One of the things I'd most like to convince physicists of is that MiHsC is fantastically compelling compared to theories like dark matter, dark energy and, say, string theory. To see why, consider the most famous anomaly in physics: the galaxy rotation problem. The outer edges of disc galaxies spin too fast to be held in by the gravity of the small amount of visible matter we can see in the middle. What is not well known, and which was first pointed out by Milgrom, is that the misbehaviour of the stars always starts at the radius from the galactic centre where the rotational acceleration of the stars falls below a critical value, about: 2x10^-10 m/s^2. This critical radius is different for each galaxy, but the critical acceleration is always the same, for globular clusters too (which cannot contain dark matter, by the way) and this is unlikely to be a coincidence.
There is no physical reason why invisible (dark matter) should suddenly appear at this critical acceleration and so it has to be added arbitrarily rather like the aether of the 19th Century or Descartes vortices of the 17th, but if you assume that inertia is caused by Unruh radiation, as MiHsC does, then this all makes sense, because at just this critical acceleration the Unruh waves get long enough (they get longer as accelerations decrease) to be disallowed because they do not fit exactly within the Hubble scale. In MiHsC the cosmos is modeled like a drum, in that only certain wavelengths can exist in it, those with nodes (where the waves' amplitude is zero) at the edge (this is because partial waves would allow us to infer what lies beyond the Hubble horizon, a logical absurdity). In a disc galaxy this means that Unruh waves for stars at the galactic edge are too long to fit, and those stars loose inertial mass because of MiHsC, so that the centrifugal force that would otherwise blow the galaxy apart reduces, and the stars stay nicely bound despite the apparent lack of gravitating matter.
It's always good if theories that have been designed to fix one problem, also fix other ones for free, and MiHsC does that: it predicts the cosmic acceleration discovered in 1999 by Riess and Perlmutter et al without needing any arbitrary dark energy to be added. It also explains a whole plethora of other embarrassing anomalies that have been brushed under the carpet recently, such as the flyby anomalies, the Pioneer anomalies, the Podkletnov and Tajmar effects, the anomalous decrease of power in the cosmic microwave background at large scales, the Tully-Fisher relation and the emdrive, and these are only the anomalies I've managed to publish papers on. There are many more that I suspect can be explained by MiHsC but haven't managed to prove yet, eg: galactic jets, globular clusters.
So to conclude: MiHsC is simple, has a logical philosophy to it, is compelling in the way mentioned above, and agrees with more data than does the standard model (without invisible matter having to be added). I would ask physicists to consider these points without prejudice. There is a lot of scope in MiHsC for development, and they could certainly improve on the mathematical/computational techniques that I have used so far.
20 comments:
A man by the name of Donald Hoffman held a highly interesting speech on TED 2015. He told the audience about the somewhat disturbing fact that his evolution simulation experiments had clearly shown, that by a strong trend, evolution only favors 'fitness' and not the emergence of beings that perceive 'reality as it is'. The latter ones all died out in his simulations. Nature evolves lifeforms to incorporate all sorts of 'hacks' that simply raise the probability of successful offspring creation. We all have evolved to have offspring. Nothing more to it, really. That's the 'purpose' of life - perpetuation and adaptation. Our human mind is just a quirky artifact of that process.
As we humans also have evolved according to this trend, it is hence not so strange that we find that pattern of nature evolving 'survival hacks' also in the human mind. Things like 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' are just hacks that seem to enable 'science' to function as normal, to perpetuate and create 'offspring theories'. But that's a dangerous illusion. Like e.g. the construct of 'God' is a hack for the human mind to give purpose and meaning to a universe that's otherwise devoid of purpose and meaning, introduction of 'dark this' and 'dark that' is just a clear hint of science slowly degenerating into religion or pure belief. Judging by how often and easily other and better takes on observable reality are nowadays suppressed or publicly ridiculed is a really bad sign for the science of physics specifically.
Do your stuff, Mike. Lookin' good.
Dear Mike,
I have a naive question on MiHsC, probably because I don't master gauge theory, relativistic theories...
you say that acceleration change the space time so that there is a rindler horizon. this is quite intuitive for me.
problems is that from the referential of the accelerating object, it is static, and only the rest of the world is accelerating.
and so for each referential, accelerated or not compare to me...
I imagine that relative reality share some commonalities because after al, object , referential are seen by others. (seen in relativity is not so intuitive... coincidence?)
is MiHsC enforcing accelerated referential equivalence?
I remember it is based on SR, not GR... maybe?
is there an ether of all galilean referential?
Dear Dr. McCulloch, I encourage you to publish more results and expand the MiHsC program; no matter some of your papers can be rejected by illogical claims such as “anomaly is too small to…” As I mentioned in another comment, Laurent Nottale developed a theory that has some relation with your work and can be of interest to analyze for going ahead more faster and backed with another research in the line of “no dark matter” theories. Please have a look at http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0307042.pdf where a proposal of 6 x 10 e-10 cm s-2 as a minimal acceleration, or see more in http://luth2.obspm.fr/~luthier/nottale/ I found this interesting because as you, Nottale’s methodology is doing science through experimental evidences and searching always for the simplest assumptions. His theory stated also a fundamental minimum quantized length, in the same way you arrived to a fundamental minimum quantized acceleration. Let me say I am using his work in my PhD and going to this seminar http://luth.obspm.fr/article603.html?lang=fr in Paris for a research I’m doing in mathematics for AI, maybe this can also be interesting because it deals with acceleration. His comprehensive book was published by Imperial College of London in http://www.amazon.com/Scale-Relativity-Fractal-Space-Time-Mechanics/dp/1848166508/ref=la_B004K2Y3T8_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441059655&sr=1-1 and I have extracted some ideas that can be related with your work, profoundly influenced by Ernst Mach principle: “… length carries the fundamental meaning and mass is only a derived concept.. page 528” or “…the inertial mass m of a particle is also fully equivalent to a length… … in any formula in which the inertial mass of a (macroscopic gravitational case) body appears, it can be replaced by its Compton length… page 529”.
I am writing this in the comment to your post to point out that your research is also backed by others and deserved to be developed and followed by more people of the scientific community as you claim. In fact you are not alone and many doctors in physics are in the ever growing group of researchers questioning dark matter and other obsolete concepts like superstrings. But your work is really special in the sense that seems readily testable, able for engineering utility in a possibly near future and in some sense, revolutionary.
I consider you should be aware of Nottale’s work because it’s strongly mathematically worked out during 35 years of publications. This concerns your final comment in the post, and maybe can help in your proposed MiHsC development. One key idea to progress is to abandon the differentiability of space and time, but adding a very interesting trick: add covariance in scale in all the differential equations, leading in an extremely nice and simple way to quantization of length. I suggest this methodology because it was very fruitful for Nottale and is on the line of your last paper about quantization of inertia.
Dear Dr. McCulloch, I encourage you to publish more results and expand the MiHsC program; no matter some of your papers can be rejected by illogical claims such as “anomaly is too small to…” As I mentioned in another comment, Laurent Nottale developed a theory that has some relation with your work and can be of interest to analyze for going ahead more faster and backed with another research in the line of “no dark matter” theories. Please have a look at http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0307042.pdf where a proposal of 6 x 10 e-10 cm s-2 as a minimal acceleration, or see more in http://luth2.obspm.fr/~luthier/nottale/ I found this interesting because as you, Nottale’s methodology is doing science through experimental evidences and searching always for the simplest assumptions. His theory stated also a fundamental minimum quantized length, in the same way you arrived to a fundamental minimum quantized acceleration. Let me say I am using his work in my PhD and going to this seminar http://luth.obspm.fr/article603.html?lang=fr in Paris for a research I’m doing in mathematics for AI, maybe this can also be interesting because it deals with acceleration. His comprehensive book was published by Imperial College of London in http://www.amazon.com/Scale-Relativity-Fractal-Space-Time-Mechanics/dp/1848166508/ref=la_B004K2Y3T8_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441059655&sr=1-1 and I have extracted some ideas that can be related with your work, profoundly influenced by Ernst Mach principle: “… length carries the fundamental meaning and mass is only a derived concept.. page 528” or “…the inertial mass m of a particle is also fully equivalent to a length… … in any formula in which the inertial mass of a (macroscopic gravitational case) body appears, it can be replaced by its Compton length… page 529”.
I am writing this in the comment to your post to point out that your research is also backed by others and deserved to be developed and followed by more people of the scientific community as you claim. In fact you are not alone and many doctors in physics are in the ever growing group of researchers questioning dark matter and other obsolete concepts like superstrings. But your work is really special in the sense that seems readily testable, able for engineering utility in a possibly near future and in some sense, revolutionary.
I consider you should be aware of Nottale’s work because it’s strongly mathematically worked out during 35 years of publications. This concerns your final comment in the post, and maybe can help in your proposed MiHsC development. One key idea to progress is to abandon the differentiability of space and time, but adding a very interesting trick: add covariance in scale in all the differential equations, leading in an extremely nice and simple way to quantization of length. I suggest this methodology because it was very fruitful for Nottale and is on the line of your last paper about quantization of inertia.
ZeroIsEverything: Thank you for pointing out that TED talk. At the end Hoffman says he only tested perception and not logic/maths, which are a way we can rise above wrong perceptions, and groupthink. He says logic/maths are next in line for testing.. Also he used a computer model & I'm wary of them. Nevertheless, as you say, the dark sector is an obvious Hoffman hack and indeed its 'fitness' could have a lot to do with joining the crowd to better survive, with fits with Hoffman's proposal.
It could be that the selection of superficial but efficient hacks is the norm, and only occasionally do humans decide to follow data and logic for brief periods (eg: during the enlightenment). I'd like to see Hoffman use his model to determine how we can set up a culture that selects for realism instead. Fascinating stuff.
The brain is a lazy thing and likes linear interpolation; thus jumping to conclusions; looking for an easy way out; being very creative at filling in gaps with pure fiction and believing it to be truth. However, the right thing to do, if encountering a weird phenomenon that contradicts what one believes to know, is to go back to zero and work a way up from first principles. I think that's what you did with your theory. Seriously, you could hold a speech like Hoffman on TED. Maybe they're interested in your theory. It doesn't need to be 'complete' or 'perfect', btw.
Amazing stuff. I am working on an EmDrive replication at the moment, if I can get funds and resources together. reckon its worth trying a kickstarter?
Dear Alain: Thanks for your useful questions, but I disagree with your particular statement: "from the referential of the accelerating object, it is static". For a body at constant speed it could indeed see itself as 'static' following Galilean relativity, as you say, but in contrast, an accelerating body can tell it is either accelerating or in a gravity field so it will not see itself as static. That said, your question opens up a lot more issues that I cannot answer clearly yet, but that are unique in MiHsC because, in its framework, absolute acceleration is not important, but the acceleration measured relative to other bodies is..
Dear conundrum: if it's funding that's stopping you, then crowdfunding is the obvious solution. Rfmwguy on the NSF forum is taking that route now. The real need with emdrive is for more conclusive experiments, and that does require more funding.
@mike
on relativity, when i say "static", I mean unable to understand if it is gravity of accelerated by a force... anyway it is very hard to have intuition in that domain...
about crowdfunding if the domaine interest industrialist, but if as I imagine they see it is not mature enough for application, but cannot be ignored as a risk, maybe the approach of LENR-Cities can be considered.
Currently they are busy with LENR, but they are open and their approach may be be replicated.
they have a white paper
http://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Attachment/110-LENR-Cities-White-paper-EN-April-14-pdf/
(from http://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/1398-LENR-Cities-publish-a-white-paper-on-their-approach-on-LENRG-ecosystem-ICCF19-pr/ )
The idea is :
Emdrive, like any disruptive innovation, may not be functional, but if it is it is a monstruous risk.
problems is that since there is nothing to sell yet, nobody want to invest in research.
what the entrepreneurial ecosystem sell is "sharing risk", for the scientists, for the industrialist, for the investor.
the scientists agree to give fair access to their IP to their (chosen) peers in the ecosystem... the insustrialist also will give access to their IP (patents, know how) ar discount price, in exchange to similar access.
this will foster sharing and cross-breeding.
The industrialist will fund research, through research program involving whoever is competent and willing in the researchers. no need to bet on one scientists alone...
this will reduce risk, as scientists will benefit from others findings, yet each keeping property on his finding. same for industrialist who will have access to others technology at fair price (no lockout).
a kind of industrial crowdfunding will be proposed, to avoid bbeing bought by a big guy.
some companies who are more frightened than enthusiasts may buy "tickets" to have access to the ecosystem, in case it becames real.
for them it will be like buying an insurance.
imagine you are building ion thruster ...
just invest a milion in an EmDrive ecosystem to have access to patents and know-how, at discount price, without barrier.
there is some logic of OpenIP (promoting sharing like free software, letting property right to the inventors)...
today it seems old kind of patent is preventing innovation.
and free technology does not promote investments...
sharing between those who share, but paying a fee anyway... small fee but much more than what small player can hope in real life (nothing in reality, they will be shaved by big guys).
@mike
I reread your statement and it seems very strange...
how a passenger in a closed lift can say it is either falling, or in free space, or in a satellite...
how can it say it is on the ground, or accelerated by a saturn V rocket ?
maybe that is the key question... as I said, hard to have intuition there.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I just meant that the person in an accelerated box would know that either they're accelerating or static in a gravity field, not static for sure. Anyway, your questions reminded me of a thought experiment I've been puzzling over for a long time, and I've just posted a blog entry on it..
I like MiHsC theory very much - not because I understand it all, but simply because there is this feeling I had when I was faced with the fact of constant and unbreakable speed of light: it is counter-intuitive for almost everyone, but it is confirmed by observation and predicts what our experience pretty well. So MiHsC is of course counter-intuitive, while "invisible Dark matter" seems to be straightforward and simple solution (but, oh well, it is invisible, but there are so many invisible things in our universe anyway, right.. like "hand of free market", and microbes you die from and harmless elmg. radiation and deadly ionising radiation, etc. so we are quite used to concept of something being invisible, even if nature of invisible things changes over time - deities and ghosts being less popular recently)
But one big problem with "general public" is... surprisingly, the fact, that Pioneer anomaly is now labeled as "explained" (at least on Wikipedia, which counts). No matter, that "official" explanation of galaxy rotation is that, it is caused by halo made of invisible pink unicorns: first of all, most people read articles on dark matter without seeing any mentions why it should be there: you just usually read stats how much % of Universe is "dark matter", without mentioning that galaxies are rotating at wrong speed. So introducing people to MiHsC usually educates them why these talks of dark matter started at all.
But Pioneer anomaly being "officialy" labeled as explained by some kind of RTG thermal emissions asymetry makes your mentions of not believing official explanations.. suspicious. So from purely "political" point of view, it would make more sense to focus on anomalies without official explanations first (as headlines), and only keep backup portfolio of bonus alternative explanations of other observations, which already have some "official" explanation attached to them (?)
Let's put it simple: Pioneer anomaly is no longer the right headliner to sell new physical theory (even if this may prove right in long run). "Dark matter denial" itself sounds good... lot of people would feel relieved, that there are in fact no invisible intergalactic poltergeists around. Occam razor, and such things.
You can wait for some New Horizons anomaly: it is spin stabilised (or will be, most of the upcoming cruise phase)... so repeated occurence of Pioneer anomaly can be measured (but the continuous spin-stabilise cruise phases may not be long enough to measure it this time, and each time maneuvring engine fires, data set is lost, more or less...)
Or, you can inspire some CubeSat enthusiasts to launch special CubeSat on interplanetary cruise trajectory, which would be calculated to maximise MiHsC-predicted flyby anomaly. This seems to be much more straightforward, than building EmDrives "edisonian way" (without any theory really able to precisely predict _exact_ shape and tuning of the cavity). Such CubeSat trajectory may be even calculated to be useful for something else, but any CubeSat beyond Earth orbit is technology validation experiment on its own. If I understand it right, distant orbits should generally show slightly less then expected orbital velocity? Or does this phenomena work only for heliocentric orbits?
You are right about the controversy of the Pioneer anomaly. I've had some hard times at conferences over that. The reason I feel compelled to mention it from time to time is because in my opinion it's been swept under the carpet by a complex computational fudge, just as galaxy rotation has with dark matter: but yes it's ambiguous so I'm on the back foot since the mainstream can shout louder. As you are saying, and as I have blogged before, I should focus on data that cannot be explained any other way. Of course, such data are usually hugely controversial, like the emdrive. A halfway house may be globular clusters which are not controversial, but cannot be fudged away with dark matter.
You mention New Horizons: good idea. I contacted NASA for Voyager range data (they're not spin-stabilised but are not firing their engines much) but the range data is not being collected they say. The data published are a model! I'll now pester the New Horizons team. About CubeSats: I'm not keen on planned space demonstrations because they are expensive and they are not as controllable as experiments in the lab. The need now is to demonstrate MiHsC unambiguously.
Distant orbits: they should behave as if their inertial mass is lower, so if in a bound orbit they should orbit faster than expected. If on an escape trajectory they should be pulled back more than expected. Thanks for your comments/suggestions.
I just removed comment which got it totally wrong: I was suggesting observing trajectory of really heavy artificial object of precisely known mass (we don't have many - because satellites burn propellant, mass of ISS is quite high, but far from being precisely measurable, etc.)
But this was wrong: all objects on same orbital trajectories feel same acceleration, regardless of their mass.
So there is no special orbit to prove inertia modification by acceleration, and higher mass also will not help.
To translate the statement about faster orbital movements: more distant objects orbiting eg. Sun should behave like Sun was significantly heavier, than it looks when taking in account less distant objects (this is what "dark matter" in a halo around Sun would help to explain, but we believe this is nonsense)
So if can manage to send two objects of exactly same weight to very different orbital trajectories, and use exactly same method to measure their orbital speed, there should be anomaly, according to MiHsC. The problem is, that we would usually use observation of the objects do determine orbital parameters! So actually, everything would look normal, only the more distant object would be seemingly on orbit with lower radius - while it will be actually more distant but orbiting faster, but not on escape trajectory.
But exact distance can be measured by delay of radio communication, so this is really about comparing data, gathered by exactly same methodics for two exactly identical objects on very different orbits. I think Pioneer anomaly really just compared mathematical model (prediction) with real data, while I would like to rather compare two datasets from different orbits, and prove, that they don't fit into same model (and all possible sources of error, like thermal radiation, would be also same for two exactly same spacecraft on different orbits)
This would be expensive, but not terribly expensive (it can be accomplished by two identical, lightweight, very simple, "ping only" spacecrafts, from which one can be placed on quite "cheap" orbit and only the second on some escape trajectory)
For one of those stars near the edge of a galaxy, wouldn't its individual particles still be accelerating quite a bit, since they are part of a seething ball of plasma? It seems like that should make the minimum acceleration not apply to the individual particles, and so not apply to the star as a whole. How do you account for this? Thanks!
Peter: Good question. Imagine a lot of hot particles moving around at random in the star, they see individual Rindler horizons very close to them (high acceleration) but because the atoms are moving at random this cloud of horizons has no effect on the star as a whole. There is then on top of this the slow acceleration of all of the atoms together as the star orbits the galaxy which is systematic and so produces a lot of coincident Rindler horizons much further off (low acceleration) that makes the Rindler horizon of the star as a whole as shown in the diagrams of my latest blog (MiHsC with horizons, no waves). This horizon is in one specific direction only so pulls the star systematically that way.
" One of the things I'd most like to convince physicists of is that MiHsC is fantastically compelling compared to theories like dark matter, dark energy and, say, string theory."
Yes, MiHsC is fantastically compelling, but only as compared to nonsense.
However, MiHsC is nonsense in its own right, because it assumes physical existence of non-existent mathematical prediction - Unruh radiation.
So, yes, to Mike, his nonsense appears fantastically more compelling than other people's nonsense. :-))
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