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Sir Charles Shults III
Sir Charles William Shults III (born 24 February 1958) is an American scientist, author, and inventor. His significant work includes development of software and hardware systems for aerospace and defense, research in cold fusion, artificial intelligence and robotics, innovative designs for windmills and solar energy systems, and a number of technical articles and books. He is an outspoken supporter of the idea that retrieving extraterrestrial samples to our planet could pose a great biological hazard to life on Earth. This is one of the themes in his book "A Fossil Hunter's Guide to Mars" which was featured in a television news broadcast about life on Mars. The news spot was aired by a South Carolina television station.

He is a laureate of the Institute of Balquhain and received the Ying Genius Award in 2000 for work he performed in cold nuclear fusion. He was knighted by a landed Scottish Baron (the Baron of Balquhain in 2000 and continues research in energy and off-planet resource development.

Mars fossils
Shults was always interested in education and taught robotics for years starting when he worked with the Orlando Science Center. He would often give week-long courses in such subjects as model rocketry, physics, electronics, and other subjects. He would put together simple demonstrations using common items that illustrated physics and optics principles to audiences that often included members of the mayor's staff, celebrities and actors, and middle school students. Even after leaving OSC he continued to work towards educational outlets and liked to combine science with entertaining backdrops that would capture the imagination.

One such project was a diorama that included a robot rover similar to the MER that NASA had launched to Mars. The concept was to allow school groups to log in and run simulated missions over the Internet using actual hardware in a stage setting that duplicated the look and feel of Mars. This drove Shults to analyze in great detail the images and data coming back from the Mars mission to provide the most realistic experience as possible. In early 2004 while studying images from Spirit and Opportunity, Shults found what he felt were signs of fossilized organisms and present-day water flow.

Unable to get any response from NASA about his findings, Shults published detailed analyses and links to the raw images on the NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratories site. This soon drew the attention of NASA and JPL researchers and his web site was flooded with hits from those and other organizations. While he could not get any response from NASA about the findings, he was contacted by Coast to Coast AM radio and decided to appear to make his case on the air. While the show is traditionally about paranormal subjects, they also periodically have physicists, scientists, astronauts, and other high-profile guests and provided a broad audience base to appeal to. The response was actually quite positive but also drew a great deal of criticism. Nevertheless the experience allowed Shults to see what sort of support and objections were present and helped him to shape his responses and refine his presentation.

While many researchers argue that Viking found no organic matter in the Martian soil back in 1976 due to peroxides destroying organic molecules, Shults contends that soil analysis proves that peroxide cannot be present due to the large percentage of iron sulfate which would explode on contact with peroxides. The original instrument that was to detect organic compounds, the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer carried by both Viking landers, is essentially blind to organic matter equivalent to less than a million cells per gram, making its lack of detection inconsequential. Part of the reason is that there appears to be ten times as much moisture present in Martian soil as was expected.

The crucial part of the argument is that organic matter is raining down on all the planets from space at all times, and therefore a detectable amount should be present in the soil. The lack of detection, he states, is due to the poor performance of the GCMS and not an actual lack of organic molecules. While peroxides would have destroyed organic matter, he argues that the presence of iron sulfate salts proves that peroxide cannot be responsible and that therefore, organic matter should be present and detectable today. Other instruments such as the Pyrolytic Release Experiment and the Labeled Release Experiment did show signs of organic matter but this information was downplayed by NASA.

A humorous side of the controversy did emerge. Using images of Mars fossils, Shults taught his children what to look for and then took them fossil hunting in the field. They recognized their targets immediately and came home with bags of ancient shells, crinoid segments, and sand dollars.

In 2011 a WLTX news segment aired in South Carolina about his findings of marine fossils on Mars and Charles Bolden, the Chief Administrator of NASA, was questioned directly. He stated that he really couldn't say if Shults' findings were correct, but when Dr. Phil Christensen of NASA was asked, he stated "It's not out of the question." Christensen's statement about NASA's intention to retrieve samples from Mars and bring them to Earth is Shults' major concern. Organisms from Mars that might exist in such a sample could provide an incredibly dangerous threat to life on Earth. Terrestrial organisms would most likely have no immune response to such organisms. Shults states that even if Martian organisms were not infectious, there is the possibility that they might take hold in our seas and displace the basis of the food chain, thus destroying a large portion of the biosphere.

A Fossil Hunter's Guide to Mars
Based on years of research that Shults performed and information released from NASA through two FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) lawsuits, he wrote a book entitled "A Fossil Hunter's Guide to Mars". Many of the images from the Mars Explorations Rovers show what he claims is evidence of liquid water and marine fossils on the planet's surface. After compiling a detailed description of the history, chemistry, and geology of Mars, as well as hundreds of images (many in color and stereo), he wrote the book to attempt to present his findings to a much larger audience than he could reach otherwise.

His intent was to create a heavily-referenced volume that was linked to the original data from NASA and JPL so that readers could easily verify that the images had not been tampered with. Likewise all other data had to be easily verified and the sources trusted, due to the controversial nature of the material. Mars, he contends, was much more habitable that generally accepted in its past. Even though conditions on the planet are inhospitable today, organisms that have had millions of years to adapt to the slowly eroding biosphere would have found ways to survive. Strategies could include the ability to dry out and remain in stasis for hundred of years or more when brief periods of moisture and increased air pressure would return. A similar strategy is used by brine shrimp and tardigrades on Earth.

One of the most important points, in his opinion, is that foreign organisms that have adapted to near-vacuum, ultra-saline conditions where extreme cold would be present for long durations could prove to be formidable enemies if they were to escape into the Earth's biosphere. Our difficulty with many terrestrial organisms might be trivial compared to such tough organisms that might exist in Martian samples brought back to Earth for research. Compounding the issues are the questions of how such organisms might actually succeed in displacing such things as diatoms and phytoplankton in our seas, thus leading to a rapidly spreading "domino effect" where our food chain could be destroyed by unchecked reproduction of Martian microbes. Even if the organisms were not infectious, they would likely be toxic and could poison animals that feed on phytoplankton. If this were to happen, the food chain could collapse in as little as a year.

The core of this idea is also shared by many scientists today, thus the formation of ICAMSR.org, the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return. When approached about the book, Barry DiGregorio, the director of ICAMSR.org, agreed to write the foreword for A Fossil Hunter's Guide to Mars. While DiGregorio does not share all of Shults' conclusions about his findings, he does agree with the central concept and that it is possible that complex life was present on Mars in the past. DiGregorio's own book about Martian life[ ] shows how it is reasonable to assume that some Martian organisms might have been transported to Earth in the past on meteorites. Desert varnish organisms could well be representative of such life due to the presence of reversed amino acids in some samples.

Early life and education
Charles Shults was born on February 24th, 1958 to Charles Jr. and Patricia Shults near Seattle, Washington. The eldest child, he has one sister, Sandra, and one brother, Christopher. At age four, his parents divorced and his mother moved with all three siblings to Jacksonville, Florida.

Shults learned to read very early and by age five had read most everything in the house and was always looking for more. He also started collecting rocks and what he learned from minerals and their composition started him on a path to learn everything that he could. Minerals and crystals led him to chemistry and electronics and from there, physics. By age six he had read through encyclopedias and learned to type on an ancient Underwood mechanical typewriter. Some of his early reading included The Bible, Brave New World, and Dante's Inferno. At age 6 he had asked the basic question, "why do we count by tens?" From this he worked out base four mathematics and what its implications were. In later years when he began working with computers this understanding led him directly to an immediate grasp of binary, octal, and hexadecimal number systems.

By age 8 Shults came to realize that whenever he had questions that were answered with "nobody really knows", it was often that the person he was speaking with didn't know but didn't want to admit it. It led him to a personal quest to learn everything there was to know, an impossible but laudable goal.

With an interest in anatomy and a curiosity about biology, he captured, studied, and dissected amphibians and other creatures. Measuring the potential of nerves and seeing how they worked proved important to later work. Many questions he had about life and its development led to evolving software algorithms later on. He remarked on how fortunate he was to have an understanding mother, who tolerated him growing cultures of organisms in every available container.

He attended public school in Jacksonville, Florida and was promoted a year from eighth to tenth grade. Shults did extremely well on testing and always showed an interest in science and mathematics with particular interest in astronomy, biochemistry, and electronics.

Although he has had no formal education, his capacious memory and innate calculating ability coupled to his insatiable reading appetite give him a firm understanding of science and technology. Where many would be satisfied with reading about a particular experiment or device, he would construct what he could and attempt to duplicate many of the experimental setups to see for himself how things worked. He states that it is necessary for people to have a visceral appreciation of science in order to truly understand nature. Fortunately, his mother was skilled with tools and readily showed him how to use them. She was very supportive of his hobbies and interests even when it led to him bringing home a literal mountain of old phonographs and televisions to repair or strip for parts.

As a boy, Shults built and flew many model rockets and often made gunpowder and smoke bombs. He also built a working black and white television from parts of discarded sets and began making simple robotic parts including an articulated robot arm. Befriending an owner of a local electronics store, he used parts from scrap circuit cards to make logic gates and simple digital circuits. Eventually he built a simple digital computer that was based on a diode-array memory. This was when microchips had only recently appeared and were too expensive to be used for the task. Understanding of the internal operation of the processor was the major achievement as the machine was rather simple and not very fast.

Shults began repairing stereos and television at age 13 and then moved to the new arcade-style video games that were appearing. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, had recently released a video game known as Computer Space, and Shults was often called upon to repair this and other early video games for local store owners.

At the end of high school, he was awarded a scholarship in electronics to Florida A&M but declined. His decision was to forego the traditional education. He had observed a number of acquaintances who seemed to lose some "essential spark of creativity" when they attended college and didn't want to suffer the same consequences they had.

Career
While still a boy, Shults began working in a warehouse moving furniture and boxes. Eventually he had the opportunity to travel on a moving van and cover a great deal of the country. By age thirteen he had visited 33 states in the USA and had a chance to see much of the country. At age sixteen he rented an apartment and was hired part time by the Information Systems Division at City Hall in Jacksonville and worked in the large computer room there. Attending high school during the days and working in the evenings, he spent his senior year running paper for the ever-hungry printers and operating keypunch, bursters, decolators, and other data processing machinery. The computers of the day occupied large areas and required separate air conditioning systems and plenty of maintenance. The hands-on experience showed him the non-technical side of computing, where the operators of the machines and their concerns were primary. This was in great contrast to the technical side but he gained an appreciation for what users needed versus what designers and programmers intended.

Later he worked servicing video games and pinball machines, where repairs had to happen very quickly. As in many early careers, there was a spate of short-lived but very informative jobs including installing burglar alarms, welding and bending sheet metal to make mobile signs, some simple fiber-optics assembly, and running printing presses. The print shop experience taught him a great deal about darkroom operation, developing negatives, and producing halftones and color separations. This was to have great value in later years when performing analysis of images and color composition.

In 1978 Shults was hired by Martin Marietta Aerospace in Orlando, Florida. He moved there from Jacksonville and spent over a decade working primarily in quality control but he also accepted assignments in other sections and was rapidly involved in weapons system operation and design projects. His time was soon split between his home department and direct work with defense projects. Some of his experience came from working on ASALM (a supersonic cruise missile project), Copperhead (the anti-tank weapon), and the Patriot missile. He also wrote the nuclear EMP test software for the Pershing II missile system and would often take over projects where a programmer or designer left the company or died, and enjoyed the challenge of coming "up to speed" on it and completing critical parts of a project in a short time. For a brief period he worked with the NDTL (Nuclear Design and Testing Laboratory, a part of Martin Marietta Missile Systems) on projects that mainly focused on the effects of high-energy radiation on microelectronics and how damage was induced.

Eventually he felt that applying his talents to weapons was morally questionable and decided to step into the public sector instead of defense. He was the chief engineer of the John Young Planetarium for three years and enjoyed making laser and optical effects and interfacing them to the automation system that ran the planetarium shows. Working in the exhibits shop, he and the staff constructed numerous physics exhibits including a 14-foot-tall Van De Graaff generator which when demonstrated, knocked out the building phone and alarms systems and interfered with medical equipment and monitors in Florida Hospital, about half a mile away.

At this time he met Dr. Nelson Ying, a philanthropist and businessman with a degree in nuclear physics and became involved in the controversial cold fusion research of the day. During Shults' research he found a means of repeatably triggering heat release from palladium foil immersed in heavy water and felt that this was a demonstration of nuclear fusion since the effect consumed only microwatts yet produced watts of heat and only worked when triggered by tandem alpha and gamma ray sources. A patent for the device was filed in 1994[ ]. This process and subsequent results were shown live on television news in Orlando, Florida and demonstrated live to George Brown Jr., who was chairman of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (which is now the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology ).

Shortly afterwards Shults built custom robots which were placed at Walt Disney World and also performed work at Universal Studios Orlando, a large theme park where he serviced ride and show automation systems. Computer-controlled animation involving large hydraulic and mechanical actuators were commonplace in the environment and his work consisted of repairing, improving, and designing equipment to make the ride systems more reliable and safe.

In 2000, he received the Ying Genius Award and dedicated his time to research primarily in artificial intelligence and robotics. This was a productive time for him as he was able to focus on complex software and models of cognition as well as the hardware needed to get tasks done without human intervention. Eventually through contacts he made while appearing on radio programs and discussing science and technology on the air, he found a group that wanted to meet with him and promised backing for his research in larger venues such as sustainable energy and water systems. He established a friendship with Gene Meyers, the CEO of Space Island Group, a company with the goal of placing orbital power stations in space and beaming collected power back to Earth.

In 2007, Shults moved to Taos, New Mexico and became the resident scientist at a large Earthship-style home that was meant to be a showcase of sustainable technologies. He reasoned that if we could keep people alive in space with the recycling and power technology that we had developed, it should be much easier to use that technology on the Earth where there are so many more resources to work with. Afterward he and a team designed and built a large Fresnel-lens based solar thermal generator system at San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico and worked on solar capture and storage ideas. In 2008 he presented some of the results to the TeslaTech 2008 Conference in Albuquerque and then traveled to Cameroon, Africa to work with the government there in setting up biofuel production and sustainable energy and water systems projects.

At the end of the trip he returned to Florida and completed his book, A Fossil Hunter's Guide to Mars which presents his arguments for present-day water, marine fossils, and a complex history of parallel evolution on Mars, tempered by the harsh conditions that exist there today. He returned to New Mexico to prepare for a long stay in Cameroon developing jatropha oil as a fuel source. During that time he designed and built novel windmill designs that were influenced by the needs of hurricane victims and the desire to place off-the-grid power supplies on cellphone towers so communications in disaster areas would not be lost.

When the biofuel project collapsed from lack of funding, Shults moved to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to work with projects at Spaceport America. At the groundbreaking for the spaceport, he met numerous people including Allan Lockheed, whose father founded defense giant Lockheed Corporation. While in the small town (known to locals as T or C), he completed writing two more books and met his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Bryant. Presently they are living in Winnsboro, South Carolina where Shults is pursuing research in basic physics.

Inventions and innovations
Far from being attached to high-tech methods, Shults tends to use minimal solutions to problems and prefers the simplest possible solution over a technical one. Just the same, technical innovation was something that he enjoys greatly. In 1976 he built a simple fiber-optic tester or "buzz box" that could show the signal strength through light fibers while exploring their use in alarm systems and data transmission. He also wrote a simple piece of self-modifying computer code that could alter itself based on stimuli and produce a refined version as a result. This was an early effort at simulating evolution in a computer environment, something that was inspired by his childhood biology experiments.

In 1980 Shults created a complex evolution package that produced software "bots" with complex behaviors. Shortly afterward he wrote a program for the defense industry that performed automatic calibration of test equipment using what he learned from the exercise. This later culminated in a program that was able to be given a series of test instructions from the technical manual for a piece of equipment, after which the program would write the program to perform the tests on an automated system that he designed.

In 1981 when considering the problems of programmable logic devices, Shults built and tested a logic "cell" that had the flexibility to be programmed as any sort of functional logic family device. It included a small memory area that stored the program, a set of inputs, cross-connections, and outputs that were all able to be programmed to nearly any state. A set of one-bit memory "flip flops" stored the configuration and could be reset on the fly. Unable to find any interest in converting the device into a chip, it languished. Present-day FPGA devices are identical in many ways to his prototype.

By 1983 he had a rough design for a space habitat that could be produced by robotic labor. The original idea came from the 1964 Cole-Cox proposal [ ] to inflate an oblong nickel-iron asteroid and then spin it for artificial gravity. Instead, Shults saw that it could be constructed in layers and could use foamed steel as its outer shell for great rigidity and resistance to radiation and meteor impact. A pair of sheet metal layers separate by a few centimeters and surrounding the exterior would vaporize most small impacts and spread the effects over a larger area, minimizing or removing damage effects. He spent two years working out the details of such items as power systems, weather control, ballast and spin regulation, and lighting. Instead of using the proposed O'Neill cylinder three-window design to admit sunlight, he opted to use fiber optics and created a "sunrod" along the axis, spreading sunlight through the interior in a manner similar to a fluorescent light tube and retained the structural integrity of the shell.

In 1984 Shults established the hardware and software systems for a microcircuit rescreening facility at Martin Marietta Aerospace. The goal was to reduce rework and thus cut production costs. His system undercut the previous testing costs by a factor of 10 to 1 and became the core of the Component Reliability Improvement Center in the Orlando Division. The system performed detailed functional and parametric testing of microcircuitry.

By 1987 he had begun working on feasible asteroid mining strategies and worked out numerous methods for moving asteroids and spacecraft. Most centered on capturing and concentrating sunlight to provide the power for propulsion and electrical systems. He also worked out the basics of a Von Neumann-style device (self-replicating machine that could be placed on the Moon or an asteroid, where it would be powered by sunlight and begin mining and refining metals and construction materials. He made presentations of this concept to groups interested in space travel and innovation.  The key feature of the early designs was a large (1-2 kilometer diameter) silvered Mylar reflector that could be shaped like an umbrella, providing a focus that would literally vaporize a portion of an asteroid, thus providing a controlled type of rocket exhaust for moving it.  The initial idea was simply to move an asteroid and use the asteroid's own gravity to hold the "sail" in place, but later he saw that the same principle would propel a spacecraft just as easily.

When the local science center hosted a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit, Shults worked with the exhibits staff and they collaborated to construct full-scale models of Da Vinci's inventions including his ornithopter (airplane), a steam-powered cannon, and his screw-type helicopter. All the models were made of brass, oak, and leather. In a later exhibit about Mars, Shults was given the custody of one of the five Viking Landers from Martin Marietta's White Sands office and performed minor repairs to the spacecraft hardware that did not affect its historical value.

Shults often stated that the period from 1980 to 1990 provided his most powerful insights and ideas and that many of his ideas come from the state of mind that he held at that time. He was able to exist in what he describes as a state of math and physics and computer code that seemed to make any problem tractable.

In 1990 after constructing a persistence of vision display, a device that typically uses a single line of LEDs to produce a text output, Shults replaced the LEDs with laser pointers and created a device that could project text and graphics on a distant surface. Later he built a larger version with 32 green lasers that could project graphics and simple video.

In 1998 Shults came up with a plan to terraform Venus using his solar thermal methods and a simple trick- using a Mylar factory powered by sunlight, in a few years a sun shade large enough to cool the planet could be produced, thus allowing most of the atmosphere to condense out and snow to the ground. He calculated that this would leave about 1.5 atmospheres of nitrogen pressure and would allow comfortable operation on the surface by both people and machines. The carbon dioxide would be split into oxygen and carbon and the carbon sequestered in deep boreholes. The sulfuric acid would likewise be split into sulfur, water, and oxygen and the sulfur sequestered underground. In a few decades the planet's surface would be rendered into a shirtsleeve environment and life could be seeded everywhere. The difficult issue of getting a regular day and night cycle was sidestepped. Instead of trying to change the planet's rotation (a practically impossible task), the sun shade would be converted into computer-controlled blinds and reflectors that would provide sunlight around the planet on demand.

In 2000 when researching information on obsolete microchips, Shults designed a microchip that implemented the Valentino Braitenberg rules of experimental psychology. This chip was manufactured and used in some of his robotic prototypes that he developed. The chip demonstrated a hardware solution to producing responses in robots that mimic the actions of insects as well as acting in ways that appear to show emotional response.

In 2001 Shults built a robot that used ground-penetrating radar to image mines and explosives. He wrote a software algorithm that would assemble "slices" of the ground return data and assemble a 3D model of buried objects. This is identical to tomography, the method of imaging the interior of the body using MRI techniques.

In 2002 he built three air-chemistry machines- devices intended to use the air as source material for a finished product. The first was a device that made soluble nitrate fertilizer by "burning" nitrogen in an electric arc. This could be operated from a small solar panel and installed in regions where nitrate fertilizers are not available or too expensive and used to improve crop growth in poor areas. The second device fixes carbon dioxide as methanol through a multi-step process and creates alcohol fuel from the air. This device is not energetically useful since it consumes more energy than it uses, but if powered by solar, wind, or a water wheel, it can actually produce a fuel that can be stored until needed. The third machine was a variation of the Miller-Urey experiment which produced tholin, the organic matter from which it is theorized that life arose in the distant past.

Another result of this research was a compact and very efficient ozone generator that can be used to sterilize drinking water. The device was tested by the University of New Mexico in 2007 and stated to be the most efficient producer of ozone on a watt-for-watt basis that they had seen. Shults is pushing for an initiative to manufacture these by the millions and introduce them to Africa and other areas of the world where clean drinking water is not available. He feels that inclusion of these devices in survival kits could prove beneficial to hurricane and disaster relief efforts.

In 2003 Shults began experimenting with plasma and vacuum systems and was inspired by the Farnsworth Fusor, a device for creating hot nuclear fusion in a vacuum chamber using high voltage methods. This led to a design for a plasma engine that could in theory propel a spacecraft to very high speeds using solar driven generators. With this type of engine, a spacecraft could carry very little fuel and move easily as quickly by harvesting sunlight power.

After exploring methods of concentrating sunlight to operate generators, Shults devised a sun-driven fiber optic skylight that can be installed in a home without cutting a hole in the roof. This device also tracks the Sun during the course of the day so the illumination can remain constant. By running a light fiber cable through the house it is possible to run skylights even in a basement.

Using similar technology Shults built small turbines and generators that could be operated by sunlight. One inspiration came from the Space Elevator project and could provide motive power for a machine to climb a high-tensile-strength ribbon from the earth's surface up to geosynchronous orbit or beyond. The idea was to eliminate many of the losses caused by converting energy from one form to another, and therefore move strictly from concentrated light to a closed-cycle steam power train that could drive the space elevator essentially for free. Development and refinement of the idea led to the solar thermal generator using flat Fresnel lenses to capture and concentrate sunlight in steam boilers. A large scale prototype was built of this device in 2007-2008. Shults held the opinion that the solar thermal generator proved that his spacecraft propulsion system was doable- that solar power could provide the needed energy to drive a spacecraft all over the inner solar system in short periods of time.

In early 2009 Shults designed and built a number of windmill prototypes, in part due to the poor efficiency of the standard wind generators that most wind farms employ. He recognized that only 4% to 5% of the available wind could be accessed with existing windmills and decided to change that completely. He came up with a valve-like vane on a vertical axis that could harvest wind in any direction and even at low velocities easily. He called the design the "air diode". It was his desire to place them on cell phone towers to meet the Federal mandated power backup requirements that were put in place after Hurricane Katrina, but to date no cell phone company has complied.

Inspiring figures
The path from childhood to a life in technology and research was something that Shults never questioned. He had been inspired when he was 6 by articles about space travel that showed the Von Braun vision of orbital stations and moon flight. Vernor Von Braun was one of his earliest inspirations and was quickly followed by Robert Goddard. Discovering the work of Nikola Tesla gave him more material to study and understand and helped him to see that there were many people who had worked to create a vision of the future. His dream was to be a part of that; to make contributions of his own.

Often his inspiration came from science fiction- picking it apart and finding the inconsistencies helped to define what was possible and what was not, and physics essays by Isaac Asimov and others provided a metric to gauge by. He later established a correspondence with Janet Asimov, the widow of Isaac, and shared an article he had written about SETI with her which she used for her regular column in the L. A. Times.

While not a religious man, he professes an admiration for Jesus and his teachings and states that his influence is as important to him as any other. "Science and reason have to be tempered with humanity, and are not apart from morality," he states. When asked about his role models, he answered "Jesus, Spock, and Superman. It's hard to beat a combination like that- morality, logic, and strength."

Media exposure
Charles Shults has appeared on many radio and television shows including Science Mysteries on The Discovery Channel. During his employment at the Orlando Science Center he became a de facto science spokesman and often appeared on news reports to show the salient features of issues such as global warming, ozone layer damage, meteor showers, and other meteorological and astronomical phenomena. He also was often a guest on a local radio show, "Stump the Scientist" where call-in questions were fielded live in any field of science.

He and Dr. Nelson Ying appeared nationwide on television during the 1992 news items about their cold fusion research results. In 2004 when he was contacted by Coast to Coast AM, he acquired a good relationship with Art Bell and the show producer Lisa Lyon and appeared on many further shows that included topics such as nanotechnology, space travel and the economy, and the coming virtual world. The content is always technical and listeners are encouraged to present questions about the technology, the future, and how it affects society as well. He continues to appear regularly on the show.

Quotes
"If telling the truth steps on your toes, you're standing in the wrong place."

"Scarcity is a myth- we have everything we need to create everything we'll ever need."

"All the interesting stuff happens at the boundaries."

"Most numbers are more than eight million digits long."

Books

 * A Fossil Hunter's Guide to Mars[ ] (2008) ISBN #978-1-4507-2063-2 - a detailed analysis of the chemistry and physics of Mars, with in-depth material about the Martian fossils.
 * The Living Galaxy (2010) ISBN #978-1-4507-3083-9 - a speculative treatise on life in our galaxy that examines the sorts of environments that other worlds in other solar systems might provide.
 * Oneiros (2010) ISBN #978-1-4507-2249-0 a science-fiction novel about the Fermi paradox and quantum entanglement.

Articles

 * On Mars' Recent Past (Astrolog, July 1992)
 * Asteroids or the Planet that Wasn't There (Focus magazine, Spring 1992)
 * Planets of Other Suns (Focus magazine, Summer 1992)
 * Hot Topics: A Look At The Greenhouse Effect and Ozone Depletion (Focus magazine, Spring 1993)
 * Why Is It So Quiet? (Amateur Astronomy Magazine #8, 1995)
 * Cold Fusion in a "Ying Cell" and Probability Enhancement by Boson Stimulation (Infinite Energy Vol.1 #1, 1995)
 * Deflecting an Earth-impactor (online, 2000)
 * Snowflake Numbers - an examination of the Collatz Conjecture (online, 2009)
 * Insolation Control for Effecting Climatic Modification (online, 2001)
 * Automating Thought (online, 2009)