Every revolution has its leading theorists, individuals who attempt to construct a logical, coherent formulation of new principles and concepts to rationalize and explain the occurrence of radical, paradigm-upsetting events or developments. Even if not there at the beginning of such seminal milestones, such individuals are quickly spawned in the aftermath, acting as compelling champions for the activists who are making the history. In the case of the revolution beginning to emerge more publicly in the field of alternative energy sources and technology, retired Army lieutenant colonel Thomas Bearden may soon be recognized as one of a small cadre of scientists and engineers who were just such credible boosters, convinced of and actively supportive of alternate energy realities early on.

Bearden recently delivered a paper on energy flow, collection, and dissipation in overunity electromagnetic devices at the International Symposium on New Energy in May in Denver, Colorado, where Atlantis Rising had a chance to visit with him.

Big, bluff, and indefatigably ebullient in demeanor, Bearden first came to public notice in the early 1980s with the publication of his book Excalibur Briefing, in which he offered theoretical explanations for a wide array of paranormal phenomena and discussed various military applications of psychotronic research in the United States and the Soviet Union. One of his many controversial claims was that the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine Thresher, which sank in the Atlantic Ocean with all hands on board in mid-1963, was the victim of an advanced operational Soviet psychotronic weapon. Since the early 1990s, however, Bearden has shunned any discussion of psychotronics, mysteriously claiming reticence to be the prudent course for any man interested in staying healthy. This consideration also impels him to avoid any work on anti-gravity propulsion systems, work he became familiar with in his consulting work in the 1980s for the late inventor Floyd Sparky Sweet. It would seem that investigating certain areas of energy research, like the subject of government involvement with UFOs, entails more and greater risks, for undisclosed but perhaps easily inferable reasons relating to the nature of politico-economic power and those in our world who possess it in great concentration.

What Bearden is voluble about, however, and what occupies his time and attention almost exclusively these days, is his work on perfecting the theoretical scientific underpinnings of, and ultimately a verifiable model for, electromagnetic systems that legitimately produce more energy than they consume (known as overunity devices). Such systems propose to make use of the random electromagnetic fluctuations that exist in the vacuum of space, known variously as free energy, space energy, or zero point energy. Armed with an M.S. degree in nuclear engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and longtime employment in the aerospace industry, Bearden has researched this topic intensively for over 20 years, and currently serves as president of CTEC, Inc., his own research and development company located in Huntsville, Alabama.

Bearden's work began with a re-examination of the fundamental concepts of classical electrodynamic theory, in light of the teachings of modern quantum mechanics and particle physics, in order to better understand how and why current actually flows in electrical circuits, where that energy comes from, and how it might be increased. This effort suggested to him major flaws in the paradigm established by 19th century scientists James Clerk Maxwell and Hendrik Lorentz, whose equations and calculations (as they are known today) dealt only with the electrical energy that measurably flows in circuits and powers the devices that are attached. Analogizing to the water flowing around a fixed paddle wheel immersed in a river and the moving air surrounding a windmill, Bearden discovered that the free energy of space was knowingly ignored as a useable source of electrical energy by these scientists, and that the classical theory needed updating to reflect 20th-century discoveries.

In Bearden's view, the principal faults in reasoning lay in two places. First, the algebra used to express Maxwell's original equations was changed, to ease understanding by others, from the highly complex quaternion type, which allowed and even prescribed overunity electromagnetic systems powered by space energy, to the much simpler tensor vector analysis, which did not. Second, Lorentz mathematically narrowed the scope and application of Maxwell's equations to describe only that part of the energy flow that physical circuits were designed to catch and use. In overall effect, according to Bearden, the early theorists made mistakes in interpreting their own calculations and unwittingly modified their original equations to discard a significant portion of the energy that was extractable, and, in fact, is extracted, from the vacuum by actual physical systems. The central issue for him therefore became: How does one redesign these systems in a new way to be able to collect and make effective use of this excess energy from the river of space, which demonstrably exists and is so readily available in the ambient environment? And then: How does one keep the redesigned systems from destroying themselves by overtapping the infinite energy source of space?

Bearden has posited that an iterative collecting and scattering of space energy could be used to enable a quantum of energy to be reused multiple times, performing a quantum of work in each rescattering. This iterative retro-reflection and multipass recollection would serve to increase the density of collected energy and therefore the local potential and strength of source dipoles (separations of charges) that occur in space due to the interaction between free charges and the vacuum. Bearden has labeled this process asymmetric regauging and believes that it increases the energy extraction by dipoles existing in the vacuum exchange. He believes that this process has been experimentally proven by the Patterson Power Cell¨, an innovative, recently marketed power device with a demonstrated overunity energy output.

Bearden's work progressed to clarifying the nature and characteristics of the two wave components of electromagnetic energy fields, the transverse and the longitudinal waves. Created simultaneously but traveling on different planes, Bearden likens the transverse wave to the easily perceived, slow waveform seen on the ocean's surface and the longitudinal wave to a swift-moving subsurface pressure wave that does not disturb the surface and is not capable of being measured by existing technology. Through the work of researchers Donnelly and Ziolkowski, Bearden found that, by science's current selection and use of the transverse wave to power conventional electrical devices, the hidden longitudinal wave is somehow killed off, preventing it from being exploited to do useful work. The longitudinal wave, however, is potentially more powerful than the transverse wave, in that the former allegedly moves many times faster than the speed of light, which is a limiting factor for conventional signal transmission using the transverse wave component. Because of the theoretical ability of the internal longitudinal wave to facilitate virtually instantaneous signal communication across vast expanses of space, Bearden has focused on how to stimulate and select it for use, and allow the transverse wave to be canceled, or not initially produced, instead.

Bearden notes that he is now preparing a patent application for the initial part of what he terms a superluminal communications system, that uses a longitudinal wave process and is capable of transmitting signals at speeds faster than the speed of light. He contends that the basic concept has already been shown theoretically and experimentally at a microscopic level by other researchers using waveguides. His team specifically intends to show how to form the longitudinal wave, by transmitting a video signal inside a DC voltage without any transverse wave signal accompanying it, and then retrieving the signal without the presence of any noise.

Bearden already has three patents now pending in the field of electric circuits, all of which purport to achieve overunity in energy output with absolute conformance to the conventional laws of physics. Nonetheless, he makes no claim to have yet developed a working model of any overunity device in his own laboratories. He does claim that his experimental results have been encouraging to date, and that, as far back as 1990, his team was blowing up circuits due to the excess space energy they were tapping. The energy apparently could not be controlled in the semiconductor arrays being used at that time, which caused the energy to ping-pong back and forth between them until the resulting surge overloaded one of the arrays.

Bearden states, without disclosing more, that his team now knows how to control the energy flow, but is at a standstill for lack of funding. Fabrication difficulties have prevented forward movement on another means of energy flow control using a specialized, hard-to-engineer metallic material he has dubbed, with tongue in cheek, Unattainium. However, he allows that his work in using multiple passes of energy, collecting it repeatedly using retro-reflection in electric circuits and thus enabling increased energy extraction, holds the most promise.

Bearden's work in this last vein may owe its stimulus to his consulting assistance to home inventor Sparky Sweet in the 1980s. Sweet had invented an assembly of wire coils and barium ferrite magnets that would extract energy from space and produce six watts of usable power, with only a much smaller trickle of energy as input. Dubbed a vacuum triode amplifier (VAT) by Bearden, a later model reportedly produced 500 watts of output power, showing a net gain of 1.5 million over the input power level. Bearden theorized that Sweet's device tricked the barium nuclei of the magnets into going into self-oscillation with the ambient vacuum, causing the fields of the specially conditioned kinetic magnets to quiver at a high level.

The theorist prevailed upon Sweet to make a change in his device that would allow for a test of anti-gravity properties. Sweet later reported to Bearden by phone that, by increasing the power output drawn from his device by adding greater loads, he was able to reduce the weight of the VAT, as measured by a scale, by 90 percent. Concern about the likelihood of exploding the magnets prevented Sweet from reducing the VAT's weight entirely and seeing it fly. Unfortunately, all of Sweet's secrets about how to activate his magnets to achieve his startling results died with him in 1995, and Bearden was left to pursue his theoretical research without the benefit of a working model.

At this time, the theorist is working on two books. One of them, due out next year, will present the world's first legitimate theory of overunity electromagnetic engines, circuits, and devices, according to Bearden, and will contain a little necessary secret essential to building them. The other book is expected to be published later this year, and deals with Bearden's second and related main interest, the Priore device that was developed under the aegis of the French government in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Bearden reports that the Priore device is reputed to have cured terminal tumors in laboratory animals, and is able to cure any disease, including arteriosclerosis and cancer, by a special electrodynamic process known as phase conjugation or dedifferentiation. This process, seemingly miraculously, allegedly causes afflicted cells to return to their previously healthy state by literally turning back the clock on the disease. Bearden states that this process is a direct outgrowth of the work of American Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Robert Becker, who demonstrated the use of small DC currents to heal intractable bone fractures by stimulating the growth of new bone. The trickle current apparently caused red corpuscles to shed their hemoglobin coating, grow new nuclei, and metamorphose into a much earlier, primitive version of the cells before differentiation. These cells could then be newly differentiated into needed bone cells, which would deposit themselves at the fracture point and result in a knitting of the broken bone. It is this basic process that Bearden asserts can be imported into the treatment of infectious and terminal diseases, including the restoration to health of the immune systems of people with AIDS. And, Bearden claims, the Priore mechanism can effectuate healing in a matter of minutes.

Looking to the future of overunity electromagnetic systems, Bearden sees the greatest obstacle to their realization being the

mindset of the existing research-funding establishment and the orthodox scientific community that it serves. The flow of funding effectively controls what research is pursued by scientists working at universities and in industry. And it is the mindset against the possibility of tapping and collecting space energy to provide useable electricity that serves to block the allocation of money to develop working prototypes. The early new energy pioneers that have most influenced Bearden in his own efforts, Nikola Tesla and T. Henry Moray, faced this same mindset, resulting in their work being ignored by the scientific community of their time and eventually being suppressed by various contemporary interests.

Still, Bearden remains optimistic. He believes that once a scientifically verifiable model is perfected that is consistent with modern particle physics and thermodynamics and working, experimental proof is clearly established, thereby dispelling any notions that perpetual motion is being proposed, the mainstream scientific community will begin to lend support and the race to a new energy future will be on in a big way. He foresees commercially marketed overunity devices becoming available in two years, with homes and cars later being powered by insertable solid-state, energy-collecting cards. And, with the advent of the Internet, the ubiquitous availability of modern communications links, and the proliferation of journals and newsletters dedicated to alternate energy technology, the ability of a hostile establishment to suppress scientific innovation and its proponents is now greatly reduced. The new-energy genie, once out, will be much tougher to get back into the bottle than in earlier decades.

For his part, Bearden believes that his major contribution will be to have blown a hole in the brick wall, not a nice door, of the traditional way of thinking about overunity systems, primarily as a theorist rather than an inventor. He expects that interested, bright graduate students and post-doctoral fellows will take matters to the next level. Only time will tell. Although Bearden is not without his detractors, he is an undeniably engaging and colorful character whose deep conviction about his work and its results inspires both fascination and curiosity. If, in conversing with him, you were to evince any doubt about his claims, Bearden is quick to point out, This is not Tom Bearden [talking], it's in the [scientific] literature! If only people would read it and test it. Agree with him or no, he is, at the very least, a visionary of almost evangelical fervor who is sincerely dedicated to helping develop a new source of useable energy that is cleaner, cheaper, safer for the earth and its peoples, and universally available worldwide. To be sure, that's a goal worthy of everybody's attention.