Puthoff leaves SRI (1985)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | Summer 1985 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Government programs (topic), Propulsion & physics (topic), Remote viewing & psi (topic) |
| People | Harold Puthoff |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 98 |
| Year | 1985 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1985 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 9 |
In 1985 physicist Hal Puthoff, who had co-led the government-funded remote-viewing research at SRI International since the early 1970s, moved to Austin, Texas, and founded the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (IASA) to study unconventional physics such as zero-point energy and gravity.[1][2]
Background
Puthoff earned a Stanford doctorate in 1967 for work on tunable lasers and joined Stanford Research Institute (later SRI International) in 1972, where he and Russell Targ ran remote-viewing experiments funded by the CIA and the military. Critics who reviewed the work could not replicate it and found cues in the transcripts. After Puthoff left, the SRI program continued under physicist Edwin May until it moved to Science Applications International Corporation.[1][2][3]
Jupiter Technologies
In Austin, Puthoff became the resident theoretician of Jupiter Technologies, a company formed in 1984 with funding from George "Bill" Church, owner of Church's Fried Chicken, to develop inventor Kenneth Shoulders's "condensed charge" technology — dense clusters of electrons that Shoulders believed could lead to new electronics and energy sources. Puthoff proposed that a variant of the Casimir effect, a force arising from the quantum vacuum, might explain how the clusters held together. Church's fortune collapsed in the late 1980s, and Jupiter shut down by 1990.[4][5]
EarthTech
In 1991 IASA was incorporated under EarthTech International, which Puthoff also founded. In the late 1980s and 1990s he published papers proposing that inertia and gravity might arise from interactions with the zero-point field and exploring whether energy could be extracted from the vacuum; other physicists found errors in some of the calculations, and critics have called the energy claims pseudoscience.[1][2]
Later career
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Puthoff later returned to the UAP story: according to the testimony, he worked on the Pentagon-funded AAWSAP program from 2008, contributing to its advanced-physics reports, and in 2017 he co-founded To The Stars Academy with Tom DeLonge.[2][6]
People and topics
- Harold Puthoff — Physicist who co-founded the SRI remote-viewing research and later worked on AAWSAP and To The Stars Academy.
- SRI International — The research institute where the government's remote-viewing studies began.
- Remote viewing — The claimed ability to describe distant places by mental means.
- EarthTech International — Hal Puthoff's research company in Austin, Texas.
- Zero-point energy — The lowest possible energy of a physical system, which some hope to tap for power.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- AAWSAP — The Defense Intelligence Agency's UAP research program of 2008–2010, carried out by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
- To The Stars Academy — The company founded by Tom DeLonge in 2017 that released the Navy UAP videos.
On the Timeline
- Advanced Theoretical Physics group (20 May 1985) — A secure facility hosts a conference on whether UAP evidence supports a research program.
- Reagan's diary entry of 11 June 1985 (11 June 1985) — President Reagan's diary hints at a large space shuttle capability after lunch with scientists.
See every 1985 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "Harold Puthoff", Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research) · psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk · archived copy
- Harold E. Puthoff — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Stargate Project — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Jupiter Technologies" (1992), KeelyNet · mirror.cyberbits.eu · archived copy
- Jacob Roberts and Kenton G. Jaehnig, "The frontiersman", Distillations, Science History Institute (Oct 2016) · sciencehistory.org · archived copy
- To the Stars (company) — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Harold E. Puthoff — SourceWatch · sourcewatch.org · archived copy
- urigeller.com · urigeller.com · archived copy
- topsecretwriters.com · topsecretwriters.com · archived copy
Further reading
- Stargate Project — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Stargate collection — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
- Harold E. Puthoff — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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