National Lab Day Has STEM Star in Marshall Barnes Reported by i-Newswire.com on Friday, 26 November 2010 (2 days ago)

One year after the Obama White House announced National Lab Day would be part of the President's inaugural Educate to Innovate initiative, research and development engineer Marshall Barnes has emerged as its brightest and most innovative component. "Today at the White House, President Obama launched the "Educate to Innovate" campaign, a nationwide effort to help reach the administration's goal of moving American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade. President Obama announced a series of partnerships involving leading companies, universities, foundations, non-profits, and organizations representing millions of scientists, engineers and teachers that will motivate and inspire young people across the country to excel in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)". That's the way the White House announcement read, little more than one year ago, and one major component of that initiative was National Lab Day, the online matching project between teachers and STEM professionals created in 2008 by Jack Hidary, entrepreneur and founder of the Jack Hidary Foundation. Being included in Educate to Innovate has meant considerable more media coverage for Hidary and National Lab Day, and out of National Lab Day's first year under Educate to Innovate has emerged a bona fide STEM star - one Marshall Barnes, R&D Eng. Marshall Barnes rose to the top of the heap of scientists, engineers, and tinkerers that National Lab Day tries to attract to match with the STEM school projects that request help on the organization's web site, www.nationallabday.org, by helping with more projects than anyone else. He was officially recognized on the site as the Top Scientist until the term "scientist" was changed to the more specific term, "STEM Professional". As a research and development engineer, Marshall works in the advanced concept area which for him means a unique region where temporal mechanics, electromagnetic field theory, special and general relativity, electronics, video, audio, consciousness and the practical application of the extreme implications of quantum theory, meet. And he is very good at it, not only producing things such as radical approaches to practical invisibility technologies (which he demonstrated to the delight of parents and children alike at the Washington D.C. USA Science and Engineering Festival in October), arguing for the existence of time against PhDs like Julian Barbour, exposing mistakes in research as in the case of the David Eagleman study in duration dilation as elongated memory, and showing a link between gravity and electromagnetism, but explaining and involving high school students with his work as well. Marshall isn't on the cutting edge of STEM, he is the cutting edge and the awards and recognitions that some of his students have received through his own SuperScience for High School Physics project (which predates National Lab Day by three years), prove it. It's one thing for a student to learn some new idea in a class, but far different for a student to get a chance to demonstrate an error that Stephen Hawking has made and get a proclamation from their city council or state government recognizing it. That's a distinction that can go on a college application or resume that could make a difference in getting into the school of one's choice or a job, as it indicates creative thinking skills which are indicative of the requirements for innovation, which is the whole point of the White House Educate to Innovate initiative. Marshall is now expanding this approach, which he calls the Oppenheimer Strain - the reason why PhD scientists can make errors that go unnoticed until high school students or younger, get a chance at them. Oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb who said that "there are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago..." Marshall recently announced that he will turn over the theory of J.R. Gott, a Princeton PhD physicist, of a self-creating universe, to a high school to see if their physics students can see the mistake that Marshall confronted Gott with on a national radio program - a mistake which Gott failed to reconcile, and Marshall is doing so with a new flashy video campaign. He plans more follow-ups, as well. Now beginning his second year as a National Lab Day STEM pro, Marshall is also preparing a series of National Lab Day PSAs which will be distributed to cable, low power stations and the web, to encourage more involvement by other STEM professionals across the country in National Lab Day activities. His goal is to eventually get 100% of National Lab Day projects completed and to increase the involvement in National Lab Day by 100% of the nation's public, private and parochial schools. He will use his connections in both the science community, and entertainment worlds, to accomplish this goal. By the time school starts in 2011, his campaigns will be under way nationwide.

J.R. Gott Stumped by Marshall Barnes on Coast To Coast AM - Leads to Educational Opportunity     Reported by i-Newswire.com on Tuesday, 16 November 2010 (on November 16, 2010)

The physicist J.R. Gott was unable to answer a challenge from noted R&D engineer and conceptual theorist Marshall Barnes, who pointed out a flaw in the physicist's idea of a universe "that is its own mother". A classroom project will result in 2011 Early yesterday morning on Coast To Coast AM, J.R. Gott had a critical flaw, that raises a number of other issues with his model of the universe "being its own mother", pointed out to him for which he was unable to respond any other way than reiterating the same flawed idea. The caller was none other than internationally noted research and development engineer Marshall Barnes, who has become well known for his work in the advanced concept research and development area, lecturing and being the biggest challenger to Stephen Hawking, writing often about mistakes that the famed physicist has made which even high school students have seen when he has given them the chance. On Coast To Coast AM, Marshall was plain and deliberate, pointing out how Gott, and associate Li-Xin Li's proposal of an inflationary universe that creates itself is wrong. The model that Gott was promoting has various branches diverge and create baby universes - and one of the branches circles back around to become the trunk where it all began. Although Gott said his idea shows how the universe is "its own mother", Marshall deftly pointed out why this doesn't work. "At the moment before the branch circles back, you place a video camera," the R&D engineer stated confidently, "and you can show on that video tape that there wasn't anything back there before you have this curvature begin. So you have a beginning to the universe without it creating itself." Gott's reply was simply to ignore the point and reiterate the idea of the universe with a little time loop at the very beginning. Based on this apparent inability of Gott to understand the ramifications of his own theory, Marshall plans on writing a paper and creating a hands-on experiment for a high school class to test Gott's model, which will reveal all of its inherent flaws, and then release the video of the student's activities on the internet as part of his own educational outreach. Marshall believes that this will all happen in early 2011 and will release an announcement once everything is in place. He states at this point he hasn't decided which school will get the project.