The End of the Dark Age of Physics?

Physics has been in what we might call A Dark Age since the 1960s, with fashions such as quarks, space-time (general relativity took over in the 1960s), strings vibrating in 11 dimensions, dark matter and dark energy. The problem with concepts like these is that there is no way to test them directly. You can test space-time by passing things through it, but that is circular because you designed it to model that in the first place. How can you break the loop and get to view it directly? You can’t. So how can you be sure there’s not some other model that works better? General relativity failed to predict every galaxy rotation ever seen, yet is still popular!

I prefer to have physics that is successful, and testable all the way down, or as far down as possible. So quantised inertia re-grounds physics on what we can see and test directly, namely acceleration and quantum fields (Unruh radiation). I can now say the latter is observable because Lynch et al. (2021) saw Unruh radiation emitted from positrons decelerating in a silicon crystal at CERN.

What is the advantage of this grounding? Everything! First of all, it makes the theory directly testable. QI says that inertia and gravity are due to the push from gradients in Unruh radiation, and you can go and look for that. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but at least it is possible and conclusive. If there’s no Unruh gradient, then no QI. It also makes specific predictions that no other model does like the galaxy rotation cut-off, that has already been seen. In contrast, if they don’t find the latest version of fuzzy dark matter they just get more money to look for an even more invisible super fuzzy ghost variant...etc.

Also, QI makes physics useful again. By explaining the mechanism of inertia, QI immediately gives us a new handle on nature. Why not make an Unruh gradient ourselves and move things without the need for propellant? The theory also tells you how to do it – Unruh waves are usually ridiculously long (light-years) but to get them to interact with metal structures and form gradients to push with, all you have to do is shorten them by producing very high accelerations, hence the observed thrust from the emdrive which has high acceleration electrons in its cavity walls, or from capacitor drives which highly accelerate electrons. This usefulness will produce a revolution in thrust and energy. Forward-thinking industry already knows this, and QI capacitor drives are just about to be switched on in space by IVO Ltd on a Rogue Space Systems cubesat launched by SpaceX.

Theoretical physics has had the wrong approach since the 1960s and disappeared into comfort, invisibility and untestability, but quantised inertia represents the return of a real physics with consequences (both theoretical and applied). I apologise. Given the state of the world you may not want more excitement right now, but if you can take it, this is of the good kind.

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References

Lynch, M.H., E. Cohen, Y. Hadad, I. Kaminer, 2021. Experimental observations of acceleration-induced thermality. Phys. Rev. D., 104, 025015. https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.00043