Sarfatti's slow-light Tic Tac theory

Sarfatti's slow-light Tic Tac theory

Date	20 March 2020
Topics	Propulsion & physics (topic)
People	Jack Sarfatti, Harold Puthoff
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 196
Year	2020 in UFO history
Timeline	2020 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	8

Sarfatti's slow-light Tic Tac theory is the physicist Jack Sarfatti's explanation for the "Tic Tac" object reported by U.S. Navy aviators near the USS Nimitz in 2004. In March 2020 he argued that the object's hull was made of a metamaterial that slows light to a crawl inside it. Pumped with the right electromagnetic energy, he said, such a hull "squeezes the space in front of it and stretches the space behind", producing a low-power "warp drive".^[7] He added that the craft came from "Earth humans" of the future travelling back in time.^[7] In his own summary, the Tic Tac showed "evidence of extremely low power warp drive with time-travel-to-past capability in a meta-material fuselage controlled by a conscious AI post-quantum computer".^[2] The theory has no experimental support. The researcher Keith Basterfield traced Sarfatti's ideas back to strange telephone calls he said he received as a boy in 1952–53, which Jacques Vallée had recorded in his journals.^[2] See Nimitz "Tic Tac" encounter.

The theory

• Slow light. According to Michael Shellenberger's 2024 timeline for Congress, Sarfatti stated on 20 March 2020 that a metamaterial used by the Tic Tac allowed the craft to slow down the speed of light.^[7] When a certain type of electromagnetic energy is sent into the material, he said, it creates a resonance that "squeezes the space in front of it and stretches the space behind".^[7]
• Warp drive. In Sarfatti's view this amounts to a "low energy low speed warp drive". He set out the idea in a 2020 book, Sarfatti Lectures in Physics Volume One: The Principles of Metric Engineering Low Energy Low Speed Warp Drive.^[2] The term "metric engineering" refers to deliberately reshaping spacetime. See Metamaterial.
• Time travel. Sarfatti claimed the Tic Tac metamaterial came from "Earth humans" from the future, who travel back in time to create "past events".^[7] These events in turn form a "Novikov loop", a self-consistent causal loop in which the origin of the event cannot be identified.^[7]
• A conscious computer. He described the craft as controlled by "a conscious AI post-quantum computer".^[2]
• Press coverage. The earlier version of this article said Sarfatti made the claim on The Hidden Truth Show. A March 2020 report republished by Exo News carried the headline "Top physicist claims Nimitz UFO 'time travelled' to reach 19,000mph". That page is no longer available, so these details could not be checked here.^[1]

Jack Sarfatti

• Education. According to his LinkedIn profile, as summarised by Basterfield, Sarfatti was born on 14 September 1939.^[2]
  • He earned a BA in physics at Cornell University (1956–60) and an MS in physics at the University of California, San Diego (1965–68).^[2]
  • He completed a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics at the University of California, Riverside (1968–69).^[2]
• Career. His listed career includes:^[2]
  • assistant professor of physics at San Diego State from 1967 to 1973;
  • teaching mathematics to sailors and marines at sea in the Navy's PACE program from 1971 to 1987;
  • science adviser to the Institute for Contemporary Studies from 1980 to 1986, where he says he helped shape the Strategic Defense Initiative "behind the scenes" for Paul Nitze, Caspar Weinberger and the President;
  • chief executive of the Sarfatti Group / Internet Science Education Project from 1996.
• Publications. His papers include work on unifying gravity with the strong force (1975), "The Physical Roots of Consciousness" (1975), a 1986 article on whether the electroweak force could be used to neutralise nuclear weapons, and later talks on dark energy and "retro-causal" gravity.^[2] In 1974 he appeared in conversation with the physicist Fred Alan Wolf in the book Space Time and Beyond.^[2] His blog, Destiny Matrix, ranges over quantum physics and politics.^[3]
• Other UFO links. In 2006, according to Shellenberger, Sarfatti said a debate with Hal Puthoff over the physics of vacuum and zero-point energy had been arranged. He accused Puthoff of raising a "red herring" and engaging in "misdirection".^[8]

Where the ideas came from

• Vallée's 1982 entry. In his journal for 27 July 1982 (Forbidden Science volume three, pp. 98–99), Vallée described running into Sarfatti at Caffe Trieste in San Francisco's North Beach.^[2]
  • Vallée wrote that Sarfatti's ideas were "full of color, short on proofs". He said Sarfatti claimed support from people close to Reagan, Edwin Meese and Caspar Weinberger and hinted at closeness to Bechtel.^[2][7]
  • "It is impossible to separate the real from the imaginary in all this," Vallée wrote, but "it is undeniable that he was a child prodigy."^[2]
• The phone calls. Vallée recorded Sarfatti's story that in 1953, aged 15, he was reading a mathematics book on switching functions when he received a call from "a mechanical voice". It put him into a "quasi hypnotic state".^[2]
  • Sarfatti remembered one call, but his mother said there was a series of them.^[2]
  • The calls, he said, "changed his life" and led him to theorise about vacuum energy and faster-than-light propulsion.^[2]
• Sarfatti's own versions. In a 2006 FATE magazine article by Preston Dennett, Sarfatti said the calls came in 1952 and 1953, when he was 12 or 13.^[2]
  • A metallic voice said it was a computer aboard a flying saucer and asked whether he was willing to be taught. He said yes.^[2]
  • In another account he said the voice called itself a "conscious computer onboard a spacecraft", possibly from the future. It told him he had been chosen as one of "400 young receptive minds" and would meet the others in twenty years.^[2]
  • It told him to go out on the fire escape to be picked up. He and some friends waited, but no ship came.^[2]
  • At first he thought it was a practical joke. He later said he had forgotten most of the episode, which his mother remembered as lasting several weeks.^[2]
• Echoes in 1997. In a 22 September 1997 journal entry about the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), Vallée quoted Sarfatti telling its members: "You chaps are obviously part of the Others predicted to me in 1952 by a sort of conscious computer and spacecraft from the future that we will now attempt to build."^[2]
• The link to the Tic Tac. Basterfield's post was titled "Jack Sarfatti – his ideas about the Tic Tac came from 'a phone call from an alien'". It drew a line from the boyhood calls, which spoke of a conscious computer and a spacecraft from the future, to Sarfatti's later picture of the Tic Tac as a time-travelling craft run by a conscious AI.^[2]

Reception

• No support. None of the sources read here reports experimental or observational support for a slow-light metamaterial drive or for time travel.^[2][7] The earlier version of this article added that the Pentagon has not identified the Tic Tac, which is not addressed in the sources read here, and that Sarfatti's ideas have not appeared in mainstream physics journals as an explanation for UFOs. That fits the sources read here, though they do not address it directly.
• Vallée's judgement. Vallée, who met Sarfatti over many years, praised his intelligence. He also found it impossible to tell what was real in his stories.^[2]
• Shellenberger. Shellenberger included the theory in his 2024 timeline. He noted Sarfatti's claimed closeness to Bechtel and to Weinberger's circle, and Vallée's description of him as a child prodigy.^[7]

People and topics

• Jack Sarfatti — Physicist known for unconventional theories about UFO propulsion.
• Nimitz Tic Tac encounter — The November 2004 encounter between Navy pilots and a white Tic Tac-shaped object off California.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
• Harold Puthoff — Physicist who co-founded the SRI remote-viewing research and later worked on AAWSAP and To The Stars Academy.

On the Timeline

• Paul Murad's energy device (29 February 2020) — A retired Pentagon analyst says a company helped him build an electromagnetic energy device.
• Atomic Energy Commission UFO materials claim (29 April 2020) — A journalist's source says the Atomic Energy Commission had UAP materials as early as 1947.

See every 2020 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References