Dear Dave,
I've been away from the job market so long that I no longer have a grasp of it! Nearly the whole complexion of the aerospace industry, e.g., has changed since I retired.
My advice would be to have a discussion with one of the more professional groups that specialize in connecting the position seeker with companies looking for that or similar skills. At least when I was still in the job market back there, for filling professional positions the companies paid the fees, and the service was free to the professional searching for the position.
The hard part, of course, is trying to get into "unusual physics" positions or positions involved in such. Here I'm afraid that the job market --- at least for the type of thing I'm trying to do --- is still nonexistent. You might find a little of it being done or looked at by some of the think tanks --- but then they have the habit of hiring Harvard grads etc. Since you have a good physics background, however, then that is a possibility. The intel community does a miniscule bit of it also, but they still stay pretty solidly with the "well back from forefront" physics. Everybody does lip service to "out of the box thinking" (the current set of buzzwords), but very few projects that are out of the box are ever funded.
The real problem is the present iron scientific mindset that one cannot extract useful energy from spacetime (or from the vacuum, depending on what model one chooses). It's still erroneously considered "perpetual motion nonsense" by scientists who really do not know what perpetual motion rigorously means anymore, because of all the dogma that has been injected over the decades. For the thermodynamics briefing I'm working on, I had to go all the way back to Planck's definition, to get at the real sense of it. Originally perpetual just meant "continuous". So one could not have a continuously working machine (e.g., a steam engine), unless one put energy into it so that it could keep doing the work continuously. This led to two types of perpetual (continuous) motion machines: (1) those that are permitted to do continuous work, and (2) those that are not.
A prohibited perpetual motion machine doing continuous work was simply one which was claimed had no input of energy, and therefore would have had to be "creating" energy --- thus violating the law that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So far as anyone knows, that law cannot be violated.
On the other hand, a permissible perpetual (continuous) motion machine doing continuous work was simply one which had a sufficient continuous input of energy to allow it to do continuous work, without any wild assumption of creating energy from nothing. Any continuously working machine, being fed the energy to do it, is a permissible perpetual motion machine. It will work indefinitely, until something breaks or until the energy input is cut off. A windmill is an example of a permissible perpetual motion machine, as is a sailboat, a water wheel, a solar cell, and every charge in the universe. All those entities exhibit COP = infinity, which simply means that all the energy is input freely by the environment, and the operator does not have to input any of it.
Today, almost the entire scientific community mistakenly assumes that the notion of a COP>1.0 EM system automatically means the notion of a perpetual motion machine creating at least some of the energy freely from nothing, and therefore prohibited. And in the standard Maxwell-Heaviside EM model (used also by EE), the source charge is in fact implicitly assumed to be a prohibited perpetual motion machine freely and continuously creating energy from nothing, thereby creating its associated EM fields and potentials.
Anyway, that was just to illustrate the received illogical scientific mindset --- which is really why this "vacuum energy" area is not yet a respectable scientific field. Since 1957 and the discovery of broken symmetry, it should have been recognized that every joule of EM energy in the universe comes directly from the vacuum via the asymmetry of the associated source charge.
With that prevailing dogma in its mindset, and with a tight job market these days, it's literally the "kiss of death" for a job applicant to start mentioning such areas enthusiastically. Never mind that every joule of energy in the universe, in every field and every potential, is already directly extracted from the vacuum via the source charge's asymmetry. Never mind that the standard EE model implicitly assumes that the source charge freely creates energy from nothing, continuously, and pours it out continuously in all directions, thereby establishing and replenishing its associated fields and potentials expanding at light speed across the universe. The job interviewer is not interested in any of that, and wouldn't believe it anyway. That's the last kind of discussion one would recommend in a job interview with a standard company or agency!
Yes, the conventional energy scientists and engineers are actually (unwittingly) the greatest prohibited perpetual motion advocates in human history! Most conventional energy scientists do not even recognize what their own EM model prescribes. Most have no notion that every charge exhibits COP = infinity, as does a windmill, a sailboat, a solar cell, etc. Most engineers and many scientists do not understand the technical difference between efficiency of an energy system and the COP of the same system. The two are quite different things. No one in his right mind advocates a machine of greater than 100% efficiency! A windmill with a COP = infinity, may have an efficiency of 50% or so. A solar cell may have an efficiency of about 17%. Yet it too has a COP = infinity. A home heat pump may have a COP = 4.0 under good conditions, but an efficiency of 50% or less.
But against that iron dogma, which is more than 100 years old, a voice of reason raised against it is just drowned by the cur dog pack attacks that the self-appointed "defenders of the faith" exhibit.
Even mentioning any of that would probably torpedo any job interview immediately.
So my main advice would be to very much soft pedal your interest in energy from the vacuum, etc., and work up your presentation and resume, etc. based on the "respectable" physics and electromagnetics experience and skills you have. Radar, signal processing, etc. they understand and accept. EM energy from the vacuum they do not.
The only way an old dog like me keeps going and doing this, is by being retired (on a fixed income) and therefore able to at least pay the grocery bill, rent, utilities, etc. Also, other kind folks from time to time do make donations, which are immensely helpful. Several folks also do freely contribute enormous time and effort to doing the hard work on the website, publishing, accounting, editing, etc. and I am extraordinarily blessed to have their assistance. Mike Rieker also contributes the website pro bono, so you can see that I do receive a great deal of assistance! There are some very hardworking and dedicated persons seeing that those things get done.
So we continue because of that. On the other hand, I gather you are transitioning toward a needed job and a needed secure position. In that case the name of the game is still "play it in the conventional arena", but just play up your special skills and experience.
Hopefully there will come a day when this exclusion of forefront work will not be so ironclad. Unfortunately, it hasn't yet come about.
Anyway, my very best wishes to you in your transition to a new career, and I do hope you find a good position. But I strongly suggest you get some really up to date advice from a good "head hunter" company or "professional portfolio" company that specializes in such, and is also completely current in what works now and what doesn't.
Sincerely,
Tom Bearden
November 13, 2002
Col. (Dr.) Bearden,
Several days ago, I was pleased to order a copy of your new book, Energy From the Vacuum. After learning about your book through recent e-mail among AIAS Fellows, I just know that this is a book no physicist should miss.
I recall corresponding with you in the late 1980s about careers in frontier areas of physics such as those outlined in Excalibur Briefing, and now I need your advice and counsel once again. I am looking for career opportunities that align with my primary interest, next-generation physics – including the next-generation electromagnetic theory that is of interest to many of us on the AIAS e-mail list. For this reason, I would be most grateful for any recommendations that you may have regarding electromagnetics- or other physics-related employment or consulting opportunities – especially in the Baltimore-Washington DC area or at least within weekend commuting distance (although for the right opportunity, I will consider relocation to other parts of the world). In fact, I seem to recall that in addition to your other research interests, you have been a consultant for at least one antenna company in the greater Washington DC area. If so, that I would appreciate any recommendations that you can offer regarding local opportunities.
To give you some information about myself – much of my professional career has involved applied electromagnetics, especially as related to radar propagation, radar scatter control, advanced surveillance concepts, radar signal processing, communications, electromagnetic shielding, and antennas. In some of these areas, I dealt with nonsinusoidal waveforms.
Incidentally, much of my career was also in the military. After 2+ years in the Army, I transferred to the Air Force, where I served several more years, primarily in areas relating to radar and RF. I retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1999 at the grade of Lieutenant Colonel.
Thank you in advance, and kind regards,
Dave
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