Name Gerald Feinberg | Role Physicist | |
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Books Life Beyond Earth: The Intelligent Earthling's Guide to Life in the Universe Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada | ||
"You don't have to be practicing Jew to be religious."
Gerald Feinberg (27 May 1933, New York City – 21 April 1992, New York City) was a Columbia University physicist, futurist and populist author. He spent a year as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and two years at the Brookhaven Laboratories.
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Research
He coined the term tachyon for hypothetical faster-than-light particles and analysed their quantum field properties, predicted the existence of the muon neutrino and advocated cryonics as a public service. He was a member of the Foresight Institute's advisory panel.
Parapsychology
Feinberg wrote a foreword to Edgar Mitchell's book Psychic Explorations (1974) in which he endorsed psychic phenomena. His concept of a tachyon, a theoretical particle that travels faster than the speed of light has been advocated by some parapsychologists who claim that it could explain precognition or psychokinesis. However, there is no scientific evidence tachyon particles exist and such paranormal claims have been described as pseudoscientific.
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