G V Nikolaev
G. V. Nikolaev | |
|---|---|
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| Born | July 3, 1935 Kagan, Bukhara Region, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union |
| Died | December 30, 2008 (aged 73) Tomsk, Russia |
| Residence | Russia |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Alma mater | Tomsk Polytechnic Institute |
| Known for | Ether, Electrodynamics, scalar (longitudinal) magnetic field |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, Electrodynamics |
| Institutions | Tomsk Polytechnic Institute; Scientific-Technical Center for Non-Traditional Electrodynamics |
Gennady Vasilievich Nikolaev (Russian: Геннадий Васильевич Николаев; July 3, 1935 – December 30, 2008) was a Soviet and Russian physicist from Tomsk known for his work in non-traditional electrodynamics. He is best known for proposing the existence of a second, "scalar" or longitudinal, magnetic field and for his associated critiques of the conventional formulation of Maxwell's equations and the theory of relativity.
Biography
Nikolaev was born on July 3, 1935, in the town of Kagan in the Bukhara Region of the Uzbek SSR. From 1960 to 1967 he studied at Tomsk State University and the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, graduating from the Faculty of Physics and Technology with a specialization in "Isotope Separation and Power Installations" and qualifying as an engineer-physicist.
From 1967 to 1977 Nikolaev worked as an engineer and senior engineer at the Research Institute of Nuclear Physics attached to the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, and was a member of the Tomsk group for the study of anomalous phenomena. He later held research positions at the High Voltage Research Institute and, from 1986, served as a senior researcher at the "Natural-Technogenic Electromagnetic Systems" laboratory of the institute. For a period around 1990–1991 he was deputy director of the Siberian Research Center for Anomalous Phenomena. In 1991 he became the general director of the Scientific-Technical Center for Non-Traditional Electrodynamics, a position he held until his death.
Nikolaev wrote three dissertations for which he received positive reviews, but because their subject matter centered on criticism of the theory of relativity they were not accepted for defense at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, and he did not obtain a formal advanced degree through them. He died in Tomsk on December 30, 2008.
Work
Nikolaev's central claim was that the classical description of the magnetic field is incomplete. In addition to the ordinary vector magnetic field, he proposed a second component, which he termed the scalar (or longitudinal) magnetic field. In the 1970s he described this component theoretically, and in the 1980s he reported experiments intended to demonstrate longitudinal magnetic interactions along the direction of an electric current.
A frequently cited demonstration attributed to Nikolaev involved dividing a toroidal magnet and reversing one half by 180 degrees so that the ordinary vector fields cancel in the gap between the halves while, according to his interpretation, the scalar field reaches a maximum. He argued that a scalar magnetic field, unlike an ordinary field, does not interact with conventional ferromagnetic materials and therefore requires special methods to detect.
In his analysis, Nikolaev addressed what he regarded as deficiencies of Maxwell's equations, particularly concerning the physical role of the magnetic vector potential and the displacement current, and connected these questions to a broader program of "ether" electrodynamics and a critique of relativity. His ideas, which fall outside mainstream physics, were taken up by some researchers in the unconventional-energy community; the Austrian physicist Stefan Marinov reproduced experiments associated with Nikolaev's work.
Over his career Nikolaev authored several monographs and articles on electrodynamics and the properties of moving charged particles. His publications include Modern Electrodynamics and Reasons for Its Paradoxical Nature (1986), Non-contradictory Electrodynamics: Theories, Experiments, Paradoxes (Tomsk State University, 1997), works issued under the title Secrets of Electromagnetism (2001–2004), and Electrodynamics of the Physical Vacuum: New Concepts of the Physical World (Tomsk, 2004). He filed 13 invention applications and received 9 author's certificates.