Thad Roberts
Inspiration for NYT Bestseller Sex on the Moon
Thad Roberts
Inspiration for NYT Bestseller Sex on the Moon
Biography
Thad Roberts is the inspiration behind the New York Times bestseller Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, which is being adapted into a feature film by Sony Pictures.
Roberts enjoys exploring unfamiliar realms and seeking out new experiences in an attempt to absorb new perspectives and to expand his own horizons. He has been dropped down a mine shaft in Peru, discovered a Tyrannosaurid tooth in the Utah deserts, skin-dived off the shores of Hawaii, mined for rare gemstones, experienced zero gravity and extreme isolation, and explored the remains of a sunken ship.
When he was 22, Roberts was hired on as a co-op at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He started out as an astrophysicist, moved to geo-astrophysicist, and then 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 Roberts fell in love with a brilliant and beautiful biology intern at NASA. Wanting to give her the moon (literally), Roberts masterminded the infamous moon rock caper and made off with contaminated lunar samples. 33 years to the day after Neil Armstrong first picked up a piece of the moon, Roberts sold some of those pieces and landed in the middle of a government sting.
Roberts was sentenced to 100 months in federal prison for his actions. Though he would never repeat those acts, Roberts 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, Roberts 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 that plague modern physics, and exploring new axiomatic assumptions that might account for them.
Roberts left prison with something more valuable to him then a safe full of moon rocks—a manuscript over 700 pages long that lucidly images a fractal structure to the geometry of space-time, unveiling an axiomatic structure that might be responsible for the unexplained mysteries of modern physics. Roberts’s research is centered around the possibility that quantum mechanics is emergent—that instead of being exact, quantum mechanics is a very accurate approximation to a deeper-level deterministic theory.
Thad Roberts is now living a life full of love, adventure, and friendship, and he is still shooting for the stars. He works 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 taking steps to one day fly to space. Roberts encourages audiences to chase their dreams, to 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 we can all rebound from our mistakes and reach for the stars.
Speaker Videos
Eleven Dimensions Theory
Speech Topics
Sex on the Moon
Thad Roberts provides an intimate look into his life as a Mormon turned adventure seeker and aspiring astronaut who stole moon rocks from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and spent time in federal prison—all to impress a girl. As the subject of the book Sex on the Moon, Roberts takes audiences on a thrilling yet emotional journey full of heartbreak and hope, inspiring audiences to chase their dreams and change their lives.