Bernard Haisch

Bernard Michael Haisch is a German-born American astrophysicist who has researched solar-stellar astrophysics and stochastic electrodynamics. Haisch, with Alfonso Rueda, developed a speculative theory that the non-zero lowest energy state of the vacuum, as predicted by quantum mechanics, might provide a physical explanation for the origin of inertia, and might someday be used for spacecraft propulsion. Haisch has advocated the serious scientific study of phenomena outside the traditional scope of science and is known for his interest in UFO phenomena as well as a variety of other unorthodox topics.

Since 2002, Haisch has been involved with ManyOne Networks and related Digital Universe projects that aim to produce, among other things, a multimedia online encyclopedia. In 2006, Haisch published a popular book attempting to reconcile modern scientific belief with traditional religious belief. Haisch attributes his spiritual interests to his educational experience at the Latin School of Indianapolis (a high school affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church) and at the Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology.

Scientific career
Haisch was born in Stuttgart, Germany and earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1975 and thereafter spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Haisch has worked at the Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, California and as deputy director of the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Haisch was a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. His primary research from the mid-1970s until the late 1990s was high energy astrophysics, specifically the ultraviolet and X-ray emissions from coronae and flares on the Sun and other late-type stars.

Haisch has published more than one hundred research papers on a variety of topics, many in journals such as Nature, Science, Physical Review, Astrophysical Journal, and Annalen der Physik. Haisch also edited the Astrophysical Journal for ten years.

In the 1990s, Haisch and Alfonso Rueda developed a "quantum vacuum inertia" hypothesis responsible for mass. The inertialess "SHARP drive" in Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey was named for Andrei Sakharov, Haisch, Rueda, and Harold E. Puthoff.

Haisch was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

In addition to papers in mainstream journals and conference proceedings, Haisch also published papers in Science & Spirit magazine and the Journal of Noetic Sciences, a parapsychological journal published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics
In 1999, Haisch founded the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Palo Alto, California, an organization mainly devoted to studying the electromagnetic quantum vacuum and funded by private philanthropic money. The institute formerly employed five full-time physicists researching string theory, general relativity and stochastic electrodynamics. Haisch served as the institute's director from 1999 until 2002.

UFO Skeptic
Haisch created a website, UFO Skeptic, advocating professional scientists to investigate UFO phenomena.

Digital Universe
In 2002, Haisch became the Chief Science Officer of ManyOne Networks. Since 2004, he also served as president of the now defunct Digital Universe Foundation, which, among other things, aimed to create a peer-reviewed alternative to English Wikipedia, seeking to provide a comprehensive and reliable account of current mainstream scientific theory, evidence, and belief.