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

Monday 15 August 2016

Honey, I Shrunk the Proton!

Standard physics is having an increasingly embarrassing time. It failed to predict the galaxy rotation problem, then cosmic acceleration, both just about the biggest anomalies you could imagine, representing 96% of the whole cosmos. These embarrassments have been hidden under the carpet with the fudges of dark matter and dark energy (whereas MiHsC predicts the embarrassments). There have been other anomalies too: the low-l CMB anomaly, the alignment of quasars, the spacecraft flyby anomaly, the Tajmar effect, the emdrive (all of which MiHsC predicts), but these anomalies have mostly been ignored by the mainstream who are focusing on the internal consistency of a standard model ever more at odds with nature (Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic). However, now comes an anomaly (the proton radius puzzle) that is so central to the standard model that it will be impossible for them to ignore.

The proton radius is well predicted by the standard model as 0.88x10^-15m and has been measured as such for many years. You can measure it by bouncing electrons off the hydrogen nucleus (a proton) or by firing lasers at electrons orbiting the nucleus in their circular train tracks (to use the simplified Bohr model) and seeing how far they jump between tracks, a jump that depends on the proton charge radius because of the Lamb shift (an effect of the quantum vacuum).

In 2010 a group at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland decided to see what would happen if they made a hydrogen atom, replacing the electron with its overweight twin the muon (identical to the electron, except 200 times heavier). The advantage of using a heavier muon was that it orbits much closer to the proton thus allowing a more accurate result when they track the maths back to predict the proton radius. To their surprise the muon jumped a bit more than expected between its orbital levels and the equations leading back to the proton radius implied it was 0.84x10^-15m: 4% smaller than before (this was confirmed in 2013 and 2016, see Pohl et al. below). This is an anomaly seven times larger than the uncertainty in the original proton radius measurement (a so-called 7 sigma anomaly), so it constitutes a significant discovery.

The trouble, or rather the opportunity, here is that there is nothing in the standard model to allow for a proton to shrink in the close presence of a muon. Cue MiHsC? I'm now reveling in the summer research period and I've just submitted two theoretical papers on MiHsC, one of them predicting the electron mass and showing that tight orbits can release mass-energy in a new way, accounting for gravity for example. It is interesting that this proton radius anomaly is wrapped up in the Lamb shift, a quantum vacuum effect. MiHsC is also a quantum vacuum effect.

References:

Accessible report about it by John Timmer, Ars Technica: Report

 A more technical arxiv summary: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.05314v1.pdf

Latest paper by Pohl et al., 2016. Science.  http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/669

7 comments:

qraal said...

Wow! I was hoping you had something to offer on this one.

What about the latest report about a Fifth Force? Could its Rindler Horizon have an unrecognized effect too?

Analytic D said...

Horizons of rapidly accelerating observers(or rapidly orbiting) are such a tight cone around the observer that regular forces are beyond the horizon until some close distance, which experimentally might appear like a very short range force of some other kind.

But there is no road here. It is pure jungle, and it might be nothing but that.

Unknown said...

The proton as a composite particle?

Two positrons and an electron would yield a net electrical charge of +1. Coulomb's law would need some revision, however. But one of the three in orbit of the other two would certainly explain diameter variation in the proton - the proton would be an orbital system, not a particle.

A similar composite nature to the neutron would make beta decay of the neutron much more intuitive. The emitted (composite) proton and electron were the composite components.

Also explains where all that antimatter from the initial moments of the universe went - it didn't go anywhere, its still in us.

Mike McCulloch said...

qraal: I do now have something more specific to say about the proton radius anomaly: a MiHsC-type calculation predicts half of it, and can explain why only muons show the anomaly. I'm writing a paper. Intriguingly, the muon also shows an anomalous magnetic moment.

The 5th force is also fascinating. It is different: as has been said, more like the recoil effect of a new particle, ie: not predicted by the standard model. I haven't looked at it in detail yet.

David Schroeder said...

Dr. McCulloch, I do look forward to seeing your application of MiHsC to the proton radius anomaly, along with the muon's magnetic moment anomaly. I've been slowly browsing your online papers, but it's hard to concentrate on them due to record breaking heat, here in the northeast USA, and noisy traffic nearby. I should be able to focus better, with Fall weather, and the windows closed.

I can fully sympathize with your frustration with the mainstream scientific community largely ignoring your work, as I had it even worse when trying to publish a model, in the mid 90s, to explain the existence of the 2nd and 3rd generation families of particles. Here's one version of that concept, that was intended to be part of a book. I was lucky back then to have an air conditioned, quiet space in an Oceanographic Institute, where I could write after hours.

http://starflight1.freeyellow.com/schroder.PDF

Mike McCulloch said...

Dear David,

Thank you for your interest. It's seems your past has similarities to mine as I used to work in ocean modelling at the Met Office. I'll try to read some of your report, and feel free to ask me questions. My proton radius anomaly paper has just been rejected because I ascribed a speed to the orbiting muon. I'm aware that it has no exact speed quantum mechanically, but surely it's possible to approximate: v ~ alpha times c. I'll resubmit..

David Schroeder said...

Mike,

I am very impressed by the logical coherence of the MiHsC theory, and how it successfully explains such a wide range of astronomical puzzles without resorting to ad hoc fixes. The wit and humor with which you write is quite refreshing also, as I discovered, reading through many of your past posts, dating back to 2008. I've printed out several of your papers, and plan to print out all of them, so I can read them at my leisure.

One of those papers that I printed out, "Can the Podkletnov effect be explained by quantized inertia?", I've been going through very carefully. Like yourself, I was utterly fascinated by Podkletnov's claims back in the 90s, and finally decided to conduct my own experiments; albeit, at a modest, low budget, amateur level. I was admittedly discouraged by the null results of the most recent experiment by Martin Tajmar and I. Lorincz to replicate Podkletnov's impulse gravity generator: http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2016-4988 However, I did, however, note that they used a peak voltage for the discharge of 1800 V, or 1/1000th of what Podkletnov used. This was in the voltage range used by Claude Poher, in similar experiments conducted near Paris. So I'm still planning to continue my own experiments, to leave no stone unturned.

Here's the rather clunky main page of my website, (I've only learned to use basic HTML coding), where photos of my experimental setup are displayed. There's also some discussion of some admittedly wild ideas, that range from possibly plausible to rather ad-hoc, that include a concept for a working warp drive.

http://starflight1.freeyellow.com/index.html