MORPH, Information & Ancient Dreams

I've not written this blog for a while, not because there is too little to say, but because there is too much going on! Also now some news is off limits because I am working with experimentors who do not like their results broadcast before they are 100% sure. Nevertheless, I will tell you as much as possible. The most important news to hint at is that I am very happy with the (inconclusive) lab tests so far.

The second advance is thanks to my post-doc Jesus Lucio who has produced a brilliant piece of matlab code, based on my uncertainty principle version of QI, that predicts the thrust expected when a laser of given wavelength and power is fired into a cavity of given shape and composition, and we have had many hours of fun playing with it. This code is also able to optimise the shape of the cavity to maximise the thrust and that is an amazing thing to see on screen - the shape morphs before your very eyes. So, I've named the model MORPH (Model of Reaction-less Propulsion by Horizons) also in honour of a character from an old program called 'Take Hart'. We have written a paper on the model and submitted it to EPL.

More good news is that other tests are now starting in various places. For example, a consortium that I have been talking to based at the University of Southern California has just received funding to test QI in the lab, using an experimental method devised by one of them that I am desperate to tell you about because it is so elegant, but can't yet. There are other tests occurring in the US and Poland.

I have been busy advancing QI theory which has been through three phases now. In the first phase (2007-2013) I derived the quantised inertial mass by damping the Unruh radiation field around objects with horizons, but you had to accept then that photons have momentum, and that just pushes the origin of inertia backwards to photons. In the second phase (2014-now) I derived QI from the uncertainty principle, which was neater, and also predicted Newtonian gravity, but you have to assume things interact in chunks of a Planck mass. The 3rd phase began in 2018 when I managed, with J. Gine, to derive QI approximately from information theory. Recently, sparked by a paper by M. Vopson on mass and information, I revisited that and managed to derive QI exactly. It also requires a separation into bits but that flows naturally from information theory anyway! I have just submitted a paper to Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

When I was studying for my physics degree at York (1988-1991) I had a crazy recurring dream about being able to levitate objects that I felt was significant, but put it aside to get on with life. Afterwards I ended up in ocean physics, a crucial step because of the ocean-wave analogy. When I proposed QI (to explain some space-craft & galaxy dynamics) I was back in fundamental physics & slowly realised that QI predicts thrust. Very recently I've shown that QI predicts materials that 'float' without power, and I've just submitted a paper on that. This brings me all the way back to that dream in 1990 & makes me wonder whether my subconscious knows more than I do..!