Bernard Haisch

German born American astrophysicist

Bernard Michael Haisch is a German born American astrophysicist who has done research in solar stellar astrophysics and stochastic electrodynamics. He has developed with Alfonso Rueda 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 the UFO phenomenon as well as a variety of other unorthodox topics. Since 2002 Haisch has been involved with ManyOne Networks and related Digital Universe projects which aim to produce, among other things, a multimedia online encyclopedia. In 2006 Haisch published a popular book in which he attempted to reconcile modern scientific belief with traditional religious belief. He 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 St. Meinrad Seminary and Archabbey.

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 in Boulder, Colorado. Haisch has worked at the Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, California and served as deputy director of the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. His main research from the mid 1970s until the late 1990s was high energy astrophysics, and 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 prestigious journals such as Nature, Science, Physical Review, Astrophysical Journal, and Annalen der Physik. He also served for ten years as an editor of the Astrophysical Journal. In the 1990's 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 is a former editor in chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. In addition to papers in mainstream journals and conference proceedings, Haisch has also published papers in Science & Spirit magazine and the Journal of Noetic Sciences, a parapsychological journal published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

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

Haisch has also created a website called UFO Skeptic, which promotes the investigation of the UFO phenomenon by professional scientists.

In 2002 Haisch became 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.