“In 1971, Zel’dovich predicted that quantum fluctuations and classical waves reflected from a rotating absorbing cylinder will gain energy and be amplified. This concept, which is a key step towards the understanding that black holes may amplify quantum fluctuations, has not been verified experimentally owing to the challenging experimental requirement that the cylinder rotation rate must be larger than the incoming wave frequency.”

Until now. This opening paragraph of a new study published in the journal Nature Physics is referring to the idea that black holes are not just matter-sucking bodies consuming all energy in their path but may actually be able to be mined by energy by a brave alien civilization or even humans – provided they can figure out a way to get close enough to plug their battery into the black hole charger. But how?

The idea came from British physicist Roger Penrose. In 1969, he theorized that rotational energy could be harvested from a black hole by lowering an object into the outer edge of its event horizon – the ergosphere – and then collecting the energy the black hole gave off as it dined. The first and biggest challenge was that the collector had to be stationary with the black hole, which meant it had to be moving at faster than the speed of light. This energy-harvesting idea became known as the Penrose Process.

While Sir Roger went on to share the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics with Stephen Hawking for the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems, renowned Soviet physicist Yakov Zel’dovich picked up the Penrose Process in 1971 and developed an experiment that could be conducted on Earth to test the theory. It involved shooting twisted light waves (used in optical tweezers and ultra-powerful microscopes) at a rotating cylinder which reflect them back with additional energy taken from the cylinder’s rotation due to something called the rotational Doppler Shift. Zel’dovich was certain it would work – he just needed a cylinder that rotated at least a billion times a second. Sigh.

Fast forward to the present. Marion Cromb, a Ph.D. student in the University of Glasgow’s School of Physics and Astronomy and lead author of the paper, came up with an alternative that would allow her and her research team to successfully test the Penrose Process using sound instead of light. Sound obviously travels far slower than light but performs the same way in a rotational Doppler Shift. They used a small ring of speakers to create a twist in the sound waves, then directed them at a rotating sound absorber made from a foam disc. Microphones on the other side picked up the sound as it passed through the disc. And?

“What we heard during our experiment was extraordinary. What’s happening is that the frequency of the sound waves is being doppler-shifted to zero as the spin speed increases. When the sound starts back up again, it’s because the waves have been shifted from a positive frequency to a negative frequency. Those negative-frequency waves are capable of taking some of the energy from the spinning foam disc, becoming louder in the process—just as Zel’dovich proposed in 1971.”

Eureka! … or whatever researchers yell these days — Cromb preferred to comment quietly to Phys.org.   Penrose and Zel’dovich’s theories on the possibility of harvesting energy from a black hole were proven in a lab experiment using the equivalent of your Wifi speaker and a fast-spinning Nerf bat. Yes, that is a long way from charging your spaceship at a roadside black hole for the ride home, but it’s still a proof.

One more point to ponder. Penrose came up with the process as a way for alien civilizations to harness black hole power. The experiment proves this is possible. Does this mean it may already be happening? What would that mean?

Akerue! (That’s a reverse Eureka!)

Over the years, more than a few researchers and writers on paranormal, cryptozoological, and ufological phenomena have changed their views on the subject of their particular choice. That includes me, too. In 2017 I wrote a book titled The Roswell UFO Conspiracy. It was a follow-up to my 2005 book, Body Snatchers in the Desert. Both presented data suggesting that the famous event of July 1947 had nothing to do with aliens. And in this year I wrote The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy. At its heart is the theory that the famous incident of December 1980 was really a top secret experiment designed to determine the extent to which the human mind can be screwed with. Of course, it’s inevitable that over time minds will change as new and alternative data surfaces. For the most part, it isn’t a big deal. Occasionally, however, it can result in disaster and tragedy – and particularly so when an interest and a fascination combine into one and become an obsession. And this latter point brings me to today’s article and to a certain man under the microscope. His name: Frederick William “Ted” Holiday.

Born in 1921, Holiday had two passions: angling and the Loch Ness Monster. His books included included Fishing in Wales, Angling in Wales, River-Fishing for Sea Trout, The Great Orm of Loch Ness, The Dragon and the Disc, The Goblin Universe, and – with Randall Jones Pugh – The Dyfed Enigma. What is particularly notable about Holiday’s work in the field of the Nessies, is the way in which his theories and conclusions changed – not just slightly but to incredible degrees. Holiday was someone who, in the 1960s, had his very own sightings of strange creatures in the loch. It prompted him to do something that a number of people had already done: he wrote a book on the subject of Scotland’s famous monster. That book was The Great Orm of Loch Ness. It was published in 1968.

Holiday came up with an intriguing theory: that the creatures of the loch were really massive versions of a very small creature called Tullimonstrum gregarium. And what that might be? Let’s see. The Illinois State Geological Survey states: “The Tully monster was a soft-bodied, invertebrate, marine animal – an animal that has no shell and no backbone, and lived in the ocean. It had an elongate, segmented body that tapered at both ends. At the front was a long snout ending in a ‘jaw’ with eight tiny ‘teeth.’ At the other end was a tail and two fins. Two eyes on stalks projected out sideways near the front of the body. Judging from the streamlined shape, flexible body, and maneuverable fins, it’s likely the Tully monster was an active swimmer. Perhaps, like a modern squid, it hovered near the sea bottom. The Tully monsters’ ‘jaws’ and apparent swimming abilities suggest that they attacked other marine animals such as jellyfish and shrimp, perhaps piercing their prey with their ‘teeth’ and sucking out the juices.”

On top of that, Tullimonstrum gregarium lived solely in the muddy landscapes of Pennsylvania, USA. Oh, and one more important thing that should be noted: it went extinct around 300 million years ago. None of these clearly important points appeared to bother Holiday in the slightest, who continued to pursue his theory with a great deal of enthusiasm. Even though Ted Holiday sincerely believed that the Tullimonstrum gregarium theory had merit, he wasn’t able to shake off a deep, foreboding feeling that there was something more to the Loch Ness Monsters, something that – rather paradoxically – implied they were flesh and blood animals, but ones possessed of supernatural qualities. It was a feeling that would ultimately become a full-blown, unhealthy obsession (filled with paranoia), and one that pretty much dictated the rest of Holiday’s short life.

By the time The Great Orm of Loch Ness was published, Holiday had not only been to the lair of the Nessies on numerous occasions, he had also had the opportunity to speak to many witnesses to the beasts. In doing so, Holiday noticed a most curious, and even unsettling, pattern. There were far more than a random number of reports on record where eyewitnesses to the creatures had tried to photograph them, only to fail miserably. As time progressed, it became abundantly obvious to Holiday that this was not down to mere chance. When an excited soul on the shore went to grab their camera, the beast would sink beneath the waves. When someone even just thought about taking a picture, the monster would vanish below. On other occasions, cameras would malfunction. Pictures would come out blank or fogged. It was as if the Nessies were dictating, and manipulating, the situations in which the witnesses found themselves. That is exactly what Holiday came to believe was going on. That was, largely, when the paranoia started to kick in.

By 1969, Holiday’s life was dominated and dictated by weird synchronicities – meaningful coincidences, in simple terms – something that led Holiday to question both his sanity and even the very nature of reality itself. What had begun as an exciting hunt for unknown animals was now rapidly mutating into something very different. The outcome: In 1973, Holiday wrote his second book on Nessie, The Dragon and the Disc. In that book, Holiday made connections between UFOs and lake-monsters (and not just those in Loch Ness, but in Ireland and elsewhere, too). Holiday became fascinated by the fact that none other than the “Great Beast” himself, Aleister Crowley, had a home at Loch Ness: Boleskine House. To his deep concern, Holiday learned of a dragon-worshiping cult operating at the loch. Also, Holiday spoke with those who had seen UFOs over that huge expanse of water, and he even engaged in an exorcism (in June 1973), to try and banish the beasts from the murky depths. On top of that, Holiday had a traumatic encounter with a Man in Black, no less – also in 1973.

For Holiday things were becoming not just weird, but downright uncanny. Unsettling, too. Indeed, one gets a sense that from the late sixties onward Holiday’s life was filled with stress, paranoia and a sense that he was no longer in control of his life. Something else – something supernatural – was taunting the man. Something akin to the “Trickster” phenomenon, we might say. Holiday continued with his research, though. It has to be said, however, that by this time Holiday had no time for Tullimonstrum gregarium. Now, it’s time to move ahead to 1979. That’s when the aforementioned The Dyfed Enigma was published. The book described “dramatic manifestations of ufological activity which occurred in West Wales between 1974 and 1977.” In other words, Holiday was now deep into the UFO subject. But not for long: 1979 was also the year in which Holiday died – from a heart attack – at the age of fifty-nine. Matters aren’t quite over, however.

In 1986, Holiday’s posthumous book, The Goblin Universe, was published. Its subjects included the monsters of Loch Ness (of course!), Alien Big Cats, life after death, that 1973 exorcism at Loch Ness, phantom black dogs, Bigfoot, synchronicities, the work of John Michell (the author of The Flying Saucer Vision) and the writings of John Keel. As an aside, Keel and Holiday corresponded in the 1970s. Keel warned Holiday of the hazards of getting deep into the investigation of such phenomena. Holiday chose to push on with his new and alternative theories and left Tullimonstrum gregarium way behind him. And then he died.

Fast radio bursts have been getting all of the “mysterious signals” publicity lately, so it’s easy to see why other mysterious signals have been overlooked. That’s no longer the case with one in particular, despite the new paper announcing them with the unwieldy description of “Excess Electronic Recoil Events.” What should make everyone recoil is that these signals are coming from experiments attempting to find dark matter and the 163 scientists conducting them can’t explain the messages.

“This is really a rather surprising result. The excess measurements do not show up in our main analysis, but rather in our background events. It’s really curious in many ways. Unexpected for sure. Unclear as to what causes this. It’s certainly some new effect that we hadn’t considered before.”

In a press release by Purdue University, Rafael Lang, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the school and one of the 163 scientists, uses some words you don’t want to hear from people playing with particle accelerators looking for dark matter. Lang is part of the Xenon Collaboration working at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, an underground particle physics facility in the Abruzzo Mountains of Italy north of Rome.

“The XENON1T experiment, employing a liquid-xenon time projection chamber (LXe TPC), was primarily designed to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter. Due to its unprecedentedly low background rate, large target mass, and low energy threshold, XENON1T is also sensitive to interactions from alternative dark matter candidates and to other physics beyond the Standard Model (SM).”

Xenon is also used in car headlights

Xenon (Xe) is used as propellant for ion thrusters in spacecraft, so it’s not a element to be fooled with lightly. In this case, it’s being used to detect WIMP dark matter hitting a xenon nucleus and causing a signal or ‘recoil’ – a search that has been going on there for 14 years without success. To pass the time, bored particle physicists began using the XENON1T to search for other hypothetical particles banging into things besides xenon nuclei. That’s when they found 53 additional recoils they couldn’t account for. They’ve spent the last year secretly trying to figure out what they are.

“The question is: Is this some known physics, such as a tiny contamination with tritium, or is this the tip of the iceberg pointing to truly new physics, beyond what we know from textbooks? We simply don’t know at this point.”

That’s not very comforting, Professor Lang. What the large team has settled on is three theoretical possibilities: a solar axion (a hypothetical particle found in the sun similar to a photon but with a tiny amount of mass), a new kind of neutrino (known subatomic particles that pass through all matter – except when collide with something) or tritium, a rare hydrogen isotope whose presence would indicate an error in the data). Obviously, they’re hoping it’s a solar axiom, which would make it a component of dark matter.

Particle accelerator

So which one is it? The answer is a good news/bad news one. The bad news is, the Xenon1T detector was shut down in December 2018 for an upgrade. The good news is, the upgrade – which will be finished soon — increases the amount of liquid xenon while decreasing the amount of background noise. Will that give these 163 frustrated researchers the answer?

“It’s like a puzzle with no missing pieces. Except that we still have a bunch of questions that this model doesn’t address. For example, what is dark matter? Why is there matter in the universe at all? So, we expect that there is this entirely other puzzle that we can play with. These questions need answers, but we don’t have our foot in the door of that one. The discovery of any new particle, such as axions, would be that foot in the door.”

For those who have been stuck at home due to the coronavirus shutdown and passing the time by assembling jigsaws, “a puzzle with no missing pieces” but still unsolved sounds like a nightmare. So does messing with dark matter. Let’s hope it’s not.