Summary of MiHsC papers

Here are some concise explanations of all the papers I've written on MiHsC so far, to show MiHsC's development over the years. I've presented the papers, warts and all, in order of their publication year:

2007. I assumed that inertial mass was caused by Unruh radiation, and subject to a Hubble-scale Casimir effect so that some Unruh waves are disallowed because they don't fit within the Hubble scale. This leads to a new loss of inertia for low accelerations. I applied this model (called MiHsC) to the trajectories of the Pioneer spacecraft and showed that the loss of inertia leads to an extra Sunward acceleration equal to the Pioneer anomaly. I remember the delighful comments of the reviewer of this paper who was amused by my use of the word 'forecast' instead of prediction (I worked at the UK Meteorological Office at the time) and said something like: 'I don't quite believe his solution, but it's more plausible than others that have been published, so..' Subsequent work by Turyshev et al. (2011) has proposed that the Pioneer anomaly could be due to an anisotropic radiation of heat, but the model they use is complex & there is no decay in the anomaly with time to back a thermal model. MNRAS, 376, 338-342.

2008a. The flyby anomalies are anomalous changes of a few mm/s in the speed of spacecraft flying by the Earth. In this paper I tried to model them by saying that when the craft pass through a zone where the net acceleration is low they lose inertial mass by MiHsC and speed up by momentum conservation. I spent the better part of a year modelling trajectories in my spare time, and it did not work because I did not yet consider mutual accelerations. However, here, I also suggested controlling inertia by bending Unruh waves using metamaterials. J.Br.Interplanet.Soc. 61: 373-378, 2008.

2008b. This paper was inspired by observations of Anderson et al (2008) that showed that the flyby anomaly was large when the spacecraft came towards the Earth at the Equator and left at the pole. When I downloaded the paper it upset me because I couldn't explain it, but then I realised with joy that I could model it using MiHsC if I considered the 'mutual' accelerations between masses, since the mutual acceleration between a spacecraft and masses in the spinning Earth is lower closer to the spin axis. MiHsC then predicts the craft's inertia is lower near the pole and to conserve momentum the craft speeds up. This models the flyby anomalies fairly well without adjustable parameters, but not perfectly. MNRAS-letters, 389(1), L57-60, 2008.

2010a. In this paper I applied MiHsC to the observations of Tajmar et al. (2006) who noticed an unexplained acceleration of accelerometers close to rotating rings. I took the idea of mutual accelerations further and considered the inertial mass of the accelerometer to be dependent (via MiHsC) on not only its acceleration with respect to the spinning ring but to the fixed stars too (with a nod to Ernest Mach). The idea was sound but I messed up the maths. I realised my error the night before I was due to give an important talk on it in Berne! I had to write another paper to correct it (see 2011a).

2010b. This was a more detailed look at the prediction by MiHsC that since Unruh waves lengthen as accelerations reduce, and because the Unruh waves cannot in principle be observed if they are greater than the Hubble scale, there must then be a minimum acceleration allowed in nature. I showed that this is close to the observed cosmic acceleration that is usually attributed to arbitrary 'dark energy'. MiHsC also predicts the observed minimum mass for disc galaxies seen by McGaugh et al (2009). In this paper I also suggested modifying the inertial mass of an object by interfering with Unruh radiation using EM radiation. EPL, 90, 29001.

2011a. I corrected my mathematical mistake (in 2010a) and MiHsC worked well but didn't fit one of Tajmar's results. When I emailed Tajmar he told me that particular result was due to a wrong stepper motor, so I was ecstatic. The prediction of MiHsC is that when the ring accelerates the accelerometer gains inertial mass and has to move with the ring to conserve the overall momentum of the system. MiHsC predicts the results very well, even the asymmetry between the clockwise & anticlockwise rotations of the ring. This paper and 2010a won "Best of Year" awards from the EPL journal. EPL, 95, 39002

2011b. This was my attempt to explain the weight loss seen by Podkletnov when he vibrated and span a superconducting disc below various test masses. MiHsC provided a possible explanation, but not a complete one and I couldn't go further because I had no way to know what the accelerations/vibrations of the disc were when it was spun. This paper on a controversial experiment led to me being consigned to gen-ph on the arxiv and led to a couple of critical letters being sent to my university faculty, but then great joy as the head of my School wrote an email supporting my academic freedom. Physics Procedia, 20, 134-139

2012. I must have submitted nearly six different papers several times each over four years trying to model a disc galaxy with MiHsC with different methods. With each rejection I tried again and my method became simpler till eventually, there was nothing for the reviewers to reject it on :) MiHsC predicts the rotation speeds of dwarf, disc and galaxy clusters within the errors bars without any adjustable parameters and most crucially: without dark matter. I have yet to model a galaxy in detail though. Ap&SS, 342, 2, 575-578

2013. In all the papers above I used a Hubble-scale Casimir effect to model 'deviations' from standard inertia, and just assumed standard inertia. In this paper I proposed that standard inertia is due to a Rindler-scale Casimir effect. As an object accelerates, say, to the right, a Rindler horizon forms to its left since information further away can never catch up. A Rindler-scale Casimir effect then suppresses Unruh waves on the left, so that the object feels more Unruh radiation pressure from the right. This pressure pushes it back against its acceleration: an elegant model for inertia that needs no adjustable parameters. This model also represents a new way of thinking about motion & energy in terms of horizons & information. EPL, 101, 59001.