Physicist Harry Ringermacher believes the universe oscillates as if breathing — July 27, 2017

 

 

 

 

Physicist Harry Ringermacher has retired from a career as an industrial research physicist, with many patents and medals to his credit, and is now devoting himself to his lifelong interest in special and general relativity and cosmology.

He will speak on Friday, July 28, at a Dudley Observatory program at 8 p.m. at the Octagon Barn at 588 Middle Rd. in Knox about the Aug. 21 solar eclipse. Free glasses to safely view the eclipse will be given out. This is the first time since 1918 that a full solar eclipse will be visible from parts of the continental United States as the moon comes between the sun and the Earth.

While three-quarters of the sun will be obscured in the Capital Region, Ringermacher will travel south so as to be plunged in darkness on Aug. 21 — the temperature will drop and birds will cease singing, he said. Scientists will look for the bending of starlight around the sun.

Ringermacher believes that the universe is reverberating, oscillating as if breathing. He brought a prop to the Enterprise podcast — a pure quartz crystal pyramid made by a glassblower he met on the Rhine — and sounded the chime to make his point about the oscillation of sound.

He sees evidence of dark matter in the bending of light, which he says was predicted in 1950 by Albert Einstein. Dark matter, Ringermacher says, holds galaxies together.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor

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