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

Saturday 25 July 2020

Five Experiments

While I'm sat here in Devon, thinking, there are five intrepid groups actually doing experiments, so I thought I'd just briefly outline what they are doing. A lot of these experiments are reproducable so you could set up your own QI-test based on one of these, on my naive suggestion at the end (see the link), or better still - your own technique.

Madrid, University of Alcala.

This group was the first to be set up. In 2016, their leader, Prof Jose Luis Perez-Diaz came to stay in Plymouth for a year, funded by a Salvador de Madariaga grant, to liaise with me about possible QI experiments and we came up with a possible thruster design that involves a many-looped fibre-optic. Laser light cycles around it at high acceleration, and sees short Unruh waves that are damped asymmetrically either by the asymmetry of the loop itself or a metal shield on one side. A thrust should appear. For a 2W laser, QI predicted 1 microNewton of thrust. The loop was put on a pendulum and a thrust was seen of between 1-4 microN. This is on the order of 0.001 N/kW. It seems small but this is fuel-less propulsion, so it is a huge deal, allowing light rockets (both in the sense that they only use em radiation and are non-heavy) and interstellar travel. However, this Spanish result is inconclusive so far. The pendulum is subject to significant artefacts.

Dresden, TU-Dresden.

I have to be careful what I say about this one as Prof Tajmar does not wish me to give details. I persuaded Tajmar to take part in my DARPA-funded project in 2017. The idea was that if I could get even the famous 'Dr Zero' to say 'Hmm..' then the world would listen. He decided to investigate Travis Taylor's 2017 suggestion (link) that a mirrored cavity of light would produce thrust by QI, but Tajmar thought of a simpler way to do it: fire infra-red light into a 2-d copper cavity. He tried several symmetric & asymmetric cavities and immediately, as expected, the one that was asymmetric produced the amount of thrust predicted by QI (140nN from 0.35W). Later tests though have shown less thrust either because the copper is slowly oxidising and is less reflective, or because he's eliminated experimental artifacts. The observed (?) thrust/power was 0.0004 N/kW.

Poland

Zbigniew Komala from Poland contacted me on twitter wanting to do a test. At Plymouth my DARPA-funded postdoc (Jesus Lucio) and I have developed a model that predicts which cavity shapes give the best thrust and we found that a Bart-cavity is pretty good (in the shape of Bart Simpson's head). So I asked Zbigniew to be the first to try that cavity. I am amazed by his work ethic, ingenuity and ability to manufacture cavities. He suspends his cavities on a spring and measures movements using a laser interferometer. He has found that the Bart drive does produce thrust of the expected size (30 microN from 20W). This is 0.00175 N/kW. The best thrust so far! Go Poland!

California, PD, USC.

I met Dr Ryan Weed (CEO of Positron Dynamics) at an Interstellar Studies meeting in the UK, last year when we were still allowed to meet with people. He suggested we work together. With Prof David Barnhart at the University of Southern California he put together a couple of fantastic bids for QI funding. One of which we won from CATIE (the California Aerospace Technology Institute for Excellence). The other is pending. The Californian team, delayed by covid-19, is now setting up the experiments. They aim to try the laser-into-a-cavity trick, but on a levitating track and in a vacuum.

Atlanta

Jamie Ciomperlik (aka monomorphic) is the latest explorer to have a go. He progressed remarkably quickly, going from "Hello" to "Here's the first result" in a couple of weeks. He's firing a laser into a 2-d cavity made of mirrors (see here) and using a torsion balance to detect thrust. He saw something that looked like thrust but at the moment it looks to be thermal. The trouble with his setup is that our Plymouth cavity model cannot predict what he should see since I do not know what his Q value is (it does not model glass yet) or how much of the light will escape from the 2-d open cavity.

All these teams have contributed something great. The Spanish team were the first QI experimenters. They showed interest before anyone else. The German team are very careful. They saw a thrust which impressed DARPA no end, and got me through to phase II of the project, but we shall see. The Polish team (Z. Komala) has done a brilliant job with the Bart drive and shows a lot of initiative, testing various other possibilities. I have great hope for the Californian and Atlantan teams, who have a tremendous American can-do attitude and great equipment.

Quantised inertia definitely works on galaxies and wide binaries. I believe it works on Earth as well and will produce thrust and energy that will revolutionise our society. This is testable, and every physics department should be testing it, instead they are rebuffing my attempts to talk to them because apparently I "make them feel uncomfortable". A shame, but I guess this is par for the course. All the more respect then to the engineering-oriented groups mentioned above who are testing QI and in three cases are being funded significant amounts to do so. Physicists please join in! One other suggested test is here. What you lose is dark matter for which there is no evidence after 40 years of hyper-expensive searching. What you gain is a stake in a new revolution that has brilliant astronomical evidence going for it (link), and maybe you'll get some funding too.

17 comments:

Stephen said...

I'm just a science enthusiast and have easily enjoyed following your journey. Any thoughts on where to start for how a non engineer/scientist with limited access to precision easement could experiment?

John said...

Hi Mike!
I didn't know there is so much experimental activity in QI. Congratulations and wishing you all the best!

By the way, the following paper proposes a simple mechanical construction that may demonstrate the breaking of Newton's 3rd law. Please see Fig.2.

Paper: https://vixra.org/abs/2007.0027

Is this possible? What do you think?

Simon Derricutt said...

Mike - you make a lot of physicists uncomfortable because QI implies that neither momentum nor energy are actually rigorously conserved, and these two laws are at the foundations of a lot of physics. You even use them in your derivations, after all. This looks paradoxical, until you realise that in most situations they are true and it is only that is specific circumstances that they can be violated at all. If it was easy to violate them by a useful amount, we'd have seen it before, and they are generally so close to being absolutely true that any small violation seen is put down to experimental error.

Though there's probably not a lot I can do experimentally, since we need high sensitivity and to avoid systematic errors (and that costs a lot), it's great that you've got so many high-quality experiments being done. It does seem that the Q of the system is highly important, and as the wavelength goes down it becomes harder to achieve a decent Q and to achieve the precision needed. It would be really nice to use superconductors with microwaves, but that's not that easy. It might be possible with a surface coating of "ultraconductor" plastics, which form 1-micron wide superconductive channels when trained, but to utilise that 1-directional superconductivity may entail a re-think of the cavity design to get wall currents in one direction only. With the material now being available for coating aircraft (to protect against lightning strikes) it might however be something to think about. Given the narrowness of the resonance peak, it also seems you'd need to use self-resonance to define the frequency rather than feed in an external frequency - does need to be designed by someone skilled in the art.

Only a decade on from your introduction of this radically new idea, it's getting some traction. That's really not shabby, and may only be another decade before it's more-widely accepted and there are useful devices as a result.

Robert said...

Could you design a metamaterial to act as a near perfect reflector to boost your Q? It would be nice to have Q's in the millions or billions.

Laurence Cox said...

It is interesting to see what is going on. Personally (and perhaps because my speciality is optics) I find Travis Taylor's approach most interesting. The one difference is that I would not attempt to put a laser gain material in the cavity. My own suggestion would be a small hole in the large concave mirror, so that a single-mode fibre could be inserted and the laser power introduced to the cavity through it. There has been a good deal of work on laser resonators and the design shown by Taylor is not a good one; a concave-concave design is better.

Steve said...

Keep up the great work! Any thoughts on this:

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/our-unexpectedly-smooth-universe-may-point-to-new-physics/

George Soli said...

Hi Mike: Just wanted to let you know I'm still working on emergent QI using the IKKT matrix model as a useful theory of everything, where QI and GR both emerge from the IKKT. As you know, emergent QI works great for dark matter at minimum acceleration, but using emergent QI to define inertia for laboratory measurement is taking a bit longer.. thank you for keeping table-top experimental QI alive! George Soli

Unknown said...

I saw an article recently that said something bout the clumping of matter in the cosmos not matching up with what's predicted using standard dark matter theories. It would be interesting to have someone dig up the processing that they did and do a similar run based on QI (and the 'hubble constant' growing over the life of the universe). I'd contribute to crowdfunding the computer time for such a comparison.

Mike McCulloch said...

Stephen: The best experiment so far, and perhaps the easiest, has been one as described in my blog titled 'LEMdrive?' - a fibre-optic loop shielded on one side, on a mass balance.

Mike McCulloch said...

Steve: QI does indeed predict that the universe should be smoother than expected on the largest scales. I talk about this in my paper here https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4434/2/1/81

Mike McCulloch said...

George Soli: Do keep trying. I hope you can get a paper published soon.

Derk_73-11 said...

Mike, good night from Madrid.

I just want to point you a point that come from old physics.

¿Why the thrust is related to power (Gradient of energy versus time)?.

The Thrust, is a force, Newtons on MKS system.

But if the thrust is not allowed to move nothing (For instance, mechanically fixing the device to the observer), then , no energy is achieved by the device.

Yes, I know, the input energy then goes to heat, thermal energy (After many Q reflections, it become heat)

But this not a rooted theoretical system.

You only need to lower the thermal loses, and then, relation Power -> Thrust, increase.

A coherent (At least, from old physics) concept frame, is that thrust, for each 'trip' (from one side to the other of the asymmetrical device of a electromagnetic energy), depend not on the power dissipated, but on the level of the energy reflected.

On one trip Forward-back, inside the asymmetrical device, a thrust should be generated (I am accepting even this at prior, not discus this now), OK, but this thrust , at abstract, theoretical level, must not depend on losses of energy, but on the level of the energy reflected.

This, Mike, is not coherent at ground physic meaning.

The other (Relation of thrust on one trip, to energy on the trip), is physically coherent.

Then, if we can get better and better cavities (Or optic systems, or other concepts that at the end send an electromagnetic energy forward and backward), we should have more and more thrust, with less and less power.

Theoretically, there should be no limit.

Thanks, and even you know I am very critically with this, I am honest with honest experiments.

Antonio Javier M. Martinez, Madrid, EspaƱa.

Alex_O said...

Alex_O from NSF

Mike, thank you for your work, you raised the flag on the hill that informs the meeting place of the soldiers of science before and during the battle. But I want to ask - Unruh waves - is it like, in what environment, in a spherical vacuum? Or are they waves on the surface of dark matter and in its depths? Dark matter can be a complex substance, from axons, from ultra-low energy neutrinos, or something else. In this dark matter, there can be different dark currents, dark wind, and sails can be used. A good design of space drive - obviously, it should have the necessary interfaces to different types of dark matter. Please think, the universe is large, but it is made of matter. Including dark matter.

Ttank, please correct my english.

Mike McCulloch said...

Unknown: Please see my blog entry 'Dark matter does not exist', link below. There are several reasons why dark matter is not a viable explanation:

https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2017/10/dark-matter-does-not-exist.html

Simon Derricutt said...

Mike - for the Madrid experiment, I've noticed that 20W lasers are now available for less than £100. Meant for laser-engravers, and come from China (Banggood), but may be useful to get an order of magnitude more force. May not be lab-quality, but could be interesting while it lasts. I'll send a link if you're interested.

What would happen if, instead of using a room-temperature stationary metal plate as the Unruh wave damper, either a hot plate (so the atoms move faster) or a fast-rotating disk was used instead? Again, this is a partially-thought-out idea, put up for discussion. Might need a specially-made disk, but possibly a high-speed (old) hard disk device could be used initially to see if it makes any difference. Maybe one of the old Winchester 8" drives at 3600rpm would have enough mass in the disk and move fast enough to see some difference, plus of course it should be possible to tweak it to go faster if you take the head assembly out (and a crashed disk wouldn't matter providing the disk still spins).

Mike McCulloch said...

Hi Simon. Can you provide a link to the laser? I'll send it pronto to Spain.. Thank you.

Simon Derricutt said...

Mike - sent by email. Sorry for taking a while to respond.

Turns out that the advert isn't actually truthful, and the continuous output power is only around 5W, though it seems to be pulsed at 20W with PWM. If the thrust produced isn't linear with power, that still could be worth it. If nothing else, you'll have two points on the graph of thrust versus power and be able to eliminate some systematic errors in the measurement.