment, which demonstrates a sizable preference for matter over antimatter in the weak-interaction oscillation of mu-neutrinos into e-neutrinos. 09-10/20 AltVw208
Pulsars, Super-Massive Black Holes, and the Gravitational Wave Background Ultra-precise measurements of pulsar timing by the NANOGrav Collaboration are very close to providing a direct measurement of the gravitational wave background that would have been created in the hypothetical "inflation" period immediately after the Big Bang.  The measurements are also sensitive to gravitational radiation from ultra-massive black holes inaccessible to LIGO, and they are able to set upper limits. 07-08/21 AltVw213
Life, RNA, and Asteroids A precursor to the appearance of  primordial life on cooling Planet Earth is self-replicating RNA molecules.  There is now some evidence that the needed RNA was produced on planetesimals, driven by the heat from radioactive decays, as the Solar System was forming.  05-06/22 AltVw218
Advanced Waves Detected There is fairly good evidence that advanced radio waves (waves carrying negative energy and going backwards in time) have been detected in a setup in which about 1-meter-wavelength radio waves are beamed in a direction is space in which there is little absorption.  If valid, this would be a confirmation of a prediction of Wheeler-Feynman electrodynamics. 07-08/22 AltVw219
Group 5 - Gravity and General Relativity
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
Antigravity I: Negative Mass The gravitation of negative mass 07/86 AltVw14
Artificial Gravity: Which way is Up? Centrifugal gravity on space stations 02/87 AltVw18
Spiral Galaxies and Antigravity Beams Gravity waves from cosmic strings 01/88 AltVw24
The Rainbows of Gravity Einstein's ring and gravitational lensing 11/88 AltVw29
Falling through to Pelucidar Shadow matter and gravitation 04/89 AltVw32
The Twin Paradox Revisited Special relativity and time dilation 03/90 AltVw38
Centrifugal Forces and Black Holes Light-like orbits near a black hole 11/92 AltVw55
The Force of the Tide Gravitational tidal forces 01/94 AltVw63
The Alcubierre Warp Drive A warp-drive s olution to Einstein's equations 11/96 AltVw81
Antigravity Sightings  Woodward's Mach's Principle space drive 03/97 AltVw83
The Krasnikov Tube: A Subway to the Stars A solution to Einstein's equations in the form of a time-shortcut tube 09/97 AltVw86
Gravity Waves and LIGO The NSF's new gravity wave detectors 04/98 AltVw89
The Micro-Warp Drive An improvement on the Alcubierre Drive that makes the warp-bubble large on the inside and microscopic on the outside 02/00 AltVw99
General Relativity without 
Black Holes
The Yilmaz variant of General Relativity, which predicts that black holes do not exist. 04/00 AltVw100
The CERN LHC: A Black Hole Factory? Theoretical predictions that the newest high energy accelerator, currently under construction at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, may  be a copious source of small and fast-evaporating black holes. 05/03 AltVw117
"Outlawing" Wormholes and Warp Drives Which solutions of general relativity (e.g., wormholes and warp drives) can be dismissed as violating physical principles and which should be taken seriously.  A new quantum approach suggests a way of answering this question. 05/05 AltVw127

Dark-Energy Stars vs. Black Holes

Do black holes exist?  A new theory suggests that they do not, and suggests instead that collapsing supernovas create "dark energy stars". 10/05 AltVw129

The Universe of Choice

String theory now seems to be predicting a vast "landscape" of possible universes with differing cosmological constants and physical laws.  Which one is ours and why? 03/06 AltVw131
Hawking's Retreat Stephen Hawking's retreat from his view that information is destroyed in the formation of a black hole. 05/06 AltVw132
Back in Time Through Other Dimensions A new variation of string theory in non-compartified dimensions provides a mechanism for creating timelike loops and suggests that such loops may exist in nature. 10/06 AltVw134
All About Teleportation The religious tradition, science fiction, and physics of teleportation. 07-08/08 AltVw143
Noise as a Quantum Signal Noise in the GEO600 gravity wave detector may be providing evidence that space-time is holographic, with the three space dimensions mapped onto some two-dimensional surface. 12/08 AltVw145
Connecting Gravity with Electricity Prof. Raymond Chiao's scheme for producing and detecting high frequency gravity waves in the laboratory by creating a quantum connection between the gravitational and electromagnetic forces using charged droplets. 10/09 AltVw149
Pulsar Timing and Gravity Wave Detection A new technique that offers to detect gravity waves from the variations they induce in the arrival time of radio pulses from distant pulsars. 10/10 AltVw154
The Deficiency of Black Holes at the LHC With a year of operation of CERN's LHC at half its design energy, the CMS Collaboration has reported that the mini-black-holes predicted by some "extra-dimension" gravity theories have not been detected. 07-08/11 AltVw158
Inflation and the Swirls of Gravity The BICEP2 detector at the South Pole has reported swirls in the linear polarization pattern of the cosmic microwave background radiation, an indication of the presence of intense gravitational waves caused by "inflation" in the early unverse. 10/14 AltVw174
Gravity with 4-Vector Potentials - A Theory Revolution? A mathematically simpler alternative to Einstein's general relativity that  predicts the same experimental observables, but predicts different gravity wave emission and detection profiles that can be critically tested with Advanced LIGO. 03/16 AltVw181
Do Black Holes Really Exist? General relativity predicts that time comes to an absolute stop at the event horizon of a black hole, but there are theoretical reasons for doubting that Nature can actually allow such stoppage of time.  Alternative theories avoid this problem by predicting that black holes with event horizons can never form.  The recent observation by aLIGO of black hole mergers offers a possible test, because the alternatives predict an "echo" following the "ringdown" observation. 01-02/18

AltVw192

Ghost Galaxies from an Older Universe? Sir Roger Penrose, Oxford superstar-theorist, has been developing  and promoting a radical new cosmological theory, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (or CCC), which is based on general relativity and which concerns itself with the origins of our universe and its predecessors.  Here we review CCC and find it to be a very interesting take on cosmology, but not without some fatal flaws. 03-04/19 AltVw199
Pulsars, Super-Massive  Black Holes, and the Gravitational Wave Background Ultra-precise measurements of pulsar timing by the NANOGrav Collaboration are very close to providing a direct measurement of the gravitational wave background that would have been created in the hypothetical "inflation" period immediately after the Big Bang.  The measurements are also sensitive to gravitational radiation from ultra-massive black holes inaccessible to LIGO, and they are able to set upper limits. 07-08/21 AltVw213
Fermionic Transversable Wormholes A theoretical investigation shows that by using fermionic matter rather than bosonic matter to form a wormhole and by threading electric flux through it, the quantum effects of half integer spin stabilize the system without the need for exotic negative-mass matter.  This raises the possibility that such wormholes might have been produced in the early stages of the Big Bang, may exist today, and should be searched for. 01-02/22 AltVw210
Group 6 - Wormholes
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
Wormholes and Time Machines General relativity and FTL travel 06/89 AltVw33
Wormholes II: Getting There in No Time Wormholes as starships 05/90 AltVw39
Natural Wormholes: Squeezing the Vacuum Negative mass from squeezed vacuum 07/92 AltVw53
NASA Goes FTL - Part 1: Wormhole Physics JPL relativity/quantum workshop report 1 13/94 AltVw69
New Improved Wormholes Making wormholes without negative mass 11/00 AltVw103
"Outlawing" Wormholes and Warp Drives Which solutions of general relativity (e.g., wormholes and warp drives) can be dismissed as violating physical principles and which should be taken seriously.  A new quantum approach suggests a way of answering this question. 05/05 AltVw127
All About Teleportation The religious tradition, science fiction, and physics of teleportation. 07-08/08 AltVw143
Two New Kinds of Wormholes Cylindrical wormholes and cosmological wormholes connecting separated universes may be easier to produce naturally and in the laboratory. 07-08/09 AltVw148
Shooting Wormholes to the Stars By accelerating a small wormhole-mouth at the LHC, one could use the time-spanning property of wormholes to reach the stars in a few days. 05/12 AltVw162
Frame Dragging and Pulsars One of the testable predictions of Einstein's general relativity is frame dragging, an analog of magnetism in the domain of gravity.  The effect is normally very small, but was finally observed near Earth by the Gravity Probe B mission in 2004.  Recent radio-telescope observations of a binary pulsar system, however,  provide a dramatic example of framer dragging in a domain where the effect is much larger. 07-08/20 AltVw207
The Lentz Soliton FTL Drive Erik W. Lentz has recently demonstrated that there is a positive-energy space-time soliton solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity. Using the Arnowitt, Deser, and Misner (ADM) formulation of general relativity and a hyperbolic rather than linear or elliptic relation for the ADM "shift vector", he has been able to construct a moving, possibly superluminal, soliton that involves only positive mass-energy. This seems to offer a more physically realizable alternative to the Alcubierre Warp Drive 11-12/20 AltVw209
Fermionic Transversable Wormholes A theoretical investigation shows that by using fermionic matter rather than bosonic matter to form a wormhole and by threading electric flux through it, the quantum effects of half integer spin stabilize the system without the need for exotic negative-mass matter.  This raises the possibility that such wormholes might have been produced in the early stages of the Big Bang, may exist today, and should be searched for. 01-02/22 AltVw210
Group 7 - Mega-Projects
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
The Coming of the SSC The Superconducting Supercollider Project 03/88 AltVw25
Mega-Projects & -Problems; The Hubble in Trouble NASA'a problems with the HST 02/91 AltVw44
RHIC: Big Bangs in the Lab Heavy-ion collider project at Brookhaven 06/91 AltVw46
CERN and the LHC The large hadronic collider project 05/92 AltVw52
DUMAND: Neutrinos from Beneath the Ocean Large underwater neutrino detector 06/93 AltVw59
Beauty and the B-Factory B mesons and matter: proposed accelerator to make B-mesons 09/94 AltVw67
CERN in Transition The new 33 TeV lead beams at CERN. 06/95 AltVw72
The Decline and Fall of the SSC The killing of the DOE's Superconducting Super Collider Project  05/97 AltVw84
Gravity Waves and LIGO The NSF's new gravity wave detector 04/98 AltVw89
The Next Big Accelerator The "next linear collider" (NLC) is being proposed by US, German, and Japanese groups as the next step in particle physics. 02/02 AltVw110
The CERN LHC: A Black Hole Factory? Theoretical predictions that the newest high energy accelerator, currently under construction at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, may  be a copious source of small and fast-evaporating black holes. 05/03 AltVw117
Watch the Skies:  The LSST Project Plans for a new telescope that watches the skies for fast-changing astronoomical phenomena. 07/03 AltVw118
The Universe as seen by WMAP A new study of the small-angle structure of the cosmic microwave background nails down the parameters of the universe. 10/03 AltVw119
A Mission to the Earth's Core A new "modest proposal" to send an instrument package to the core of the Earth by melting through the crust with molten iron.. 12/03 AltVw120
Solving the RHIC Puzzle Interferometry data from Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) appears to be in conflict with other results from the collisions.  A new approach explains why. 07-08/05 AltVw128
Extrasolar Planets and Occult Astronomy A new star-shade system may enable the Hubble Space Telescope and its successors to discover earth-like extra-solar planets and even detect the presence of life on them. 03/07 AltVw136
Bubbles of Broken Symmetry Results from the STAR Collaboration at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider provide evidence for a new kind of breaking of mirror-image symmetry (parity) in strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma systems. 07-08/10 AltVw153
The Deficiency of Black Holes at the LHC With a year of operation of CERN's LHC at half its design energy, the CMS Collaboration has reported that the mini-black-holes predicted by some "extra-dimension" gravity theories have not been detected. 07-08/11 AltVw158
A "New Physics" Bump at Fermilab? As the Tevatron Collider at Fermiiab is in its last few months of operation, the CDF Collabration has reported a 3.2 standard deviation "bump" in proton-antiproton collisions invollving Z-mason production that appears to be inconsistent wuth the Standard Model of particle physics and may signal "new physics". 10/11 AltVw159
How Al Gore and I Invented the Internet A memoir about my role in the creation of NSF-Net, one of the major precursors to the modern Internet. 03/13 AltVw166
The 2013 Starship Century Symposium Report on the all-star 2013 Starship Century Symposium timed to celebrate the release of the new Starship Century book, edited by the Brothers Benford and based on the DARPA/NASA 100 Year Starship Project. 12/13 AltVw170
Starshot: Laser Sailing to Alpha Centauri A new initiative funded for $150 million by billionaire Yuri Milner proposes to send a tiny interstellar probe to Alpha Centauri at 0.2 c using high powered ground-based lasers and micro miniaturization. 10/16 AltVw184
Kardashev Civilizations, Dyson Spheres, and Black Holes A recent publication argues that super-technology Kardishev Type-II civilizations would be likely to obtain energy by constructing a Dyson-sphere around a black hole rather than around their parent star. 11-12/21 AltVw215
Group 8 - Space Drives
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
The Dark Side of the Force of Gravity The Dark Matter Problem 02/85 AltVw05
Strings and Things Cosmic strings 04/87 AltVw19
Laser Propulsion and the Four P's Laser-sustained propulsion 08/87 AltVw21
FTL Photons The Casimir Effect and the speed of light 13/90 AltVw43
Nuke Your Way to the Stars Continuously detonating nuclear rocket 13/92 AltVw56
The Tachyon Drive: Vex=infinity and Eex= 0. Using tachyons as reaction fuel 10/93 AltVw61
NASA Goes FTL - Part 2: Cracks in Nature's FTL Armor JPL relativity/quantum workshop report 2 02/95 AltVw70
The Alcubierre Warp Drive A warp-drive solution to Einstein's equations 11/96 AltVw81
Space Drives, Phased Arrays, and Interferometry  Amplitude and intensity interferometry 01/97 AltVw82
Antigravity Sightings  Woodward's Mach's Principle space drive 03/97 AltVw83
The Krasnikov Tube: A Subway to the Stars A solution to Einstein's equations in the form of a time-shortcut tube 09/97 AltVw86
The Micro-Warp Drive An improvement on the Alcubierre Drive that makes the warp-bubble large on the inside and microscopic on the outside. 02/00 AltVw99
"Outlawing" Wormholes and Warp Drives Which solutions of general relativity (e.g., wormholes and warp drives) can be dismissed as violating physical principles and which should be taken seriously.  A new quantum approach suggests a way of answering this question. 05/05 AltVw127
Noise as a Quantum Signal Noise in the GEO600 gravity wave detector may be providing evidence that space-time is holographic, with the three space dimensions mapped onto some two-dimensional surface.   Are 2D space shortcuts possible? 12/08 AltVw145
Is it Space Drive Time? When it was "typewriter time" dozens of inventors almost simultaneously invented the typewriter.  Is it now "space drive time"? 07-08/14 AltVw173
The Direct Fusion Drive Rocket A new design for rocket powered by the nuclear fusion of helium-3 and deuterium has been designed by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Princeton Satellite Systems. 12/16 AltVw185
Alien Microwave Sailing and Fast Radio Bursts Radio astronomers have detected fast radio bursts (FRB) that originate in distant galaxies and are not accompanied by energy releases in any other form.  Two astronomers have suggested that FRBs might be leakage from alien civilizations launching microwave-driven light sails. 09-10/17 AltVw190
The Lentz Soliton FTL Drive Erik W. Lentz has recently demonstrated that there is a positive-energy space-time soliton solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity. Using the Arnowitt, Deser, and Misner (ADM) formulation of general relativity and a hyperbolic rather than linear or elliptic relation for the ADM "shift vector", he has been able to construct a moving, possibly superluminal, soliton that involves only positive mass-energy. This seems to offer a more physically realizable alternative to the Alcubierre Warp Drive 11-12/20 AltVw209
Group 9 - Biology, Evolution, and Catastrophe
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
The Pump of Evolution The Fermi Paradox and catastrophes 01/86 AltVw11
Dinosaur Breath Cretaceous air trapped in amber 07/88 AltVw27
Killer Asteroids and You Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids 01/92 AltVw50
Planet of the Geezers Telomeres and the reversal of human aging 02/98 AltVw88
The "Rare Earth" Hypothesis A new book by an astronomer and a geophysicist argues that complex life must be very rare in our galaxy and our universe.  We may be alone. 09/00 AltVw102
Tracking Adolf An account of using y-DNA analysis to obtain information about my great grandfather, Adolf Cramer. 10/08 AltVw144
The Nice Way to Make a Solar System The Nice Model suggests that the early history of the Solar System may have been very violent, with giant planets exchanging orbits and outer-system debris raining on the inner planets. 03/10 AltVw151
Cell Phone Radiation, Cancer, and The WHO The World Health Organization (WHO) has proclaimed that using cell phones is "possibly carcinogenic to humans,"  despite the fact that there is no plausible physical process by which photons from cell phone microwaves could produce mutations in DNA. 12/11 AltVw160
The Specifications of Extraterrestrial Intelligence In a new book, sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson presents the specification that an extraterrestrial intelligent being would have to have, based on new understanding of how high intelligence was developed in the primates, leading to Homo sapiens. 05/15 AltVw177
Genome Editing: The CRISPR Revolution Description of CRISPR, a new genetic engineering technique for high-precision cutting, splicing, and editing of DNA, using the antivirus CAS-9 enzyme that has evolved in certain bacteria for targeted DNA cutting.. 10/15 AltVw179
Can We Cure Aging? Recent results from the Mayo Clinic suggest that many symptoms of aging result from the accumulation of senescent cells, and that many aging effects can be reversed by causing senescent cells expressing the protein p16 to "self-destruct".  A new company, Oisin Biotechnology, has developed a plasmid-based DNA technique using this approach that clears senescent cells from animals and humans, offering the possibility of a general treatment for aging.  A spin-off of this technology is a possible general treatment for cancer cells expressing the p53 protein. 05-06/18 AltVw194
Are Humans Too Fragile for Life in Space? For humans, space is a very hostile environment. There's no air to breathe, and "no one can hear you scream". There's also no gravity, the lack of which over a few months will cause your muscles to degenerate and your bones to lose mass. Further, outside the Earth's protective geomagnetic field and atmosphere, your body will be irradiated by much more ionizing radiation, which will damage or kill the cells of your body, will produce dangerous mutations in your future children, and will increase your chances of developing cancer in a decade or so.  How can we deal with these problems? 01-02/19 AltVw198
Bio-Reprogramming and Multi-Century Life Spans A group at Stanford University has reported that that infusing aged human cells with a six-protein cocktail (OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, c-MYC, LIN28 and NANOG) of messenger RNA caused the treated cells to be "reprogrammed" to a dramatically younger but still functional state.  In other words, they have discovered a way to rejuvenate old and damaged human cells, perhaps even in living humans. 09-10/19 AltVw202
Rejuvenation and the DNA Methylation Clock Cell biologists now understand that the mechanisms behind cell specialization and cell aging are epigenetic programming, at least partially implemented by the attachment of methyl (CH3) radicals to DNA to silence unwanted genes.  A Methylation Clock has been discovered that can accurately predict the ages of humans and animals, based on how their DNA is methylated.  Now, several methods of accomplishing epigenetic reprogramming by resetting the DNA methylation pattern to a younger profile have been developed.  It appears that such reprogramming has the effect of rejuvenating the subjects. 03-04/21 AltVw211
Group 10 - Communications and Virtual Reality
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
Telepresence: Reach Out and Grab Someone Robotics and telepresence 07/90 AltVw40
A Visit to Virtual Seattle Virtual reality  11/90 AltVw42
The Bandwidth Revolution: Internet and WorldWideWeb The coming of the Web 03/94 AltVw64
News from CyberSpace: Virtual Reality and HyperText Report on two conferences 07/94 AltVw66
EPR Communication: Signals from the Future? An Innsbruck PhD thesis suggests a way in which one might use quantum nonlocality for communication, which would make possible superluminal and retro-causal signaling. 12/06 AltVw135
Leinster's Golden Age "Logic" In John W. Campbell's 1946 Astounding, the SF writer Murray Leinster (Will F. Jenkins) published a short story, "A Logic Named Joe", that was remarkably accurate in predicting the characteristics of the modern Internet. 03/11 AltVw156
How Al Gore and I Invented the Internet A memoir about my role in the creation of NSF-Net, one of the major precursors to the modern Internet. 03/13 AltVw166
Is Our World Just a Computer Simulation? A philosopher of science has presented interesting arguments asserting with high probability that the universe we live in is a computer simulation.  How can physics test this hypothesis? 07-08/13 AltVw168
Entanglement, Spooks, and Superluminal Signals Theoretical work in quantum optics showing that the "influences" of quantum entanglement cannot propagate faster (or slower or at) than the speed of light. 03/14 AltVw171
Cryptocurrency and Quantum Computing Quantum computers are now emerging from the academic and industrial laboratories. We explain what quantum computers and cryptocurrencies are and consider the impact of quantum computing, with its potential for breaking cryptographic codes, on the emerging development of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. 07-08/18 AltVw195
You Can't Believe Those Lyin' AIs One of the most advanced deep-learning artificial intelligence systems currently available, GPT-3, has been tested for veracity when asked questions on a variety of subjects.  It was found that GPT-3 often lies, making things up instead of giving reliable answers.  Let users of artificial intelligence beware. 03-04/22 AltVw217
Group 11 - Flashes in the Pan - Things That Didn't Work
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
New Phenomena Magnetic monopoles, "anomalons", free quarks? 02/83 Analog-3
Again Monopoles Magnetic monopole detection at Stanford (?) 09/83 Analog-4
When Proton Meets Monopole Monopole catalysis and proton decay 07/84 AltVw01
Antigravity II: A Fifth Force? Hypercharge and hyperforce 09/86 AltVw15
Super Atoms and Super Fields Positrons from Z>173 atoms 13/86 AltVw17
Recent Results Review of past AV columns 06/87 AltVw20
The Coming of the SSC The Superconducting Supercollider Project 03/88 AltVw25
Paradoxes and FTL Communication The Calcutta QM Paradox  09/88 AltVw28
Cold Fusion, Pro-fusion, and Con-fusion Pons & Fleischman and cold fusion? 12/89 AltVw36
The Rise and Fall of Gyro-Gravity Spin-modification of gravity? 09/90 AltVw41
Heavy Neutrinos: Who Ordered That? Reports of a 17 kilovolt neutrino 12/91 AltVw49
Inside the Quark Preons and quark sub-structure 09/96 AltVw80
Breaking the Standard Model Evidence from DESY for a new particle: the leptoquark.  Note: later work suggests that leptoquarks do not exist.) 11/97 AltVw87
Introducing the Pentaquark Evidence from several experiments suggests that "pentaqurks", baryons consisting of four quarks and one anti-quark, may form some of the particles observed in high energy experiments. (Note: later work suggests that pentaquarks does not exist.) 03/04 AltVw121
Noise as a Quantum Signal Noise in the GEO600 gravity wave detector may be providing evidence that space-time is holographic, with the three space dimensions mapped onto some two-dimensional surface. 12/08 AltVw145
The Deficiency of Black Holes at the LHC With a year of operation of CERN's LHC at half its design energy, the CMS Collaboration has reported that the mini-black-holes predicted by some "extra-dimension" gravity theories have not been detected. 07-08/11 AltVw158
Mu Neutrinos as Tachyons? The OPERA Collaboration has reported the observation of superluminal muon neutinos?  Could this mean that they are tachyons?  It appears that the numbers do not work. 03/12 AltVw161
Another Look at FTL Neutrinos and Wormholes The OPERA Collaboration has found problems with their analysis of muon neutrino data.  Evidence for superluminal neutrinos has gone away.   07-08/12 AltVw163
Gravity with 4-Vector Potentials - A Theory Revolution? Discussion of a mathematically simpler alternative to Einstein's general relativity that  predicts the same experimental observables, except that it predicts different gravitational wave emission and detection profiles that can be critically tested with Advanced LIGO, when gravitational waves are at last detected.. 03/16 AltVw181
Ghost Galaxies from an Older Universe? Sir Roger Penrose, Oxford superstar-theorist, has been developing  and promoting a radical new cosmological theory, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (or CCC), which is based on general relativity and which concerns itself with the origins of our universe and its predecessors.  Here we review CCC and find it to be a very interesting take on cosmology, but not without some fatal flaws. 03-04/19 AltVw199
Group 12 - Science Policy
The Alternate View
Column Title
Subject of Column Analog
Issue
Column
Code
The Territoriality of Space Exploration Guest Editorial: Should the USA have claimed the Moon as territory? 11/81 Analog-2
The Alternate Who???? 1st Alternate View column - Introduction of the author 07/84 AltVw00
The Retarding of Science AARSE - American Association for the Retardation of Science and Engineering (satire) 13/84 AltVw04
Dyson on Space Freeman Dyson's views on the space program  13/88 AltVw30
Science and SF in Japan Report on a trip to Japan 04/93 AltVw58
Science Policy: The Parable of the King and the Grain The politics of scientific decisions 08/93 AltVw60
CERN in Transition The new 33 TeV lead beams 06/95 AltVw72
2001, Then and Now How and why the year 2001 as depicted in the Stanley Kubrick film differs from the the reality of the year 2001? 07/01 AltVw107
A Mission to the Earth's Core A new "modest proposal" to send an instrument package to the core of the Earth by melting through the crust with molten iron.. 12/03 AltVw120
Cell Phone Radiation, Cancer, and The WHO The World Health Organization (WHO) has proclaimed that using cell phones is "possibly carcinogenic to humans,"  despite the fact that there is no plausible physical process by which photons from cell phone microwaves could produce mutations in DNA. 12/11 AltVw160
Starshot: Laser Sailing to Alpha Centauri A new initiative funded for $150 million by billionaire Yuri Milner proposes to send a tiny interstellar probe to Alpha Centauri at 0.2 c using high powered ground-based lasers and micro miniaturization. 10/16 AltVw184
Can We Cure Aging? Recent results from the Mayo Clinic suggest that many symptoms of aging result from the accumulation of senescent cells, and that many aging effects can be reversed by causing senescent cells expressing the protein p16 to "self-destruct".  A new company, Oisin Biotechnology, has developed a plasmid-based DNA technique using this approach that clears senescent cells from animals and humans, offering the possibility of a general treatment for aging.  A spin-off of this technology is a possible general treatment for cancer cells expressing the p53 protein. 05-06/18 AltVw194
Are Humans Too Fragile for Life in Space? For humans, space is a very hostile environment. There's no air to breathe, and "no one can hear you scream". There's also no gravity, the lack of which over a few months will cause your muscles to degenerate and your bones to lose mass. Further, outside the Earth's protective geomagnetic field and atmosphere, your body will be irradiated by much more ionizing radiation, which will damage or kill the cells of your body, will produce dangerous mutations in your future children, and will increase your chances of developing cancer in a decade or so.  How can we deal with these problems? 01-02/19 AltVw198
Bio-Reprogramming and Multi-Century Life Spans A group at Stanford University has reported that that infusing aged human cells with a six-protein cocktail (OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, c-MYC, LIN28 and NANOG) of messenger RNA caused the treated cells to be "reprogrammed" to a dramatically younger but still functional state.  In other words, they have discovered a way to rejuvenate old and damaged human cells, perhaps even in living humans. 09-10/19 AltVw202
Rejuvenation and the DNA Methylation Clock Cell biologists now understand that the mechanisms behind cell specialization and cell aging are epigenetic programming, at least partially implemented by the attachment of methyl (CH3) radicals to DNA to silence unwanted genes.  A Methylation Clock has been discovered that can accurately predict the ages of humans and animals, based on how their DNA is methylated.  Now, several methods of accomplishing epigenetic reprogramming by resetting the DNA methylation pattern to a younger profile have been developed.  It appears that such reprogramming has the effect of rejuvenating the subjects. 03-04/21 AltVw211

Note 1: Month "13" in the issue list above indicates the Mid-December issue of Analog.
Note 2: The "Alternate" of the column title refers to the fact that they appear in alternate issues of Analog, originally alternating with columns by the late G. Harry Stine and subsequently with columns by Jeffery D. Kooistra .
Note 3: Recent columns may not be provided with links because they have not yet appeared in Analog, which holds first serial rights for their publication. 
Note 4: As of the January-February-2017 issue, Analog publishes six double issues per year.  "The Alternate View" columns by John G. Cramer appear in every issue, with no other AV Columnists.

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This index was originally created by John G. Cramer on 7/16/96 and was last revised on 01/28/2021.