RIP Tom Van Flandern

[Steve Smith]

Media release

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - For immediate release

Sequim, Wa – Noted astronomer Thomas C Van Flandern succumbed to colon cancer on January 9, 2009. He graduated from Xavier University in 1962, briefly attended Georgetown University in 1963 and received his PhD in astronomy from Yale in 1969, specializing in celestial mechanics. Dr. Van Flandern's early work is well regarded within his field, but he was more broadly (and controversially) known for his later scientific contributions.

Fascinated with astronomy from a very young age, Dr. Van Flandern made his first contribution to the field at age 19. In 1959, Tom and his friend Dennis Smith (age 17) set the world record for number of artificial satellites tracked during a month as part of project Moonwatch in Cincinnati. Tom made his observation from his personal telescope purchased with money earned from his paper route.

Dr. Van Flandern worked at the U.S. Naval Observatory for 21 years and became Chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch of the Nautical Almanac Office. His team contributed to the regular production of The Nautical Almanac, among other projects. After retiring from the civil service, Van Flandern served as a Research Associate at the University of Maryland Physics Department, and as a Global Positioning System (GPS) consultant to the Army Research Laboratory.

In his book "Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets", Dr. Van Flandern presented the case for several controversial theories, most notably that the speed of gravity must propagate significantly faster than the speed of light; both comets and asteroids are remnants of an exploded planet; back-ground radiation is not caused by an expanding universe and therefore the big bang is invalid; Mars is an escaped moon of an exploded planet formerly located in the asteroid belt; and that some structures on Mars are artificial. Dr. Van Flandern successfully predicted the discovery that asteroids with satellites, co-published peer reviewed papers on the speed of gravity with J.P. Vigier, and collaborated with Esko Lyytinen in improving the model for predicting meteor showers. Unfortunately detractors frequently use his claims of artificiality on Mars to marginalize both him and his work.

Dr. Van Flandern founded Meta Research in 1991 in response to the broad problem of getting research support for promising but unpopular alternative ideas in astronomy. Meta Research publishes a quarterly journal and maintains a presence on the Internet at metaresearch.org.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Van Flandern lived, worked and retired in Washington DC with wife Barbara and their four children. He spent the final years of his life in the Olympic peninsula town of Sequim, Washington.

[Solar]

My goodness. I was just listening to an mp3 radio broadcast of Van Flandern this morning. May he Rest in Peace. His brainchild is Meta Research.

[bdw000]

Too bad.

His website is great.

I especially like his critiques of relativity, and his alternative of "Lorentzian Relativity."

[junglelord]

Yes, he will be sadly missed


I put that very article up today in memory of him.

[redeye]

Unfortunately detractors frequently use his claims of artificiality on Mars to marginalize both him and his work.

He will be greatly missed. Unfortunately, once you have passed away, you appear to be fair game for any detractors. I recently watched a BBC documentary about the Big Bang, I think it was originally aired as part of the LHCtravaganza last year. The program was an excuse for an extended dig at the late Fred Hoyle and his support of the Steady state hypothesis. As far as I'm aware Fred Hoyle rejected the Big Bang (a phrase he coined) as a leap of faith he was not willing to take and supported the Steady state hypothesis as there was no reasonable alternative. The program also failed to mention the fact that Fred Hoyles work on nucleosynthesis is one of the theories used to support the Big Bang theory, the program stated that Edwin Hubble was the originator of the theory (not George Lemaitre) and, after mentioning the show stopper that is the CMB, they made no attempt to explain it's inhomogenous nature or how the Big Bang explains this. Fred Hoyle would have had these idiots for breakfast!

Sorry for the vitriol but I get seriosly angry at the reaction to honest scientists who are led by facts rather than the crowd.

Thunderbolts does a great job stopping the revisionists from defaming the likes of Van Flandern, Dyson and Velikovsky to name a few.

Cheers!

Cheers!

[junglelord]

Too bad.

His website is great.

I especially like his critiques of relativity, and his alternative of "Lorentzian Relativity."

Please join in and help honour his memory.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 7&start=60

[mnemeth1]

That really sucks.

I am a fan of his work.

Lots of great contributions that picked apart Einsteinian relativistic cosmology piece by piece.

[Lloyd]

I thought I posted a comment here before, but I don't see it. So here goes again. It's too bad alternative scientists don't know more about alternative health care. Conventional science and conventional medicine are both oppressed by big business or the ruling class and it's the alternatives that provide the best information in both cases. Even though there's a lot of junk science in alternatives too, there's much more junk in the conventional. Some evidence for this is at http://mercola.com and http://curezone.org.