Book Review: Let's Talk Flying Saucers

What would you say if I told you the following:

• Gravity is a side effect of large masses of matter cooling off in space.


• White light is not made up of the seven colors (red, orange, yellow, etc.), and the wavelengths and energy levels of those colors are not in that order.


• The stars are not as far away as currently believed.

I'll stop now, because I'm sure you get the point, and apologies to Mr. Bros, as I'm sure I got at least one of these wrong. So, would you call me a crackpot? A troll? A plagiarist? If you picked the last answer, you must be familiar with Let's Talk Flying Saucers by Peter Bros. Mr. Bros comes off as an angry crackpot, but there are some interesting theories in his book, and on his website The Real Skeptic. He also raises an important point: scientists spend too much time on questions that can't be resolved and wouldn't help us much even if they were answered: for example, theories about the origin of the universe and string theory. Instead more attention should be given to questions like how does gravity work and can it be altered or even nullified?

Now for you recovering materialists out there, Mr. Bros talks in his book about how Newton used his reputation as an alchemist to get a position as Master of the Mint. I don't know how much Mr. Bros knows about alchemy. From what I've read of it, any transformation of lead into gold must be preceded by a just as drastic transformation on the part of the person performing the operation. This doesn't exactly square with the model of the universe as deterministic billiard balls that is commonly associated with "Newtonian" physics. For one thing, it shouldn't even be possible. And to have it depend on a change in the mind, spirit, soul or whatever of the person performing the operation goes against all science as we know it. I don't know about Mr. Bros, but I for one smell a rat.

So here's something to look into: since the scientist whose public model of the universe carried the day (at least until Einstein and the quantum physicists) must have had secret beliefs that contradicted that model, is it possible that he had a private model?