I've suggested (& published in 21 journal papers) a new theory called quantised inertia (or MiHsC) that assumes that inertia is caused by horizons damping quantum fields. It predicts galaxy rotation & lab thrusts without any dark stuff or adjustment. My University webpage is here, I've written a book called Physics from the Edge and I'm on twitter as @memcculloch. Most of my content is at patreon now: here

Saturday 12 April 2014

Bringing MiHsC down to Earth


MiHsC has been developed mostly by looking at anomalies in space. The great advantage of space being that things are simpler there and the fundamental rules are more easily seen. Nevertheless, to convince other people, astronomical anomalies are not ideal. For example, I have shown that MiHsC predicts galaxy rotation without dark matter and without any 'tuning', unlike dark matter or MoND which do need tuning (see McCulloch, 2012). The 'theoretical inevitability' of MiHsC is a great advantage, but is not enough to persuade others to drop beloved theories. What is needed is an experiment in which I can show some control over the anomalous effect (hopefully) and thereby demonstrate MiHsC conclusively. Here is my best try so far at such an experiment:

Start with a disc made of a material with good tensile strength that can withstand cold, attached by an axle to a motor. Enclose the disc in a metal box, which ideally should be a cryostat (very cold) to suppress thermal accelerations. Suspend a test mass outside the box, but above the rim of the disc, where the mutual disc-mass acceleration should be maximum, and monitor its weight. Allow things to settle down thermally, then spin the disc very fast. There should be no 'normal' coupling between the disc and test mass, but there will suddenly be a large mutual acceleration between the test mass and the disc, the very long Unruh waves the test mass saw initially will shorten, and so a greater proportion of them will be 'allowed' by the Hubble-scale Casimir effect of MiHsC and so MiHsC predicts that the test mass will gain inertial mass. This means the test mass will become less sensitive to gravity, and this will show up as an apparent loss of weight. You may notice the similarity with the controversial Podkletnov experiment of course, though with the (I hope) advantage of MiHsC, I have simplified/redesigned it a little to accentuate the predicted anomaly.

To be specific, MiHsC predicts, for a disc 5cm in radius and at the latitude of Plymouth (latitude is important because of an initial acceleration only with respect to the fixed stars) that for spin rates of 3000 rpm, 100,000 rpm and 1,000,000 rpm the test mass will lose 0.0016%, 1.76% and 100% of its weight.

Reference

McCulloch M.E., 2012. Testing quantised inertia on galactic scales. Astrophysics and Space Science, 342, 575. link

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Mike,

The simplicity and feasibility of this experiment makes it a really good candidate for validation (or the contrary) of MiHsC. Spinning at a speed between 3000 rpm and 100,000 rpm is accessible at a low cost (comparing this to the rotating speed of a entry-level hard-drive drive)

Have you been able to conduct it ? Can you provide the results, or a place where you published them ?

Thanks,

--
Mathieu

Mike McCulloch said...

A warm version of the experiment is now in progress :) I'll discuss it when the results are more solid..

birchoff said...

Have you seen this paper looks like what they are talking about should be at least partially related.

birchoff said...

http://www.ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030020760.pdf

Mike McCulloch said...

Thanks a lot. I don't like the hypotheses they introduce, but the experiments are very relevant and most of them I didn't know of. I knew of the Japanese experiment where they dropped spinning weights and saw changes in fall speed. Here are some of my notes on it:

Hayasaka et al. (1997) enclosed a spinning gyroscope in a capsule in freefall. They found that a gyro of radius 2.9 cm spinning at 18,000 rpm showed an decrease in its downwards acceleration of 0.00014g +/- 0.00007g (1 part in 7000). This is consistent with an increase in its inertial mass, which slows down its acceleration given the same applied force. MiHsC predicts a loss of weight of 0.000266g +/- 0.0000266g (where g is 9.8m/s^2, and the error comes from assuming a 10% error in the Hubble constant). These values are close but do not quite agree given the error bars. Also, the experimental result only showed an anomaly for right-spinning gyroscopes (an anticlockwise spin when looking from above).

alfaquatro said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Hello Mike,

I'm very curious to hear how the "warm experiment" went. I'm also curious on testing this principle with a similar machine I'm building. However, mine involves revolving Mercury within a toroid with the electromagnetic force of a magnet in the center; a homopolar motor.

I anticipate your response on your findings from your experiment.