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

Sunday 29 March 2015

Dark matter contradicts itself.

There has just been a study published in Science (Harvey et al., 2015) that is interesting because it shows the dark matter hypothesis is starting to contradict itself.

Harvey et al. have looked at the light from familiar objects like galaxies as seen from behind galaxy clusters, and looked at the distortion in the images due to gravitational lensing. They know what a typical galaxy looks like: a disc, so if it looks like a U-bend instead when it's behind the galaxy cluster, then they can infer the bending of the light that must be occurring and assume this bending is due to dark (invisible) matter in the cluster. They looked at 72 galaxy cluster collisions, and have modeled the collisions using several kinds of dark matter, and have shown that the only kind of dark matter that fits the observations, is a kind that doesn't interact with itself. I'd like to point out here that this makes the dark matter hypothesis self-contradictory since the dark matter particles have to be given a lot of kinetic energy (momentum) so that inertial/centrifugal forces keep them spread out in their usual orbital halo, but if you now imagine that two clouds of dark matter hit each other there should be a 'push' as the particles collide. This study proves there isn't any such push, so the simplest solution is that there is no dark matter. I'm sure someone will think of a way to make dark matter more complex to save the hypothesis, but it gets ever more ridiculous.

In contrast, MiHsC says that there is no dark matter (see my blog here and my paper here) and that the light is bending because its inertial mass varies due to the variation in acceleration within the cluster. I know the inertial mass of light is a controversial issue, but it has never been well understood, and MiHsC predicts galaxy rotation, cosmic acceleration, the flyby anomalies, the emdrive (light in a box) and many other anomalies quite well without invisible entities or contradictions (Introduction to MiHsC).

(Thanks sincerely to those whose online comments helped correct a technical error about dark matter that I made in an earlier version of this entry, but my original argument still stands).

References

Harvey D, Massey R, Kitching T, Taylor A, Tittley E. The non-gravitational interactions of dark matter in colliding galaxy clusters. Science 27 March 2015. Read more at Phys Org.

McCulloch, M.E., 2012 Testing quantised inertia on galactic scales. Astrophysics & Space Sci., 342, 575-578. Preprint. Journal.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

This ones a bit 'out there,' but it seems to be some species of EM Drive, and the guy did post a result table.

http://www.paresspacewarpresearch.org/Projet_Space_Warp/Experiment_5.htm

Might be worth a quick look to you.

Also, Doctor Rodal just dropped a bit of a bombshell on the approach we were looking at the NSF forum.

Any luck finding somebody to build you your very own EM Drive yet?

Mike McCulloch said...

Thanks, interesting. I don't believe the warp stuff & they should have documented it better so people can tell how robust it is, but the expt is interesting (tho' the exponential dependence of force on power is different to emdrive). Unruh waves r partly EM and I've said b4 they might be open to interference. This might be a way to do it.

No crazy engineer yet. I'd like to think about it all a bit more, b4 considering an emdrive build, because with MiHsC I may see a way to simplify or enhance things..

Unknown said...

Mike -

Now 'Star Drive' (guy on Eagleworks team) has dropped his own bombshell at NSF. Seems they have been doing a *lot* of testing and thinking over there lately. Some of the predictions are...impressive. Might be worth a look n your part.

Mike McCulloch said...

Thanks. Interesting, but I'd really like to see the formula/method they're using (how many assumptions & adjustable parameters?) & what they predict for all the experiments (like the Tables I've shown). Have they published their formula & these predictions somewhere that I don't know about?

Unknown said...

Maybe you could communicate with 'Star Drive' directly via PM at NSF. Impression I get is that the Eagleworks team is collectively very busy with the 'hands on' stuff.

Unknown said...

CDM doesn't include any repulsive forces and yet in simulation it reproduces large scale structure and halo concentrations extremely well. What are you basing the claims that dark matter requires a repulsive potential on? It's not part of standard theory.

Mike McCulloch said...

Dark matter feels gravity so it should converge to a point. Modellers avoid this by saying the dark matter can't lose heat by radiation so it buzzes around like bees around a hive and the inertial/centrifugal apparent force is like a repulsion that keeps it out in the halo. The trouble with this is you have to put this energy in by hand checking all the time that combined with gravity it makes general relativity fit the rotation data. Computers make this delicate act possible. My point is there is no physical reason (beyond saving GR) that says 'it must be this value' (it's wrong to assume in advance that GR is right, as they do). With MiHsC there's only one possible prediction, and it works.

Unknown said...

But you don't have to put energy in by hand. N-body simulations can form galaxies out of primordial fluctuations, there is no tuning of the energy of the dark matter particles at any point. The energy they gain is gravitational potential.

Forgive me but more than a few models can re-derive the Tull-Fisher relationship, which isn't exact to begin with. A much better test would be actually predicting rotation curves and velocity distributions in ellipticals.

Unknown said...

Also your claim was that these results should have shown some sort of repulsive force, now you claim this repulsive force is not a real one but the dark matter not losing energy. But that's exactly what they wouldn't detect, it's the null hypothesis for forces. There is no contradiction here.

Mike McCulloch said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike McCulloch said...

My point still stands: the apparent repulsive force, whatever it is, has to be balanced by mutual gravity. This is a self-attraction, but the study showed that if dark matter is there, then it can't self-interact..

Unknown said...

But this study was only sensitive to real forces, not a lack of them which is the reason CDM wouldn't collapse beyond halos. You can call it an apparent force but it's not a force at all. It's a lack of momentum exchange which causes halos to be supported under their own angular momentum. Just like there is no real repulsive force keeping the planets out of the Sun, only conservation of angular momentum. That's not a repulsive force and it wouldn't show up in this study.

Mike McCulloch said...

I appreciate your comments, but :) in order to keep the halo spread out, you have to give the hypothesised dark matter particles a lot of KE/momentum, so centrifugal forces keep them spread out in orbit. This means when 2 DM clouds hit there should be a force, a real one. This study shows there isn't one. The simplest explanation then is that there's no DM.

Unknown said...

But why does a high momentum imply there would be a force between dark matter clouds and what force specifically? Seems to me it doesn't follow.