Thad Roberts is a theoretical physicist, a philosopher of physics, the inspiration behind the New York Times best seller Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, and the author of ‘Einstein’s Intuition: Visualizing Nature in Eleven Dimensions‘.

Thad enjoys exploring unfa­miliar realms and seeking out new experiences to absorb new perspectives and to expand his own horizons. He has sailed across the Atlantic through a tropical storm in a 55 foot sloop, excavated dinosaur fossils from the Great Basin, Mojave and Chihuahuan deserts, mined for rare gem stones in the Wah Wah mountains, skin­dived off the shores of Hawaii, flown zero-gravity, experienced extreme iso­la­tion, explored the remains of a sunken ship, and discovered the jungle covered remains of an ancient Mayan complex.

When he was 22, Thad was hired on as a co-op at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He worked as an Astrophysicist, then a Geo-astrophysicst, and even­tu­ally became a Flight Lead in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, where he SCUBA dived with the astro­nauts, helped train them for their EVAs (space walks), and par­tic­i­pated in under­water studies of the International Space Station mock-ups.

At age 25 Thad fell in love with a brilliant and beautiful Biology intern at NASA. Wanting to give her­ the moon (literally), Thad mas­ter­minded the infa­mous moon rock caper and made off with lunar sam­ples. 33 years to the day after Neil Armstrong first picked up a piece of the moon, Thad sold some of those pieces and landed in the middle of a gov­ern­ment sting.

Thad was sentenced to 100 months in fed­eral prison for his actions. Though he would never repeat those acts, Thad doesn’t regret how things turned out. Despite the iso­la­tion, lone­li­ness, and hard lessons that defined those years, he notes that without that time of intense ded­i­ca­tion and con­stant focus he may have never dived so deeply into questions about the con­struc­tion of our Universe. After coming face to face with his own insecurities, Thad decided to overcome the odds of his past mistakes and to once again strive for his dreams. His days in prison were spent teaching, exercising, wrestling with the mysteries of modern physics, and exploring new axiomatic assumptions that might explain them.

Thad left prison with some­thing more valu­able to him than a safe full of moon rocks – a man­u­script over 700 pages long that lucidly describes how he was led to a new geometric axioms for the structure of spacetime. The result was quantum space theory (qst), a specific form of superfluid vacuum theory (SVT), which now stands as a candidate for the theory of quantum gravity.

Thad’s book ‘Einstein’s Intuition' has been acclaimed for how it lucidly explores the mysteries of modern physics and artfully challenges traditional assumptions about reality to construct a new perspective that brings new light to quantum mechanics and general relativity. (Available at Amazon, Audible, & iBooks)

Thad is now living a life full of love, adventure, and friendship, and he is still shooting for the stars. He works (as a theoretical physicist for a private think tank) to contribute to Einstein’s dream of unifying the realms of relativity and quantum mechanics into one intuitively accessible map of Nature, and he is still taking steps to one day fly to space. Thad also works as a public speaker for the American Program Bureau, where he encourages everyone to chase their dreams, to richly experience the world for themselves, and to support others in their dreams. He believes that a first step in committing to your dreams is making a list of things done and things to do. With each other’s support he believes that we can all rebound from our mistakes and reach for the stars.

Click here for more on Thad’s philosophy on life, or here for an interview with Creativ.

To be introduced to quantum space theory TEDx-style, watch Thad’s presentation at TEDxBoulder 2010.