Don't Shut Up And Calculate; Read Fields & Energy and Understand

An Interview with Author and Physicist Hans G. Schantz

Dr. Hans G. Schantz, Principal Scientist at the Society for Post-Quantum Physics, is currently crowdfunding Fields & Energy Book I: Fundamentals and Origins of Electromagnetism for release this fall. His book collects material he’s published on his Fields & Energy Substack.

Hans argues that conventional thinking on electromagnetism, as currently taught and understood, is based on false premises, and that a return to the original, physically grounded formulations of the 19th century (especially those of Faraday, Maxwell, Heaviside, and Hertz) can provide a clearer, more coherent foundation for physics. Underlying this is a broader critique of modern scientific culture: that it has become overly formalistic, dismissive of alternative interpretations, and hostile to foundational questioning. Hans’s goal is to reinvigorate scientific inquiry by recovering lost insights and re-centering electromagnetic theory on physical understanding rather than abstract calculation.

Hans was kind enough to allow me to interview him. My questions are in block quotes in bold italic, while Han’s answers are in plain text.

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Hans, thanks for agreeing to an interview here at the Tree of Woe. Let's start with an introduction of who you are, for readers who haven't encountered you before.

I’m a theoretical physicist turned engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and science fiction writer.

I trained as a theoretical physicist only to discover my Ph.D., specializing in theoretical electromagnetism, didn’t really prepare me for practical work on antennas and wireless systems. With a couple additional years of study, I made the leap into designing ultrawideband (UWB) antennas, including some of the first commercial UWB antenna designs. I ultimately wrote a textbook on the subject, The Art and Science of Ultrawideband Antennas, now in a second edition.

I realized that short-wavelength, microwave frequency signals like those used in UWB wireless systems would have great difficulty precisely locating wireless tags through walls. I co-invented near-field electromagnetic ranging, a long-wavelength, low-frequency approach to indoor location. I co-founded Q-Track Corporation to commercialize the invention. Our products were able to localize tags through walls with sub-meter accuracy. Q-Track was acquired in 2019.

I’m also a science-fiction writer. My novels include an alternate-history conspiracy techno-thriller, The Hidden Truth, and The Wise of Heart, a courtroom drama of biological science versus transgenderism that brings the Scopes Trial up to date for the twenty-first century.

More recently, I’ve been working on various wireless projects for a defense contractor. Navigating the technical challenges I faced throughout my career, I earned over forty patents. Along the way, I developed new models and insights: simple, powerful ways to visualize and explain how fields and energy interact.

I founded the Society for Post Quantum Research (SPQR) to serve as a clearinghouse for my efforts to revitalize modern physics with classical ideas. I’ve been sharing excerpts from my forthcoming book, Fields & Energy, on my Fields & Energy Substack. I accept paid support, but the material is all available for free.

You are proposing a new theory of electromagnetism - an intriguing prospect for sure. But before we dive into the new theory, it might be worth stating what the current theory of electromagnetism is. (See what I did there?)

Contemporary thinking on electromagnetism is positively charged with confusion (I can do it, too). Many physicists adopt a “shut-up-and-calculate” refusal to engage seriously with models. The result is that instead of explicitly picking the best model to understand a particular problem or situation of interest, they default to thinking of electromagnetism as due to a single entity: a “photon” that simultaneously combines the mutually contradictory properties of non-localized wave and localized particle.

A Feynman diagram in space-time format showing an accelerated charge (e-) emitting a photon (ϒ).

They think of radiation as the result of a charge wiggling and popping out a photon of radiation that propagates unperturbed until it is absorbed or received elsewhere. A variety of practical examples demonstrate the inadequacies of this simplistic model which in turn reinforces the false notion that models are useless.

You’ve mentioned that when you went into engineering, you found that the theory of electromagnetism didn't have applicable answers to the questions that you encountered. Given the centrality of electromagnetism to our society, I wouldn't have expected there to be such a large “theory-practice” gap. Can you give some examples of where the current theory is silent or wrong?

Conventional electromagnetic theory works very well over a wide range of practical problems. But because conventional wisdom is stuck on the false picture of charges emitting photons, conventional thinking leads to paradoxes and contradictions.

One problem of particular interest is the problem of radiation reaction. If a charge emits a photon, the radiation reaction force on the charge causes an additional acceleration on the charge. Which means more radiation. Which causes still further acceleration. The result is an exponentially increasing acceleration and radiation any time you accelerate a charge. That is not an accurate model of how the universe works, but that’s the absurd result suggested by conventional theory.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? The question is meaningless, because it takes two hands to clap. Yet physicists persist in contemplating the similarly meaningless question of the radiation of one charge accelerating.

Instead, any model of radiation requires at least two charges. A dipole is the simplest model of a source of radiation that preserves the physics necessary to understand what’s going on. A single charge can accelerate, only if there are nearby charges, for instance on the plates of a capacitor, creating a field to cause the acceleration. Take that field into account, and you will discover that an accelerating charge absorbs energy, not emits energy. Think of an accelerating charge as a small current. The faster the charge moves, the stronger the current, and the more intense the magnetic fields around the charge. An accelerating charge is gaining magnetic field energy from the field responsible for the acceleration.

Look at the problem mechanically, and you will reach the same conclusion. An accelerating charge is moving faster and faster. Its kinetic energy is increasing at the expense of the potential energy of the applied field. However you look at it, accelerating charges absorb, not emit, energy. The radiation fields from the accelerating charge ripple out through the inflowing energy absorbed by the accelerating charge. The radiation energy ultimately comes from the fringing region of the applied field set up by the capacitor. It doesn’t directly react against the accelerating charge at all.

The single-charge reductionism of the conventional approach leads to any number of problems and misconceptions. For instance, you’ll see physicists confidently asserting that magnetic fields cannot perform work, because the Lorentz magnetic force law acts at a right angle to the direction of the other charge giving rise to the magnetic field. I’ll leave that one as an exercise to the reader.

This wrong turn needs correction.

You allude to this "wrong turn" frequently. Can you be more specific? What was the wrong turn, who made the turn, where did it take us?

Positivism, Einstein, and into confusion, respectively. I’ll elaborate.

The second book in my Fields & Energy trilogy will examine this question in further detail. You’ll find most of the content already published on my Fields & Energy Substack. In the late nineteenth century, Ernst Mach (1838–1916) proposed a way of looking at science that — with some elaboration — became a school of thought called “positivism.” Mach placed observables first and dismissed speculation about underlying processes. “Our studies can never put us in touch with reality,” was the defeatist attitude of one physicist, “we can never penetrate beyond the impressions that reality implants in our minds.”

5.1 Positivism & Physics

Mach had a profound influence on Albert Einstein (1879–1955). Einstein realized that the emerging discoveries in electrodynamics could be explained by two principles: first that the laws of physics are identical in all non-accelerating frames of reference, and second, that the speed of light (in a vacuum) is the same for all observers independent of the motion of the light source or observer. From these two principles, he derived the Lorentz transforms for which Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928) had required eleven postulates. No mechanism, no process, no æther required to explain what was going on. Just focus on the observations, Einstein insisted.

Ironically, Einstein’s views began to change as he extended his thinking to accelerating bodies in the theory of General Relativity. “Spacetime tells matter how to move,” explained John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008). “Matter tells spacetime how to curve.” That free space could have this mysterious property of spacetime curvature smacked of an æther, and Einstein acknowledged as much in a 1920 lecture.

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) reported that — a few years later — Einstein objected that Heisenberg’s formulation of quantum mechanics left no room for the concept of an “electron path.” Heisenberg, well-versed in Einstein’s writings on relativity, responded by quoting Einstein himself, arguing that since such a path can never be directly observed, there was no justification for including it in the theory. Einstein had, after all, employed similar reasoning in developing special relativity. To Heisenberg’s surprise, Einstein replied, “Perhaps I did use such a philosophy earlier, and also wrote it, but it is nonsense all the same.”

Nathan Rosen (1909–1995) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955) pose next to the headline of an April 18, 1935 New York Times story.

Einstein insisted “God did not play dice with the universe” and argued, along with co-authors Boris Podolsky (1896–1966) and Nathan Rosen (1909–1995) in the “EPR Paper,” dubbed that after the authors’ initials, that quantum mechanics was incomplete.

Sadly, Einstein’s thinking was sidelined in favor of the Copenhagen Interpretation, championed by Niels Bohr (1885–1962) (and generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation). Physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019) declared that “Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of theorists….”

Is that still true? Not being a professional scientist, I can’t claim to have my “finger on the pulse” of the scientific community. Are present-day scientists still largely captured by Niels Bohr’s positivist approach?

Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation remains the most favored explanation in a recent study, although a wide range of alternatives are entertained.

You’ll note the distribution of opinions on quantum mechanics, above. Everyone knows there are problems. It’s all about choosing the least bad answer, and there are many from which to choose. Notice how about half those who subscribe to a particular interpretation are not confident about it.

Ironic, perhaps, that a philosophy called “positivism” has ultimately led scientists to be so cautious about what they posit. But that’s a discussion for a different day. With this groundwork laid, let’s talk about what matters. Tell us about your new theory!

In my theory, electromagnetism is due to two things: non-local fields that behave like waves, and local energy that – in the quantum limit – behaves like particles. Fields propagate like waves. Energy flows along specific paths and behaves like particles in the quantum limit.

Light is not just waves or fields. Light is not just particles or energy, and light is definitely not the weird, counterintuitive “particle” with simultaneous contradictory wave-like properties of conventional quantum mechanics.

Light is not one thing. It is two distinct yet complementary phenomena: non-local distributed fields that guide the local flow of energy. My theory arises from classical electrodynamics and provides a classical foundation for a pilot-wave-like approach to quantum mechanics.

Since one of your criticisms of current theory is its inapplicability to engineering, can you talk a bit about the engineering implications of your theory? For instance, the conventional theory says “X is possible and Y is impossible” while field & energy theory says “no, X is impossible, but Y is totally possible.”

Excellent question. Here’s one very specific example of a practical engineering application that’s inconceivable or paradoxical by conventional thinking. Here’s one way to make a near-field electromagnetic location and positioning system.

Suppose we arrange two small magnetic loops or dipoles at right angles to one another, and feed them in quadrature, in other words, with a ninety-degree phase difference. The result is a transmitter that comprises a virtual dipole spinning at the same frequency as the radiation. The fields propagate radially outward from the stacked dipoles at the origin, however the energy curves under the influence of the progressive spiral phase of the radially propagating fields. The result is that the energy ends up traveling offset by about a third of a wavelength (λ/π) from the actual propagation of the fields.

Two orthogonal loop antennas (left). The spiral energy flow is offset by (λ/π) from a direct radial path (right).

That’s right. If you use direction-finding or angle-of-arrival wireless systems, you will discover the energy comes from a direction offset from the actual source by about a third of a wavelength. This is inconsistent with conventional thinking in which photons are assumed to radiate directly, radially outward from a source. Change the phasing of the loops and you can make the fields spin either clockwise or counter-clockwise. The energy you detect in the far-field region appears to come on a trajectory offset on one side or the other from the true origin. This can be a significant distance at low-frequencies and long-wavelengths.

These phase relations are the basis of a guiding and orientation tracking system developed by Army scientist Heinrich P. Kalmus (1906–1982)¹, ², ³. My colleagues and I rediscovered this effect and successfully applied it to the problem of implementing a high-precision, low-frequency, near-field indoor location system.⁴ I’ve included references at the end for the readers who wish to pursue this further to the source material.

Fields guide energy. Here once again, fields go one way. They propagate radially outward. Energy goes another way. It curves as it propagates, offset by λ/π from a purely radial trajectory. This directly contradicts conventional thinking in which once a photon is radiated it propagates on a straight radial trajectory without perturbation.

That’s a very grounded example. Can you give one that’s more speculative. As a science-fiction writer and game designer, I'd love it if you could touch on the implications for speculative fiction. If your theory is right, what does it open up in terms of hard sci fi ? What does it shut down?

What does it shut down? The Multiverse. A pilot-wave-like theory casts doubt on the multiverse, especially in the context of the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics, because it provides an alternative explanation for quantum phenomena that does not require branching universes or multiple realities to make sense of quantum probabilities.

If it’s any consolation, though, I fully intend to continue using the Multiverse in my storytelling anyway. A multiverse is a powerful storytelling technique because it allows creators to explore alternative realities, what-if scenarios, and multiple versions of characters or events without violating the internal logic of a story world.

The premise of my novella, Split Decision, also offered in my crowd fund campaign, is that the hero is thrust into a no-win solution and deliberately shreds the timeline. He forces himself to pursue every possible outcome in order to find a solution.

As for what new opportunities my Fields & Energy theory opens up, I’m still working on that. Stay tuned!

Well, staying tuning is not as easy as it might be, you know. You’ve been, to put it kindly, “gatekept”. You haven't been able to publish your papers in peer-reviewed journals or even some open-access journals. Even Kickstarter won't approve your campaigns. Yet we see every day absolutely absurd “scientific” papers getting published. Why are you being gatekept? In your science fiction series you allude to a conspiracy...

Ironically, ten years ago when I wrote my first novel, The Hidden Truth, I included a shadowy conspiracy I dubbed the “Civic Circle” which I imagined pulling the strings of all those other conspiracies you may have heard about. I set the story in an alternate timeline, parallel to ours. I was concerned that the notion of an evil cabal working behind the scenes to secure power and control at the expense of the welfare of the rest of humanity might be a bit too far-fetched for some readers’ suspension of disbelief.

I no longer have those concerns.

One of the most interesting aspects of the continuing revelations of the Epstein Affair is the extent to which Epstein in particular and intelligence agencies in general have been infiltrating and influencing scientific investigation and discovery. The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, appears to have been particularly active in this area. Sexual blackmail is only the tip of a fetid iceberg that also includes influence and control of science. Dr. Naomi Wood’s article is a good take-off point to look into that further.

"The Network" in the Worlds of the Elites

I don’t think there’s any deliberate or active effort to silence my work in particular. It’s just very difficult for an outsider to make an impression in the face of an entrenched establishment. In Fields & Energy, I share the story of John Herapath (1790–1868), and John James Waterston (1811–1883). Decades before James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) pioneered the kinetic theory of gases, Herapath (in 1820) and Waterston (in 1845) independently submitted papers on the kinetic theory of gases to the Royal Society.

John Herapath (1790–1868), left, and John James Waterston (1811–1883), right.

In each case, their mostly correct approach was summarily rejected. Wikipedia justifies this, saying the papers “failed peer review.” It would be more correct to say that peer review failed those papers and their authors.

At one time, not so long ago, I was a senior member of the IEEE, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. I peer-reviewed dozens of papers for other researchers over the years. I did so (without compensation) in the expectation that I could get the benefit of my peers’ feedback when I wished to submit a paper of my own. But when I submitted my original paper to the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, the editor summarily rejected it without review. I tried a few other journals with similar results. Finally, Professor Raj Mittra (1932– ) accepted my paper for publication in a regrettably obscure online journal he edited at e-fermat.org. ArXiv allowed me to share my first paper, but when I came back to post a follow-on, ArXiv rejected it. First I was told that only “real” scientists with a publication record elsewhere were allowed to contribute. When I pointed out I satisfied that criterion, I was told that my paper “wasn’t a good fit,” and I should try to post my paper elsewhere.

I ultimately submitted an updated version of that paper, “Energy velocity and reactive fields,” which was accepted by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, an eminently respectable peer-reviewed journal.

But what a massive pain in the butt to get a paper published! I spent more time arguing with editors and peer-reviewers than I did writing the paper in the first place, and it took years to get my work published. While sometimes I have received helpful feedback from peer reviewers, the process provides an extremely low return for the effort required.

“Peer-reviewed science” has become a fundamental sacrament of the modern-day cult of scientism. It’s important to step back and realize what a recent invention peer-review is. Throughout his entire career, for instance, Einstein was peer reviewed only once, and he was so upset that the editor sent his paper for an outside review that Einstein withdrew the paper and never published in that journal again!

Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell, created Pergamon Press, a publisher of scientific journals with the specific purpose of turning scientific knowledge into profit. The business model was (and remains) stunning in its hubris. Authors pay money to Maxwell and his present-day successors, “page fees,” to cover the cost of publication. Then universities and libraries pay hefty subscription fees for the journals. Pergamon proliferated a wide range of new journals to which researchers had to subscribe to stay caught up with the work in their areas. In the old days, top journals had brilliant and well-read editors who could stay on top of a particular field, provide feedback, and make informed publication decisions. Such geniuses are few and far between. So, to staff the growing catalog of journals, Maxwell’s editors made a practice of sending papers out to a handful of reviewers who would review the papers for free and advise the editors on the papers’ merit. Thus did peer-review science become a touchstone of modern culture.

In addition to allowing intelligence agencies to exercise significant control over scientific progress, peer review has the added benefit - from their perspective - of enforcing conformity and slowing down the pace of potentially disruptive innovation.

Herodotus praised Egyptian civilization for its antiquity and order but also noted its rigidity and conservatism. In contrast, he admired the Greek city-states for their diversity, competition, and innovation, particularly in political and intellectual life. Egypt fostered stasis. Greece sparked an unprecedented burst of innovation whose consequences are still being felt today.

In Lost World, Michael Crichton vividly explained the dangers of conformity.

I think cyberspace means the end of our species... it means the end of innovation... This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every one knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benneton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity.

To reiterate, I don’t think the challenges I’ve faced are the result of a deliberate gatekeeping campaign aimed at me, but rather, a systemic indifference to innovation, possibly deliberately engineered through the counter-productive peer-review system.

I saw all this, and I decided to share my results by writing my own book and assembling my own team of peer reviewers in a private channel on Telegram (Applications still being accepted. DM me if you’d like to join the team). I now have nearly three thousand subscribers following my updates on Substack, about a third of whom open the emails when I send an update. I am now interacting and sharing my ideas with a far far larger audience than I was ever able to obtain following the traditional path of “peer-reviewed” publications and professional conferences.

And so, here we are.

I was pleased to see that fundmycomic.com has approved your crowdfunding campaign. Who is your campaign targeting, and what can they expect to get when they back you? Is this something an autodidactic layperson can enjoy or is it aimed at professional engineers and scientists? Could a bright high schooler understand it, or does it require college knowledge?

Let me start with a tip of the hat to FundMyComic.com. They came to my rescue after I was cancelled by Kickstarter. Twice. If you have a controversial project you’d like funded, they have your back.

The audience I’m targeting follows from the incident that inspired me to write Fields & Energy in the first place. One evening about seven years ago, I explained my frustrations getting my ideas taken seriously to some friends, science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright, and his similarly talented wife, L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright. They asked me what my idea was. I explained it. They got it. And the lightbulb turned on for me.

My problem wasn’t that I had a new theory too complicated to explain to the typical physicist or engineer. If intelligent well-read people without deep formal training in science and engineering grasp it so easily, any beginning science or engineering student or interested layperson should have no difficulty. The problem was that conventional wisdom is too deeply engrained in the minds of most physicists or engineers for them to be able to step back and consider a novel perspective. Conventional wisdom works so well that it becomes difficult for practitioners immersed within its framework to step back and question their fundamental premises. There’s a reason Planck said that “A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

My target readers are curious students and intelligent laypersons who share my passion for understanding what electromagnetism is and how it works. I also hope to reach out to the professional engineers and scientists who not only realize there’s something wrong with the status quo, but also are willing to consider an alternative with an open mind.

Thanks so much, Hans! We will now contemplate fields and energy on the Tree of Woe.

Is woe one of the fundamental forces of the universe?

Absolutely.

Genesis shares the story of how Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. That’s a worthy tale of woe. Yet years later when famine came, Joseph had risen to a high position under Pharoah, and was able to feed his brothers and their families. “You meant evil against me,” he explained to them, “but God meant it for good.”

As I look back on my many setbacks and disappointments over my professional career, I realize that in most cases, they were bullets dodged. How miserable I would have been if I’d secured a professorship in today’s academia, under constant pressure to publish or perish and to toe the line on conventional thinking lest I be fired.

If I’d landed that comfortable community college teaching job, would I have been content to teach basic physics for the rest of my life instead of engineering and enabling new innovations?

Would I have learned and accomplished as much professionally if I’d scored a quick and easy payday from my entrepreneurial experience instead of remaining lean and hungry and creating as many clever inventions and innovative ideas as possible to keep the company running?

I think not. I’ll leave you and your readers with a final thought:

Experience is the crucible within which providence turns woe into wisdom.

That’s all for this week’s installment. Be sure to sign up for the Aetherczar’s Fields & Energy Substack, if you haven’t already. You can subscribe at https://aetherczar.substack.com/. More importantly, be sure to back Fields & Energy to get a copy of Hans book.

1. Kalmus, Henry P., “A New Guiding and Tracking System,” TR-974, Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories, US Army, March 1962, pp. 7-10.

2. Kalmus, H. P., “Direction Indicator,” U.S. Patent 3,121,228, Feb. 11, 1964.

3. Kalmus, Henry P., “A New Guiding and Tracking System,” IRE Transactions on Aerospace and Navigational Electronics, 20 September, 1961, pp. 7-10.

4. Schantz, Hans G., Andrew Compston, Robert DePierre, James Matthew Barron, “Multiple phase state near-field electromagnetic system and method for communication and location,” U.S. Patent 8,253,626, August 28, 2012.