August  9, 2015, Boca Raton, Florida (Florida Atlantic University)

From the feedback from all the participants, the John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society’s First Conference was a resounding success.  It was known that this year’s attendance would be lower because of all that has happened in the past year and a half and that the CNPS did not have a conference in 2014. Also, the CNPS membership was waiting for the new organization to be official which did not happen until the middle of this year. The conference was offered free to FAU students, faculty, and workers and attracted numbers of new faces during the conference that sat in on various sessions.

David de Hilster opening up the CNPS Conference in Boca Raton Florida at Florida Atlantic University

I think everyone agrees, the facilities at Florida State University were just great! We were in the “House Chambers” for all but 1 day and they provided a handsome and noble place for the heated discussions on the universe. Boca Raton is very green and tropical and with participants from 5 countries and three continents, some members took full advantage of the trip with some bringing their spouses and making a mini vacation out of their travels to the conference.

With a smaller attendance, presenters had from 30 to 60 minutes or more for their presentation and discussion and everyone heard everyone else’s talk. There was flexibility and we adjusted the schedule several times to accommodate speakers.

Each speaker’s talk was video recorded and will be on the CNPS Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_FXz7FV546ncHhP3wpqusQ.  Look for those in the coming weeks.

Day One, August 5, 2015

Richard Calkin and Ray Gallucci pose on the red carpet upon arrival at CNPS 2015

Participants were treated like science rockstars with the CNPS and SciFlix literally rolling out the red carpet for scientists and guests.

David de Hilster (me) opened the conference with an overview of the history of the group and its transition to the CNPS. He talked about the future of the CNPS and new endeavors and the importance of “marketing” the group.  The group size has remained the same for several decades more or less doubling in the last ten years but members agree, there should be more done to attract new members.

There are many new directions for the group that are underway including member blogs which are growing in number, the community website (http://community.naturalphilosophy.org), the SciFlix Film Festival, and the Dissident Science Podcast. The CNPS also has a facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/chappellnaturalphilosophy), twitter account (https://twitter.com/naturalphilo), Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_FXz7FV546ncHhP3wpq), and a Meetup Group (http://www.meetup.com/CNPS-Southern-Florida/)

Musa D. Abdullahi: Terminal Speed of an Electron Accelerated by an Electric Field

Musa D. Abdullahi who came all the way from Nigeria in Africa, opened up the conference with his paper Terminal Speed of an Electron Accelerated by an Electric Field. He then went on to talk about An Explanation of Inertia outside Relativity. That brought spirited discussion given the popularity of inertia.

Musa is a retired teacher who now is looking to start a local CNPS chapter, the first in Africa. His goal is to teach students to have an open mind to science and to use the materials provided by the CNPS online for their Meetups found on the CNPS community website.

Duncan Shaw talks “On the Cause or Causes of Inertia”

Carl R. Littmann was up next and talks about the Fusion Mass Losses and Tunnels Formed between Touching Nucleons. Despite his fights with the slide changing buttons (no one was immune from the syndrome!), his talk about aether and how it affects and keeps the nucleus of atoms together was very popular and gave new ideas to many at the conference and to the upcoming “Hackathon”.

He was followed by Duncan W. Shaw who talked about  On the Cause or Causes of Inertia, again, a popular subject among CNPS scientists.

The last talk of the day came from Peter Sujak on the Basic Historical, Philosophical and Physical Reasons for Denial of Main Physical. Peter, who is from Czechoslovakia, talked about the hundred years of mainstream science denying the existence of aether.

Peter gives his talk to the members at the CNPS conference on the first day.

Barry and this production team talks live via video conference to the SciFlix Film Festival.

The evening was the first screening for the SciFlix Film Festival which screened the 2015 Science Lecture Series winner “Anomolies – A Journey of Scientific Discovery“, Barry Setterfield. The members saw about 60 minutes of the “Speed of Light” chapters from the DVD series.

It was greatly interesting to CNPS members to find out that the speed of light has been getting slower during the last 300 years – a fact not known by many and pointed out by Barry and his DVD series. Barry and his team were moved by the award and were greatly appreciative.  Barry suffers from a rare disease and we wish him the best with his health and congratulate him and his team for their pioneering series on Anomalies.

Day Two, August 6, 2015

Richard presenting “The Special Theory of Relativity is a House of Cards Built on a Parlor Trick and Sustained by Circular Reasoning”

Day two opened with Richard O. Calkins talking about The Mediums for Light are Hiding in Plain Sight and The Special Theory of Relativity is a House of Cards Built on a Parlor Trick and Sustained by Circular Reasoning. These subjects are a favorite with CNPS members and there was plenty of discussion as you can imagine.

Next was Jeff Baugher on his Introducing Integral Geometry: Are Notational Flaws Responsible For the Inability to Combine General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? Jeff is doing something with General Relativity that is similar to what Steven Crothers does with Black Holes: he is doing a thorough examination of the derivation and equations and finding important flaws. His discussion of areas was particularly interesting.

Jeff Baugher presenting “Introducing Integral Geometry: Are Notational Flaws Responsible For the Inability to Combine General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics?”

Bob de Hilster presenting his paper “Light, Gravity, and Mass: A Particle Theory”.

Next, Bob de Hilster and David Scott de Hilster talked about their paper Light, Gravity, and Mass: A Particle Theory.  According to David de Hilster, his father has proposed a real model for Light and Gravity solving the wave/ particle duality problem by using one particle to carry light waves encoded by density differences and that carry gravity. Bob de Hilster presented this model to the audience while David provided some ideas for using and extending the model.

This was inspiration for the first “Universe Hackathon” which took place later in the week on Saturday, August 8, 2015.

Duncan Shaw then followed with his presentation On the Structure of Atoms suggesting to the audience that we desparately need to come up with real structures for atoms.  This author agrees!

The afternoon finished up with a video presentation of Vladimir B. Ginzburg‘s The Essence of the Universal Spacetime Theory (UST).

Vladimir B. Ginzburg
The Essence of the Universal Spacetime Theory (UST)

Thursday night was another SciFlix Film Festival event where members were invited to David and Doris’ de Hilster‘s home in Boca Raton for stimulating discussion, drinks, and super healthy but tasty food by Doris de Hilster with snacks from Pat de Hilster all using the Forks Over Knives diet.  David de Hilster has been on the FOK diet for almost 2 years and the documentary Forks Over Knives was given the “Impact Award” of 2015 at the SciFlix Film Festival.

The diet excludes oil, any meat, processed flour or rice, added sugar, dairy, and eggs. The meal included two soups (lentil and split-pea), bread, banana bread, brownies, and salad with non-oil dressing.

Portion of the film was screened the next day at the Awards Banquet at the University as guests talked well into the evening about the subjects they love.  This night was simply healthy discussion and healthy food accompanied by the fabled Brazilian “caipirinhas” drinks – tasty!

Conversation and drinks before the meal

CNPS Members and spouses at the social evening at the de Hilster’s home in Boca Raton Florida.

Day Three, August 7, 2015

Day three say Raymond H. Gallucci give four talks on Michelson-Morley Interferometer Experiment of 1887: “Null” Result, Questioning the Cosmological Doppler Red-Shift, Accelerating Clocks Run Faster and Slower, and Re-Examining Velikovsky.

This meeting took place in the Majestic Palm Room at Florida Atlantic University and there was much discussion about all subjects. These talks will be available on the CNPS Youtube channel in the coming months.

Raymond Gallucci gave 4 talks on Friday morning leaving ample time for discussions.

Scott Wall “Making Waves” at the CNPS conference.

Scott Wall made lots of waves with Making Waves as his talked caused the most discussion of all the talks during the conference. The part of the talk that brought the most spontaneous participation of the entire conference was the part on tides. With the tides slide on the wall, various people walked up to the slide to start talking about tides including Bob de Hilster who has worked a lot on the phenomena and who added some valuable insights from his own investigations on the subject.

Bob pointed out that the barycenter of the earth (that fact that the earth wobbles around off-center because of the pull of the moon) has something to do with the high tides. While Scott Wall was talking about charge in water, Bob was talking gravity and angular momentum.

Note: Before the SciFlix Festival dinner, Hans Strupat and Scott Wall were seen busily working on calculations for tides and who knows, maybe another paper for the next CNPS Conference?

The afternoon had our special guest, Dr. Andrew Bartlett, sociologist from Cardiff University in the UK giving the John Chappell Memorial Lecture on “Science, Society, and Consensus”. His talk was a interesting look at dissident science and society and was worthy of the Chappell Memorial Lecture.

Dr. Andrew Bartlett gives the annual John Chappell Memorial Lecture at the 2015 CNPS Conference.

Afterwards, there was a panel discussion with Dr. Bartlett and David de Hilster with each asking questions of each other as well as entertaining audience questions and comments on Society and dissidents.

There was also discussion lead by David de Hilster on the new directions for the CNPS and suggestions for growing the group.

Great meal for the gala event!

The evening was the awards dinner for the SciFlix Film Festival.  There were five festival winners including:

1. Best Scientific Lecture “Anomalies – A Journey of Scientific Discover” by Barry Setterfield
2. Best Mainstream Science Documentary “Journey to A Miracle“
3. Best Impact Documentary “Forks Over Knives“
4. Honorable Mention “Stink!“
5. And Grand Prize Winner “Einstein Wrong – The Miracle Year” by David de Hilster

A very elegant and tasty “Greek” dinner was served to all participants and excerpts were played to the audience.  Scientist and film judge Nick Percival was live via video feed to give his impressions of all the films while David de Hilster was master of ceremonies.

Five Awards in the 2015 edition of the SciFlix Film Festival.

Award winning director David de Hilster and his family at the SciFlix Awards Banquet

Day Four, August 8, 2015

Day four was the start of the first public “Universe Hackathon”, this edition being 1.1. Version 1.0 was done previously with Bob de Hilster, David de Hilster, and Robert Berger, members of the local CNPS chapter in Southern Florida.  Members from the CNPS and local chapter of the CNPS (via Meetup) were present.

Jeff Baugher explains his “hack” to Bob de Hilster using the model given to participants of the Hackathon.

The morning included introductions of everyone at the Hackathon and the laying the background for the reason for the “Hackathon”. The idea was to help the CNPS “Light, Gravity, and Structures” subgroup “hack” the universe using simple rules or assumptions based on Glenn Borchardt‘s work. These are the only tools you can use for hacking or modeling the universe:

• Space
• Infinity
• Mass
• Mass in motion
• Pushes

With this, Hackathon goers were challenged to come up with new “hacks” or configurations for the model. Robert de Hilster’s model for light and gravity are already “hacked”:

This is the breakthrough “hack” as come up by Bob de Hilster where light waves are density differences in aether or graviton particles and gravity is cause by the push of these particles on atomic substructure

There was some interesting developments. Both Bob de Hilster and Peter Sujak suggested we need to identify the “aether” or gravitons in the model including the shape, size, mass etc. How that would be done is still unclear although Bob de Hilster says in his calculations he is trying to work on that. Some suggestions included looking at current data and seeing what could be found in existing data that  CNPS members would agree is caused by aether with some suggestions including whirling aether as magnetic fields, and experiments that show interactions between atomic structure and light.

Hans Strupat, Scott Wall, Bob de Hilster, and David de Hilster finished out the day hacking the fact that the model will need to show that as aether passes through mass, the density variations which cause light will be filtered. Bob and Hans are electrical engineers and looked to electrical dampers to their inspirations.

Scott Wall, Hans Strupat, and Bob de Hilster hacking the universe and coming up with a mechanism for damping aether density through mass

Here is the diagram from David de Hilster’s co-authored paper from the conference:

Light waves which is traveling as variations in density of aether or graviton particles has the density “normalized” when passing through mass. How does this happen? It requires “hacking”.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Pat and Luanda de Hilster for their help at the conference.

We want to thank Dr. Cynthia Whitney for her generous contribution to the CNPS that without, would have made the budget for this year’s event precarious at best. Many thanks!

Thanks also to Pat, Luanda, and Bob de Hilster for their administrative support during the event. Pat de Hilster “womaned” the registration table giving everyone a proceedings, a schedule, a badge, and a free DVD of Einstein Wrong. Bob de Hilster manned the camera, and Luanda de Hilster helped out with hospitality and registration.

Thanks to Doris de Hilster for cooking and hosting a magnificent and very healthy meal for all!

Special thanks as well to Dr. Andrew Bartlett who came to give the John Chappell Memorial Lecture as well as lead a discussion on Science, Society and Consensus.

Also a very special thanks to Scientist and film judge Nicholas Percival who screened all the films for the SciFlix film festival.  Without his help, this first modest edition of the film festival would not have been possible.

Nick Percival, film festival judge for SciFlix 2015

And lastly and most importantly, thanks to Lou Ellen LaFollette, Duncan Shaw, Nicholas Percival and Greg Volk for their work on setting up the new CNPS organization and keeping this group not only going, but growing!

Best Wishes

We also send our best wishes Lou Ellen LaFollette a speedy recovery after her surgery and best of luck and wishes to Dr. Cynthia Whitney in her upcoming (or already completed) surgery.

Elections Coming

The acting directorate of the CNPS will be holding elections for directors in the coming months. All paying members will be able to participate and vote.

Thanks again to all!

David de Hilster
Boca Raton Florida, USA

David de Hilster, webmaster and conference organizer