Product Description

The nuclear bomb programme was the culmination of a huge, expensive research development project, so secret that even days before the explosion of the first bomb many people said it was impossible. But what if, at the same time, America had discovered another strand of technology that was even more powerful than atomic science, a weapon so powerful it needs no fuel to fly at 17000 miles per second? Defence journalist Nick Cook reveals a 50-year conspiracy to surpress a technology based on anti-gravity, way ahead of its time. Gravity control: technology that can cancel out the weight of objects or be transformed into engines that produce energy from nothing, promising safe, pollution-free power, limitless propulsion - and weapons potential, The US aerospace and defence industry announced in 1956 that it was on the brink of a great scientific discovery and that the breakthrough would come before the decade was out. But it never happened; the revolution died before it had begun. That was the official version of events. The truth, however, Cook maintains, is very different, and this book traces his 10-year investigation to prove that America cracked the gravity code and classified the technology at unheard of security levels. In his pursuit of the truth, he went to the heart of US aerospace development - a regime so secret it does not officially exist. Cook's trail took him eventually to Germany, searching out a repository of technical secrets buried 50 years earlier by the Nazis. There, among a cache of unofficial projects run by the SS and hidden by the Holocaust, he learned the secret of Zero Point.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #491920 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 281 pages

From the Publisher
Gravity-control. Imagine it: technology that can cancel out the weight of objects or be transformed into engines that produce energy from nothing. Aircraft, trains, ships and cars no longer require fuel. Gravity-control promises safe, pollution-free power, infinite possibilities; limitless propulsion - and weapons potential.

In 1956, the US aerospace and defence industry announces it is on the brink of the greatest scientific discovery since the development of the atomic bomb. Gravity-control is within its reach. The breakthrough will come before the decade is out. But it never happens. The revolution dies before it has begun.

This is the official version. The truth, however, is very different.

The Hunt For Zero Point is the story of a ten-year investigation by award-winning defence journalist Nick Cook to prove that America cracked the gravity code and classified the technology at unheard of security levels. To seek out the truth, Cook knows he must journey to the heart of America’s black world of aerospace development – a regime so secret it does not officially exist.

Picking a path through America’s most classified weapons programmes, Cook follows a trail of detection that takes him to Germany, hunting down a repository of technical secrets buried by the Nazis 50 years earlier. It is here, in amongst a cache of undocumented projects run by the SS and hidden by the crimes of the Holocaust, that he finally learns the secret of Zero Point.

From the Author
The Hunt For Zero Point is the story of my ten-year investigation as Aviation Editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly into the truth - or not - of anti-gravity, the ‘Holy Grail’ of aerospace propulsion technologies. I was drawn into the story, much against my will at first, by my chance discovery of a 1950s aerospace publication that set out in great detail the mid-1950s anti-gravity R&D activities of a large number of US aerospace and defence companies. What, I wondered, had happened to all this research? And why had all these companies since gone quiet on the subject?

There are three main investigative strands to the story:

1. There is real work going on in the USA today on anti-gravity - the most visible of it at NASA, where the space administration is investigating the use of ‘impossible science’ to develop hardware that will allow a manned spacecraft to journey into deep space before the century is out by travelling at light-speed or even beyond. In the course of researching this story, I discovered and met with a Russian scientist called Podkletnov who has succeeded in ‘blocking’ gravity with super-conductors. Technically, this is scientific heresy, but Podkletnov is doing it and others aren’t far behind. There’s a race going on here and the prize is huge: whoever cracks the technology and brings it to market first taps into a potentially limitless energy source and develops an exotic and novel form of propulsion that requires no fuel. However, we’re also talking weapons technology here: stuff that makes ‘Son of Star Wars’ look like a cheap firework display. Which brings me to strand 2 ...

2. The Hunt For Zero Point is also an investigation of the Pentagon’s ‘black world’ of defence procurement. Every year, the US spends around $20-30 billion (the equivalent of the entire UK defence budget) on technologies so secret they do not officially exist (as far as the public, media and most of the US Congress are concerned). As Aviation Editor of JDW, I’ve got about as close as you can get as an observer to this activity, which encompasses ‘leap-ahead’ technologies such as stealth, nuclear programmes, spy satellites and directed energy weapons. The question I needed to answer was whether anti-gravity technology had been hidden away in this Pandora’s Box of doomsday science. The black world is a bizarre place - it is very much a ‘system’, huge and sprawling, only with walls and compartments you can’t see - and you need to keep your feet on the ground when you enter the labyrinth. In visiting top-secret locations like the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works (in the California high! -desert) and interviewing black world Pentagon generals, I come to realise that the US military contains traces of activity in the anti-gravity field, but, in effect, it has more to lose than gain from pursuing it. The origins of anti-gravity science, however, are real and buried in a top-secret, undisclosed high-level weapons programme, run by the SS in Nazi Germany in World War 2.

3. Strand 3 is an investigation of the top secret research and weapons programme run by the SS (without the knowledge of Hitler’s inner ‘cabinet’) in the last two years of the war. The man in charge of this programme was SS General Dr Hans Kammler, who ran a network of facilities in modern-day Poland, Czech Republic, Germany and Austria, devoted to a wealth of exotic weapons technology. At the end of the war, having told a number of close confidants (among them, Albert Speer, Nazi Germany’s armaments minister) that he was negotiating his surrender with the Americans, Kammler disappeared - as well he might. Before administering the weapons programme, he was the architect of Hitler’s death camps. In this portion of the book, The Hunt For Zero Point is given over to the search for Kammler and an examination of the technologies he controlled - weapons science that even today lies on the very edge of our understanding, so different was the ‘culture’ under which it came together. In! the book, it becomes clear that anti-gravity technology was definitively a part of this culture and that the Germans developed hardware. The book contains details on two Kammler-controlled programmes and visits to the facilities where they came together.

The question is, of course, whether the Americans, in their dogged pursuit of Nazi scientists at the end of the Second World War, recovered the physics, technology and expertise associated with this research - and, more to the point, developed it further. The assembled evidence in The Hunt For Zero Point speaks for itself.

About the Author
· Nick Cook is an award-winning defence and aerospace journalist. For the past 15 years he has been Aviation Editor and Aerospace Consultant of the world-renowned Jane’s Defence Weekly – the bible of the international defence industry. His ground-breaking, exclusive stories for Jane’s have included reports on Russian secret weapons and a classified operation to rescue US hostages in Iran. Both made headlines all over the world.

· His stories have prompted questions in the House of Commons and have formed the basis of briefing documents for the Prime Minister’s Office.

· He is a regular contributor to The Financial Times and articles by him have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, The Sunday Telegraph and The Scotsman. He is quoted on aerospace and defence matters in news media around the world.

· Cook frequently comments on defence and security issues for BBC News, ITN, Sky News, CNN and the BBC World Service. He has appeared on The Today Programme, The World At One and Newsnight. His analysis was sought by UK, US and other world news media during the 1991 Gulf War and 1999 Kosovo conflict.

· He is a three-time winner of the prestigious Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards in the Defence, Business and Technology categories. In his 18 year career, Cook has visited the world’s leading defence establishments and has gained access to numerous top secret military facilities and bases in the US and former Soviet Union.

· Cook’s previous books have been published by Macmillan, Penguin and Little Brown in the UK and St Martin’s Press in the USA. He has written 2 Sunday Times Top Ten Bestsellers. ‘The Hunt for Zero Point’, his sixth book, follows a ten-year investigation into an undocumented phenomenon.

· Cook’s two hour documentary for the Discovery Channel, ‘Billion Dollar Secret’, written and presented by him, detailed for the first time the secret inner workings of America’s classified weapons establishment.

· Cook, 41, lives in London with his wife and two children. He was educated at Eton and has a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Exeter University.

Customer Reviews

Janes guy puts his neck on the block...
Intriguing book, and I desperately want it to be true... I really do. Whether it is or not... I dunno. Its either Janes guy uncovers massive new branch of physics and decides to tell the world or Janes guy makes a quick buck outta the fact that he's a Janes guy and people like me want this to be true... sorry Nick, I'm sure you'll appreciate that a little scepticism is a good thing. Either way it was a riveting read (hence the 4 stars) - and if its true then it'll destroy the airlines, aeronautics and the petrol and power industries in one sweep... thats either proof that its all BS or its undeniable proof that its all true.

One man's investigative search for the holy grail of physics
Nick Cook, journalist for Janes Defence Weekly, takes us on a world-wide search through history and science putting together a jig-saw puzzle which connects Stealth, Podkletnov's gravity research, the Nazi's special projects division in the last days of the war, US black projects and exotic propulsion systems. Wading through intelligence, counter intelligence, multiple trails, dead ends and disinformation he leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the US has had anti-gravity technology since the forties.

This is a totally absorbing book, once started I couldn't put it down. Leaves you wanting more !

Where's the Proof?
Any book producing such diverse reactions must be worth reading, I thought, and couldn't wait for publication in the US to buy and read it. I found this book to be engrossing, intriguing, and thought-provoking from the first page to the last. One point that impressed me is that the author didn't reach his conclusions in haste but patiently and persistently followed the trail of evidence wherever it led over a period of years. And yet...the question I keep returning to is "Where's the proof?" The most difficult thing to accept is that the development of antigravity propulsion could be kept secret for 50 years, that this knowledge could be passed from one generation to another without some breech of confidentiality along the way--especially in the US which prides itself on freedom of information and where the media relentlessly work to uncover anything perceived as being withheld from the public. As a well-written detective story, this book is worth your money and your time. As scientific investigation, it lacks that one bit of tangential evidence that I need to overcome my skepticism.