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

Wednesday 31 October 2018

Bozeman, Montana or TU-Dresden?

This is a summary of the visit I have just made to Prof Martin Tajmar's esteemed Institute fuer Raumfahrttechnik at the Technische-Universitat-Dresden (TU-Dresden). I arrived on time at 10am. One of his students met me and took me to his office and then after a short chat, I gave a one-hour talk on quantised inertia (QI) to him & his research group of 30 or so. Martin Tajmar asked a few questions, eg:
  1. How does the cosmic horizon interact with local dynamics in QI given the speed of light limit? (Answer: there is no relativistic speed limit for monochromatic waves).
  2. Your assumption of an average acceleration of photons in the emdrive is wrong, they accelerate only when they rebound (Answer: true, but my assumption now has more backing, see below).
  3. What is the degree of shielding of Unruh radiation by matter? Won't that introduce an adjustable parameter to QI? (Answer: Maybe).

After the talk we all went for a meal at the nearby canteen, and I made it clear, as I tried to do in my talk, that I am very confident about quantised inertia on a galactic scale, but I need Tajmar and his team's world-class experimental expertise to bring it down to the lab scale.

Then he gave me a tour of his labs, in which he seems to be testing most of the anomalies I have heard of. I saw the equipment he used for the 'Tajmar effect' that I tried to explain in a paper in 2011 (see refs). It is still embedded in its concrete well. I held his small emdrive. He also has a massive wind tunnel for more mundane aeronautical experiments. At one point he said "And here is my Stargate..". I looked through a window and saw a huge room in which he is building something that looks like the fictional stargate (it's not).

Back in his office, a student who has just started a PhD devoted to the emdrive gave a talk on recent progress. They have applied 3-10 Watts to an emdrive and measured a thrust of two microN, but it disappears when they subtract thermal changes due to an asymmetrical expansion of the cavity and the resulting changes in the centre of mass. Note that this is a thrust ten times smaller than the thrust NASA JPL was getting for a similar power and this work is still in progress.

We talked about Travis Taylor's mirror proposal. It may not be possible to build as originally proposed, due to the dielectric and mirrors not being able to fit together - manufacturing limitations. So they suggested a simpler arrangement where the dielectric and mirrors do not touch.

Martin then said "We are physicists, let's play" and started writing on a white board, asking me for the relevant QI formulas to put in, and this way, we derived the maximum acceleration of a photon of given frequency. The result was interesting because it means that for visible light bouncing off a mirror the Rindler horizon will be so close that a shield will not effect it, but it also shows that for microwaves the horizon is cavity-sized, so they can see the emdrive shape, or a shield.

The most unexpected thing that Martin said to me was in the evening while socialising (I had some delicious Saxische Sauerbraten and dumplings, and rather more than my usual amount of beer). He criticised most of the well-known lab anomalies as being debatable due to often sloppy technique, and yet showed some interest in an anomaly I thought had been wildly discredited: Hutchison's. I thought I'd had too much beer.. Good physics is of course predictive, but the profession itself is not!

References

McCulloch, M.E., 2011. The Tajmar effect from quantised inertia. EPL, 95, 3. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/95/39002/pdf

13 comments:

mikenyc said...

OK, I'm willing to be the goat: What about Bozeman?

Mike McCulloch said...

MikeNYC: Good question. See Star Trek: First Contact.

3e said...

Hi can you define/describe what you mean by monochromatic waves? Do you have any references in your other papers? Most of the Unruh radiation descriptions talk about regaular electromagnetic waves.

mlodzian@onet.eu said...

Do these stargate have anything to do with Hutchison's research?

Unknown said...

Hi Mike:
The attached link shows QI as an energy level that is related to your time energy uncertainty principle description and shows how inertia is an entropic force. http://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10018 It's a short paper and doesn't set any constants equal to one. Of course they don't mention QI but they quickly notice that their entropy can only go the wrong way for a short time. Loved the beer story.
Thank You
George Soli

mikenyc said...

RIP Stan Lee

Unknown said...

Bozeman. Need to have the launch site correct when prototype construction begins.

George Soli said...

Hi Mike:
It turns out we have been measuring absorbed and reemitted Unruh radiation since the 1970s and calling it Sokolov–Ternov radiation [1]. This is inelastic scattering of Unruh radiation onto the mass shell and supports the idea that inertia is an entropic four-dimensional force [2]. And the asymmetric Casimir force is recovered in three-dimensions after the inelastic scattering onto the mass shell as shown by Equation (10) in [2]. This requires replacing the Rindler event horizon with its static limit. The static limit blocks the distant universe from interacting with the accelerated electron in circular motion because the distant universe would have to rotate faster than light in order to do so. The static limit is almost as far away as the event horizon was before it disappeared due to the circular motion of the electron and from Appendix C “Unruh Radiation” in your book “Physics From The Edge” we see that delta x from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle still enables the Unruh radiation to arrive here in a timely fashion. It’s interesting to note that the acceleration of storage ring electrons is on the same order as electrons on the gold nanotips described in “Physics From The Edge” on page 38.
Thank You
George Soli

[1] Akhmedov and D. Singleton, “On the relation between Unruh and Sokolov–Ternov effects” https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0610391v4

[2] Liangsuo Shu et al, “Local thermodynamic equilibrium and inertia principle” http://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10018

Unknown said...

+++ STOP PRESS +++
Did everyone hear the latest news? Scientists have "discovered" that a giant "dark matter hurricane" is headed our way, see:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/19/opinions/dark-matter-hurricane-headed-our-way-lincoln-opinion/index.html
The rationale of this claim is that remainings of a dwarf galaxy that once collided with ours are coming closer and according to common wisdom, these should be accompanied by 10 trillion sun masses of dark matter.

My guess is that the precursors of this event already led to strange human behaviour, like taking peculiar decisions in popular votes or in elections.... ;-)
Anyway, Mike should hurry up with his project to disprove dark matter before it blows all of us away.... :-)

George Soli said...

Hi Mike:
Continuing from yesterday. For black holes the event horizon of a non-rotating Schwarzschild black hole and the static limit at the equator of a rotating Kerr black hole are at the same radius 2m(G/c2), so we could continue to use r=c2/a, Equation 2.12 in “Physics From The Edge”. Both the Schwarzschild event horizon and the Kerr static limit are infinite redshift surfaces and that’s how both linear and circular accelerations work for detecting Unruh radiation. The static limit and infinite red shift surface for an electron in circular motion is elliptical because of Lorentz contraction along the electron’s direction of motion, which should prove useful for “warp” core design. Matt Visser’s paper “Conservative entropic forces” describes the many problems we will be facing trying to mimic gravity using quantum (your quantised inertia) entropic inertia.
Thank You
George Soli

[1] Matt Visser “Conservative entropic forces” https://arxiv.org/abs/1108.5240v4

George Soli said...

Two pies are better than one on Thanksgiving.

Hi Mike:
Happy Thanksgiving. Erik Verlinde postulates that an extra 2 pie is required in Equation (3.5) in [1] in order to get the correct answer. Like you put in the extra 2 pie in Appendix C “Unruh Radiation” to get the correct answer. Matt Visser says, in yesterday’s reference, that we need to stack the Unruh temperatures in order to mimic gravity. Ok, the electromagnetic (em) drive does this stacking nicely by making one end wider than the other. So, all? we need to do is put those virtual Unruh photons in the em drive onto the mass shell. And the virtual photons in QED increase the mass of their absorbers by E/c2 and are reemitted on shell, taking that mass increase with them.
Thank You
George Soli

[1] Erik Verlinde, “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton” https://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0785

George Soli said...

A boundary condition on quantised inertia.

Hi Mike:
Inertial mass = mass (1 – 2c2/a theta) = zero if a = c2/r and theta = 2r. And can be under stood as engineering a Rindler event horizon and hiding inside it… To conserve momentum the electromagnetic (em) drive accelerates slowly towards its narrow end.
Thank You
George Soli

Gaaark said...

Anxiously awaiting news: now they're inventing 'dark fluids'!

Next will be 'dark butterflies and rainbows'...where will the madness stop?