The Journal of Empiricism

When I used to work at the UK Meteorological Office, I was often in their library when work permitted. That was in the old building in Bracknell, a building which no longer exists. One of my favourite reads was The Meteorological Magazine, which was devoted solely to reporting interesting observations, like the early journals of the Royal Society in the time of Newton and Hooke. I loved reading that because the anomalies gave me something to think about: a large water spout was seen near Bali, St Elmo's fire in the Sargasso Sea, a freshwater layer on the ocean, made it hard for boats to make way... Here were genuine phenomena, mysteries that no-one had ever solved, and maybe I could solve them?!

By the time I found it and had read a few articles I distinctly remember asking at the desk for the more recent issues and I can still remember my disappointment when Yunus the friendly librarian told me apologetically it had been discontinued in 1994.

By that time anomalies were becoming undervalued, and this was part of a decline that has occurred throughout science. Technically we have better observations than ever, but what good are they if the latest compulsory solution is enforced on the subject from above for reasons of social control (climate), profit (medicine) or the furthering of existing research programs? (strings, dark matter).

So, in 1994 The Meteorological Magazine was closed down, and it was replaced by the business-like Meteorological Applications. The same thing has happened in wider physics, but to reinvigorate the field at a deep level what we should do is to make a new journal like those of the early Royal Society. Allow those good at observing to publish freely without forcing them to fudge a solution, and allow those who love to ponder deeply to freely publish their suggested solutions. First look, then think. The old symbiosis would return and we'd advance far faster.

JoE: the Journal of Empiricism?

PS: If you like this please come over and support me (£3/month, or more if you can) at patreon. It makes possible my independent research program: https://www.patreon.com/OneSteptoTauCeti

Demysticon 2025 in Sesimbra

As you may know I've just attended a conference in Sesimbra, Portugal. I was invited to speak on QI at the Demystify 2025 conference and it has been a tremendous experience, both because of the beauty of this area (my hotel balcony overlooked the turqoise sea and the seafood was fantastic) and especially the stimulating talks and conversations I have had. I won't give details of the talks, because they will appear online soon, but I'd like just to provide some highlights.

The first talk was by Alexander Unzicker who proposed, half in jest, a Department of Scientific Efficiency (DoSE) to get rid of all the grift in physics and eliminate physical constants. Then Eric Lerner outlined some of the problems with the Big Bang theory such as the Lithium problem: there is only 1/3 as much as there should be. Patrick Van Raes presented two ideas from Robitaille, the Liquid Sun model (the problem is: how can you get fusion then?) and R's theory that the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is actually being emitted from the ocean which explains why it has only been seen in satellites close to the Earth like COBE and not in those far away like Planck. There was then a spirited argument especially from M.L Corredoira, because some claim that Planck has seen it but they just didn't bother to put it in the paper because everyone assumed it was true anyway.

Then Indranil Banik showed that you can explain the Hubble tension (the higher redshift of nearby supernovae) if you assume we are in a local void (a big hole) so that nearby over-densities are pulling everything out of the void more strongly than expected. He has been looking at Baryon Acoustic Oscillations which are frozen sound waves left over from the early universe that provide a standard ruler. Banik & Kalaitzidis (see references) predicted how big they should appear at each redshift. Only by assuming we're in a local void, as found in local galaxy undercounts, did they get agreement. This is independent evidence for the local void, and happens to solve the Hubble Tension because gravity pulls matter out, increasing the local Hubble constant. He gets some pushback from people using the cosmological principle (the cosmos must be uniform on big scales), but I think that argument falls flat. I don't see the problem with a local hole and the Hubble Tension is a major issue.

Then Andre Assis, lovely guy, said that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is actually evidence against the Big Bang, because its temperature was predicted far better by the earlier steady state theories than by the Big Bang models. Andre later kindly advised me to relax a bit, and also to study the electromagnetism of Weber, which I like already because it gets rid of the abstract concept of the field.

Alexander Unzicker then spoke on the Variable Speed of Light (VSL) cosmology. A curved space with a constant c is equivalent to a flat space with a varying c. I admire this guy more than any other physicist of our time, but of course, as he admits, even if the standard form of VSL is true it still agrees with general relativity so we are back to all the problems with galaxy rotation. Nevertheless, I agree the VSL is the way to go, it fits better with QI and is directly testable, unlike curved spacetime.

My talk went well. I presented my QI cosmology with a varying G. One guy asked if that means I can solve Sagan's faint young sun paradox. The early Sun, under standard physics should have been dimmer, but oddly the Earth was not generally a snowball at that time. Indeed, a higher G in the past leads to more intense stars: more confinement, more fusion, but Indranil Banik suggested it would make them burn too quick (unless c varies as well?) Interestingly, a varying G would also mean a smaller Earth in the past.

Then an interesting and bold talk from Unnikrishnan who claimed that he has disproved special relativity by doing, for the first time, a one-way speed of light test. He claims that c depends on the observer's motion. I need to read his paper before commenting on that one! (see his comment below).

As a finale I had a chat with Indranil Banik that was so interesting and covered so much ground (from quantum thrusters, to Milky Way satellite galaxies to how to build a cosmology) that we talked from 7pm to 3am. He said he might invite me to talk at the Cosmology Institute in Portsmouth. This was the overall hope of this conference, which was organised brilliantly by Anastasia Bendebury and Shilo DeLay (on X, @demystifysci): to build a bridge between the mainstream and mavericks.

References

The Conference website: https://demystifysci.com/demysticon-2025

Unzicker's first talk at the conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOdyPNYo8Po

Indranil's Hubble Tension paper: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staf781

No Need for Dark Galaxies

Recently, a few people on X pointed out to me a paper by a Chinese group (Lui et al., 2025) who have been monitoring neutral hydrogen outside the Milky Way disc and noticed what they call a compact gas clump, named poetically: AC G185.0-11.5. It is a swirling mass of hydrogen that somehow stays together. The mainstream of course proposed adding as much dark matter as needed to keep it together within the remit of general relativity, and called it a 'dark galaxy' (there are others like this, such as Dragonfly 44), but we know how to do testable physics, so we can do better.

From a paper I wrote in 2012 (see the reference), quantised inertia (QI) predicts that the velocity of the material at the edge of a system at very low acceleration has to be just large enough to keep the acceleration above the cosmic minimum (2c^2/Cosmic_scale), so it will be

v = (2GMc^2/Cosmic_scale)^0.25

So let's see if QI can predict this newly-observed system (you know it will, or why would I be writing this with such a confident air!). Its gas and dust mass was given in Liu et al. (2025) as ranging from a possible 3x10^7 to 4.7x10^8 solar masses, and the cosmic (Hubble) scale is 8.8x10^26 m, so using the QI equation above, the predicted orbital speed has a low of 30 km/s and a high of 58.9 km/s, so let's say 44.5 +/- 14.5 km/s.

So what do Lui and crew say is the observed rotational speed? Drum-roll... It is 42.2 +/- 2 km/s. QI predicts it well. It correctly predicts Dragonfly 44 as well (I wrote a blog on that one in 2016). I always thought dark matter was a load of hot gas, but now it seems it's not even that! QI for the win.

By the way, for far more frequent updates like this please subscribe to my patreon account here: https://www.patreon.com/OneSteptoTauCeti

References

Liu et al., 2025. Discovery of a high-velocity cloud of the Milky Way as a potential dark galaxy. Science Advances, Vol 11, Issue 16. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.09419

McCulloch, M.E., 2012. Testing quantised inertia on galactic scales. Astrophysics & Space Sci. Vol. 342, No. 2, 575-578. https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7007

The End of the Dark Age of Physics?

Physics has been in what we might call A Dark Age since the 1960s, with fashions such as quarks, space-time (general relativity took over in the 1960s), strings vibrating in 11 dimensions, dark matter and dark energy. The problem with concepts like these is that there is no way to test them directly. You can test space-time by passing things through it, but that is circular because you designed it to model that in the first place. How can you break the loop and get to view it directly? You can’t. So how can you be sure there’s not some other model that works better? General relativity failed to predict every galaxy rotation ever seen, yet is still popular!

I prefer to have physics that is successful, and testable all the way down, or as far down as possible. So quantised inertia re-grounds physics on what we can see and test directly, namely acceleration and quantum fields (Unruh radiation). I can now say the latter is observable because Lynch et al. (2021) saw Unruh radiation emitted from positrons decelerating in a silicon crystal at CERN.

What is the advantage of this grounding? Everything! First of all, it makes the theory directly testable. QI says that inertia and gravity are due to the push from gradients in Unruh radiation, and you can go and look for that. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but at least it is possible and conclusive. If there’s no Unruh gradient, then no QI. It also makes specific predictions that no other model does like the galaxy rotation cut-off, that has already been seen. In contrast, if they don’t find the latest version of fuzzy dark matter they just get more money to look for an even more invisible super fuzzy ghost variant...etc.

Also, QI makes physics useful again. By explaining the mechanism of inertia, QI immediately gives us a new handle on nature. Why not make an Unruh gradient ourselves and move things without the need for propellant? The theory also tells you how to do it – Unruh waves are usually ridiculously long (light-years) but to get them to interact with metal structures and form gradients to push with, all you have to do is shorten them by producing very high accelerations, hence the observed thrust from the emdrive which has high acceleration electrons in its cavity walls, or from capacitor drives which highly accelerate electrons. This usefulness will produce a revolution in thrust and energy. Forward-thinking industry already knows this, and QI capacitor drives are just about to be switched on in space by IVO Ltd on a Rogue Space Systems cubesat launched by SpaceX.

Theoretical physics has had the wrong approach since the 1960s and disappeared into comfort, invisibility and untestability, but quantised inertia represents the return of a real physics with consequences (both theoretical and applied). I apologise. Given the state of the world you may not want more excitement right now, but if you can take it, this is of the good kind.

Get access to twice-weekly updates on QI at patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OneSteptoTauCeti

Follow me on X: memcculloch

References

Lynch, M.H., E. Cohen, Y. Hadad, I. Kaminer, 2021. Experimental observations of acceleration-induced thermality. Phys. Rev. D., 104, 025015. https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.00043

The Bullet Cluster Looks Like a QI Effect

The Bullet Cluster is often taken as a proof of dark matter, but dark matter is so flexible that anything could be taken that way. The cluster is shown in the composite picture below (from NASA's Chandra X ray observatory). The pink areas are the visible matter. The bullet, the pink 'cone' to the right, from its symmetry, looks as if it has moved from left to right and has crashed through the pink mass on the left.

Figure 1. The Bullet cluster, visible mass (pink) & inferred dark mass (blue)

By looking at the bending of starlight arriving from behind these masses, astronomers have proposed the presence of their favourite fudge, dark matter, shown by the blue areas. Well, I never did like fudge as a child, and I still don’t, so let’s see if quantised inertia will explain this instead and in a way that does not need fudging.

Quantised inertia predicts that every time the mutual accelerations get very low, and that happens especially along spin axes (see my referenced paper on the flyby anomaly below), then the inertia decreases in a new way and particles, including photons, should bend more under gravity, making it look like there is dark matter when it is actually a QI effect instead. Sure enough, the blue areas are along the spin axis of the cluster (a spin I have deduced quite reasonably from the rotational symmetry of the Bullet, its cone shape.)

Let’s see if the numbers fit. The mass of the Bullet is 2x10^14 Solar masses, and the distance to the centre of the blue area to the right of it, is, roughly 250 kiloparsecs. So the acceleration there is

a = GM/r^2 = 4.7x10^-10 ms^2

By now, if you have been following me for 20 years you may be getting fed up of this number (or values close to it) which crops of everywhere in deep space, but I love to see it. What this means is that the Bullet Cluster, far from proving dark matter, supports QI in two ways. The blue areas are along the axis as predicted by QI, and the acceleration is indeed low enough in the blue areas to make QI effects important.

I hope you have enjoyed this latest Bullet-in, for more like this, but twice a week, please subscribe at my patreon https://www.patreon.com/OneSteptoTauCeti

Reference

McCulloch, M.E., 2008. Modelling the flyby anomalies using a modification of inertia. MNRAS Letters, 389 (1), L57-60 https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/389/1/L57/996711

Request for Support

I've been writing this blog for seventeen years now, and I will continue because I enjoy it and it gets the message out, but I would like to explain my change of circumstances. In 2017, I won $1.3M from DARPA to test whether quantised inertia can indeed produce propulsion and by the end of the project several labs in liaison with me had shown thrust. When the DARPA project started, in 2017, I bought myself out of teaching to work 100% on it. Unfortunately, in 2023 when I went back to the courses I had been teaching, they had shrunk: I was told the students didn't like positioning and matrix algebra anymore. How odd! I guess I had not been there to present it in an accessible manner :) So I was let go. I suspect part of the issue may have been my alternative physics and my non-woke opinions (I went through a disciplinary process for my non-woke comments on twitter in 2021).

Since 2023 I have been applying for jobs in academia, but I'm not getting any responses, which seems strange for a person with a lot of papers, evidence of funding at a high level, and high profile work. I feel a bit like William Shatner after Star Trek TOS ended, slightly famous but in dire straits. As a result, in order to continue I am designing an entirely new career that is anti-fragile, that won't suddenly disappear because my opinion differs from the crowd - freedom is essential for someone who wants to innovate. That's why I'm trying to become a publicly-funded physicist/author. I'm appealing for help from the largely non-woke technically-aware public since group-think seems to have blacklisted me.

The method I'm using so far is Patreon. The deal is that you can pay as little as £3 or 4$ a month to read accessible discussions of new anomalies and developments in quantised inertia. I was always a good teacher at university - I can explain complex things simply (I was told). I write a page or so twice a week and I am putting my papers on there as well, before submission:

https://www.patreon.com/c/OneSteptoTauCeti

There are options to pay £10 or more, which would help. I'm not ashamed to ask that if you do value my work, please do subscribe. My intention is to build an online university that offers a much better version of physics (and indeed the technique of science) than the old universities do: no dark matter, no eleven-dimensional strings, but driven by new observations, more predictive, philosophically coherent, simpler, and with hope for quantum launch, clean energy and interstellar travel (fully backed by evidence). As a student of this university you might be the one to make these things practically possible. It was after all, reading my papers that inspired Frank Becker to suggest capacitors as a solution, and get a patent. It was a talk by me at his astronomy club that caused Steve Cookson to co-publish a paper on wide binaries in a prestigious journal - it's rare for an astronomy club to achieve that. The public can contribute to science, if they keep up with the anomalies and the new wave. My Patreon is a way to do that.

QI is taking off (and I don't just mean the exciting IVO launch of a QI drive in March) and when it does, anyone in the know will be ahead. Besides, anomalies and QI are fascinating in their own right.

"The future belongs to those who show up" - Mark Steyn

Four Books!

So far, I have written four books that cover quantised inertia, among other things like the scientific method and what it is like to be a maverick scientist, from various points of view.

I was invited to write my first book, Physics from the Edge (2014) by World Scientific. The title had three meanings. First of all, quantised inertia's main claim is that the cosmic edge (horizon) affects inertia here, so it is indeed physics from the edge of the cosmos. The second meaning is that I felt myself to be on the edge of the physics community. The third meaning was an allusion to Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge... partly because I always fancied Carrie Fisher. The book introduces QI and some applications of it. You can get a good feel for the early years of QI. The theory was slightly different back then. Many things have improved but some nuances have been lost. It is expensive though, as it was publish as a monograph.

My second book (2021) was called Falling Up. It is a sci-fi novelette, published on Amazon. I wrote it, off and on, from about 2004 to 2021 so it contains bits from the entire history of QI. The antigrav lab scene, for example, was written before I derived QI and was living on a station platform (in a tiny flat I must add!). It has many good reviews on Amazon and 4.7 stars. One reviewer said that "If Frank McCourt was to write a sci-fi novel it would read something like this." Excited by that comment, I read his novel, Angela's Ashes, and it seemed almost grammarless! I'll take it as a compliment anyway.

My third book (2023) was called Hacking the Cosmos, and is also a novelette. It was written more recently, as you will see from the social environment I describe. It introduces QI from the new information standpoint and also describes the feeling of alienation from the physics community that I've felt, almost as if I was indeed guilty of destroying the cosmos. I refer to some of the relevant QI papers in the book.

My fourth book (2024) called Quantised Accelerations is the second QI textbook and was published by Robert Zubrin's Polaris Books. I wanted with this one to demonstrate the old empirical approach (i.e. genuine science) that has been almost entirely lost in these times. The book starts by discussing 54 anomalies that cannot be explained by modern physics. It then introduces QI, and shows how QI explains most of the anomalies. I also discuss applications: thrust, power and interstellar travel, and some consequences for philosophy. I wrote it to be accessible, there are equations, but they are simple, and I drew cartoons and schematics to help explain the ideas. It is still selling well and has 4.7 stars on Amazon.

I have loved writing them, and I hope you enjoy reading them.