tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46377781574193881682024-03-16T04:13:10.212-07:00Physics with an edgeMike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.comBlogger281125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-35511693141279685862024-03-14T08:48:00.000-07:002024-03-14T08:48:57.308-07:00The Hubble "Tension"<p>If you say boo to a goose and it flies away, rather than attacking you as they used to at York University, then the sounds you hear coming from it will shift to a lower frequency as the waves from your point of view are spread out. This is the Doppler effect and applies to light waves as well. As we know, Edwin Hubble noticed that the light from distant galaxies was red shifted, that is, the wavelength of the light we received from them was longer, implying that the galaxies were moving away from us and that the further ones were moving away faster than the closer ones. This was taken to mean that all the galaxies were moving away from a common centre as if there had been a Big Bang (or a Big Boo) 13.6 billion years in the past.</p><p>Looking at local galaxies, the Hubble expansion rate has been measured to be 73 km/s/Mpc. That is, galaxies one megaparsec (Mpc) away from us are apparently moving away from us at 73 km/s.</p><p>Recently, a new method was devised to calculate the Hubble constant from observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background, that represents the cosmos long ago at a redshift of Z=1000, and then extrapolating forward using standard models assuming dark matter and dark energy. Perhaps not surprisingly they got a different answer: 67.7 km/s/Mpc.</p><p>This discrepancy is now much bigger than the uncertainties in these two numbers, so it is significant (Reiss et al., 2019). As is usual in physics now, to avoid offending anyone, this is called "The Hubble Tension", but in fact it is a falsification of the present model (as stated, the difference is larger than the error bars).</p><p>What does QI have to say about this? Well, there is an interesting link up. If you look at the difference in these speeds you get 73 - 67.7 = 5.3 km/s/MPc. Scaling this up to the speed at the edge of the cosmos you get 155,000 km/s and if you calculate an acceleration from this by dividing by the age of the universe you get</p><p>Acceleration = 3.8x10^-10 m/s^2</p><p>This is the mutual acceleration of both sides of the cosmos and we just want that of one, so when we divide by two we get about <b>2x10^-10 m/s^2</b>. Those who know about quantised inertia, QI (surely most of you reading by now) will see immediately that this is the minimum cosmic acceleration predicted by QI as 2c^2/CosmicScale = <b>2x10^-10 m/s^2</b>. So maybe the Hubble "Tension" is just the fact that they left QI out of their model!</p><p>Note that there is probably more to this, as I'm not sure I believe in the physical acceleration model either, but you must admit this does all fit rather well!</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Riess, A. et al., 2019. Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheid Standards Provide a 1% Foundation for the Determination of the Hubble Constant and Stronger Evidence for Physics beyond ΛCDM. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 876, Issue 1, article id. 85, 13 pp.</p><p><br /></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-55523958724894793642024-02-06T12:45:00.000-08:002024-02-07T05:09:38.244-08:00The 18th Birthday of Quantised Inertia<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span>Recently, last
Thursday, it was the 18</span><sup>th</sup><span> Birthday of Quantised Inertia. Back then, in
2006 I was a humble ocean and wave modeller at the UK Met Office in Exeter, with a
hobby of thinking about physics in the evenings. It was on the 1</span><sup>st</sup><span>
February, 2006 that I first realised that Newton’s First Law was slightly wrong (ie: QI) and that this was a big step</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%;">I gave my
first talk on QI (then I called it MiHsC) later that year at the Alternative Gravities Conference at the
Royal Observatory in Edinburgh where I had the last talk, and I nearly did not
get to speak as they all wanted to go to the pub! In 2007 I published the first
paper on QI. One of my colleagues at the Met Office told me I shouldn’t have
such grandiose dreams, weathermen should stay below Karman Line. I submitted
anyway and my first paper on QI was accepted by MNRAS (a prestigious
astronomical journal). The reviewer was delightfully amused that I’d used the term ‘forecast’
instead of ‘predict’ and did not quite believe QI, he said, but he also said it
was better than the alternatives he'd seen already published, so why not publish?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%;">By 2008, I’d
published enough papers to leave the Met Office and get into academia at
Plymouth University, lecturing in geomatics (the maths of positioning in space)
which was a subject vague enough to fit. I enjoyed the
teaching, and my courses on GPS Positioning stimulated me to develop a better
way to formulate QI, using uncertainty in position and information. I finally managed to show that QI predicts galaxy rotation without dark matter which is a massive result, and very clear in that even the onset of the anomaly is predicted well, and I was invited by World Scientific to
publish a monograph.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In some papers I mentioned producing thrust from QI, and a few years later DARPA got in touch (2016), said they'd been "following my work for some time", and invited me to apply for funds. I applied and won $1.3M to test for what I’d predicted: thrust from highly accelerated objects in cavities. We first tried photon cavities. I used labs in Germany and Spain, which I was soon unable to visit due to covid, but the photons were too light (pun intended) to work. Fortunately along came engineers Becker and Bhatt who'd read my papers and they suggested electron cavities instead (capacitors). That seemed to work in their lab and IVO Ltd (Richard Mansell) confirmed and improved on it. I managed to get DARPA funds to Plymouth to replicate it with engineer Richard Arundal (a paper is in review) and now IVO have launched a test into space via SpaceX and Rogue Space Systems! Another recent development is that Lynch et al. (2021) have finally confirmed Unruh radiation using CERN data. Morgan Lynch emailed me excitedly to tell me. This is good for QI, which has been assuming its existence for 18 years!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%;">Now I am temporarily between jobs, busy with new QI books (one sci-fi and one text book) and papers, but given the crazy acceleration of the past few years, there is
some relief in pausing to decide how best to progress. QI (my hobby) is so big now: a radical change to physics, thrust, clean energy,
interstellar travel... It needs development for the sake of getting humanity to
the next level, yes, but to avoid burn out I do need to get back to the feeling
that this is a deep scientific exploration & not just the race of all time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Keep Calm and Quantise Inertia!</b></div></span>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-14995500454439237912023-11-30T08:20:00.000-08:002023-11-30T08:42:08.712-08:00QI Takes Off<p>It is thrilling to know that the first spacecraft designed to test for thrust from quantised inertia (QI) is now up there. Designed and built by <a href="https://ivolimited.us/" target="_blank">IVO Ltd</a>, and launched on the 11th November aboard a SpaceX, Falcon 9 and sharing a cubesat belonging to <a href="https://rogue.space/" target="_blank">Rogue Space Systems</a>, it is now in a good low Earth orbit and IVO are monitoring it for a month to get statistics good enough to provide a baseline. At some point soon they will switch on the quantum drive and see if the orbit changes. If it does then the world will change with it. Very appropriately to the spirit of QI physics which has always been open to all, hence this blog, you can monitor the orbital data of the satellite (called Barry-1) for yourself here:</p><p><a href="https://db.satnogs.org/satellite/QDDY-8878-5291-1819-3935#data">https://db.satnogs.org/satellite/QDDY-8878-5291-1819-3935#data</a></p><p>For more information you can see an article in The Debrief by Christopher Plain, with quotes from Richard Mansell, the CEO of IVO Ltd:</p><p><a href="https://thedebrief.org/exclusive-the-impossible-quantum-drive-that-defies-known-laws-of-physics-was-just-launched-into-space/">https://thedebrief.org/exclusive-the-impossible-quantum-drive-that-defies-known-laws-of-physics-was-just-launched-into-space/</a></p><p>There's also a good article in Forbes by David Hambling, who has been following QI and related issues for a few years now, so he has a good grasp of it. It has quotes from Shawyer and myself:</p><p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/11/17/controversial-quantum-space-drive-in-orbital-test-others-to-follow/?sh=a2c9538742a7">https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/11/17/controversial-quantum-space-drive-in-orbital-test-others-to-follow/?sh=a2c9538742a7</a></p><p>Little did I know when I started scribbling on bits of paper back in 2006 (I was then a lowly scientist at the Met Office), that two years later I'd get an academic post and start this blog, six years later be invited to write a book, 11 years later get £1M in DARPA funds and 17 years later a US company would launch a test of QI into space! More will follow. It's been a thrilling ride, with a few temporary downs, but massive ups, including this launch. The pace is accelerating as well. My main hope is that I can continue to think calmly about fundamental physics as this all takes off!</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-28460254536348062152023-10-26T05:29:00.004-07:002023-10-26T05:43:47.708-07:00Free Fall, & The Lord Hates a Coward<p>I had a bit of an epiphany recently while explaining the weightlessness of free fall to my son - a way to see it using horizons. The insight that Einstein had in 1907 that a falling man would not feel his own weight was apparently the happiest thought of his life, and although I admire Einstein, I've always been wary about this evidence-less thought. It is almost as if Einstein was trying to convince himself. The insight proved to him that inertial mass (the resistance to acceleration) was equivalent to the gravitational mass (the attraction to other matter) and so they cancelled out. Lovely and symmetrical, but 100% true?</p><p>This is called the equivalence principle and it has been tested many times by experiments that are far more accurate versions of Galileo's dropping of two heavy balls from the tower of Pisa (I often had the amusing thought that he was aiming for one of his many critics). The balls hit the ground at the same time, thus proving the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. Or does it?</p><p>There is a loop hole. The change of inertial mass in quantised inertia is such that the effect is independent of the mass. The acceleration changes to: a = GM/r^2 + 2c^2/Theta. This has a constant second term, which means that both balls would still fall together, but a little faster. This means the experiments done so far (based on the two balls) will be blind to QI. They need to look at speed of fall instead.</p><p>The epiphany I had was imagining the spacecraft we were watching on screen (in Independence Day), and getting rid of all fields and only thinking of horizons. As the craft accelerates towards Earth there is a single Rindler horizon above it which damps the Unruh radiation above it pulling it up (inertia), and many little horizons caused by atoms/matter in the Earth below it damping the fields there and pulling it down (gravity). Whereas in general relativity the path of the craft is along an abstract vector in space-time (a thing that can never be tested for directly), in QI the balance is caused by horizons and their damping of the Unruh field, something that can be tested for (Unruh radiation has now been detected, see reference).</p><p>Modern theoretical physics disdains the idea of testability, but I do not, and it has been found that the best theories are always the testable ones, almost as if the cosmos gives us a reward for sticking our necks out. "Well, the Lord hates a coward." - Jim Malone.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Lynch et al., 2021. Experimental Observation of Acceleration-Induced Thermality. Phys. Rev. D 104, 025015. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.00043">https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.00043</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-15071194601091606812023-06-13T03:40:00.002-07:002023-06-13T08:00:53.569-07:00A Foresight Workshop in San Francisco<p>Last week I traveled all the way to San Francisco to attend the Foresight Institute's <a href="https://foresight.org/foresight-space-workshop-2023/" target="_blank">Space Workshop</a>. The meeting was held at the HQ of the <a href="https://fiftyyears.com/" target="_blank">50 Years</a> VC firm by the Randall Museum. It was a modern building and very St Francis: soft pillows, intense light, vegetarian buffets (nice!), beautiful views, small nooks with Buddha statues in them... The atmosphere was relaxed but highly organised.</p><p>I gave my talk, saying that QI has been proven without a doubt in space (galaxies and wide binaries), it predicts that we can get propellant-less thrust, lab tests are backing this which means we can get a probe to the Oort cloud in a year and Proxima Centauri in 10 or so. They also asked me for a challenge and offhand I said "How to fund a Horizon Institute to work on and apply QI". I felt then that this was a little selfish, but given I am losing my university post, it was the problem I had come here to solve so I let it stand. Anyway, several people voted for it and it came second and was combined with Robert Zubrin's challenge for a Mars Institute to work on colonisation by doing things first on Earth and Creon Levit's welcome plan for the Mavericks' Institute. We were called Team 1.</p><p>The next day we had a grievance session in which Zubrin repeated his interesting comment that NASA has the same budget in the 2010s it had in the 60s for Apollo but is no longer "storming the heavens", and there should be a property office for space to encourage space mining and a new gold rush. Creon Levit said that universities and institutions no longer tolerate mavericks, which is very true. I pointed out that after I published something on the Podkletnov effect I was banned from the arXiv, which is not to say I necessarily believe the Podkletnov effect, but an academic must have the right to look at anomalies without cancellation, otherwise the old theories are never going to be tested and improved.</p><p>We were then divided into our Teams. Team 1 met: Creon Levit, Robert Zubrin, Larry Lemke & I. In the relaxed surroundings and leadership from Creon, the group decided the best way forward was for Larry to test a QI capacitor drive in a 1U cubesat setup. Geffen Avraham then sat down next to me and offered to launch it! I offered of course to provide advice. Put the right people together on a comfy sofa and see what happens. We presented our plan to all, as did other groups, and there was a vote using Feynman Bucks. Our plan won the nominal 1st Prize of $3000.</p><p>The other groups had suggested projects involving <a href="https://www.fedtech.io/post/fedtech-innovator-podcast-mike-grace-from-longshot-space" target="_blank">Mike Grace</a>'s shoot-cargo-into-space (a brilliant idea that fits his larger than life character perfectly and that he is developing - he took people to see his hypersonic accelerator), proving on-orbit robot manufacture by building a long space stick (astronomer Martin Elvis was not happy) , investigating the biological dangers of colonising Mars, and the Mars Institute devoted to doing it (Zubrin and Carol Stoker have a long running debate about this). As a coda, it was suggested in jest that we could combine all these, by launching with Mike Grace's space gun, building the stick, using QI to get it to Mars, whereupon Carol Carol and Zubrin could debate whether it should land.</p><p>Overall, it was a great example of how a shared vision, a relaxing environment and first class organisation can lead to positive results. Thank you to the <a href="https://foresight.org/foresight-space-workshop-2023/" target="_blank">Foresight Team</a>.</p><p>PS: Thanks to a doctor, a nurse & the flight crew on my way to San Francisco who probably saved my life.</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-9804860565382976422023-03-28T06:14:00.002-07:002023-03-28T06:14:24.407-07:00How QI gets rid of the Gravitational Constant, Big G<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Inertia has never been understood, it has just been assumed that “Things keep going in a straight line, unless you push on them”, but why? Quantised inertia (QI) explains why.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This diagram shows an object (the black circle) accelerating to the left. Quantum mechanics states that all accelerated objects see a warm bath of thermal (random) radiation called Unruh radiation (orange) that has now been observed at CERN (Lynch et al., 2021). Relativity states that information from the far right will never catch up to the object since it is limited to the speed of light (c) (the black area to the right). The new assumption of quantised inertia (QI) is that the object & horizon (edge of the black) damp the Unruh radiation between them, as in the Casimir effect (the blue area) so more radiation pushes the object from the left than the right – this model predicts inertia (McCulloch, 2013).</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZ1qkcMGeW5gOjqS_aJU62b5HntYDW4Tr8_-uobDmQ9m21uVgQ9e_pZtE2wDYIpOoFP7HegKxFLeeM4tifLAkBlzEGRlzPJUt-FbyJfD7BRwoCaQUce_FqfQUKoPSoFTMxHnHmfgE7WhguO3oGseY4xSvP-3rRaO-71-ROtm72DDeCZ4g60MndawXi" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img alt="" data-original-height="222" data-original-width="395" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZ1qkcMGeW5gOjqS_aJU62b5HntYDW4Tr8_-uobDmQ9m21uVgQ9e_pZtE2wDYIpOoFP7HegKxFLeeM4tifLAkBlzEGRlzPJUt-FbyJfD7BRwoCaQUce_FqfQUKoPSoFTMxHnHmfgE7WhguO3oGseY4xSvP-3rRaO-71-ROtm72DDeCZ4g60MndawXi" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">QI also explains galaxy rotation without dark matter, since at a galaxy’s edge the accelerations are tiny so the waves of Unruh radiation get too long to fit inside the observable cosmos (size=Θ), so they cannot exist (Mach: what you cannot ever perceive you should assume does not exist). There is no doubt that it is QI & not dark matter that explains galaxy rotation since the galaxy rotation problems starts at the exact radius where the Unruh waves get as long as the cosmos (McCulloch, 2017). This also predicts a minimum acceleration for nature of 2c^2/Θ.</div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is how QI gets rid of the need for the gravitational constant G. The lower the acceleration, the longer the Unruh waves. Physics must act to make sure that the length of the Unruh waves is less than the cosmic diameter, so in any volume there must be at least enough gravity to keep the acceleration above the minimum acceleration, so</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">GM/r^2 >(2c^2)/Θ</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Since Θ=2r and we’ll assume it is on the threshold, then</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">G=(c^2 Θ)/2M</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This relation has long been known to work (try putting numbers in). Now quantised inertia explains it. Since we know the speed of light, c, the cosmic size Θ (to 10%) and the cosmic mass, to within a factor of 10, from counting galaxies, we can calculate G and replace G in all the equations with the right hand side above. This new physics also predicts that G varies in time, as Θ increases. So, next time someone mentions the gravitational constant, tell them it isn't, and furthermore that it is not needed at all!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>References</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">McCulloch, M.E., 2013. Inertia from an asymmetric Casimir effect. EPL, 101, 59001. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.2775" target="_blank">Link</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">McCulloch, M.E., 2017. Galaxy rotations from quantised inertia and visible matter only. Astro. Sp. Sci., 362,149. <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-017-3128-6" target="_blank">Link</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Lynch, M.H., et al, 2021. Experimental observations of acceleration-induced thermality. Phys. Rev. D., 104, 025015. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.00043" target="_blank">Link</a></span></p><div><br /></div>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-63736559339796709892023-03-17T11:58:00.004-07:002023-03-23T08:16:21.971-07:00A Quantised Inertia Drive is to be Launched to LEO by SpaceX<p style="text-align: justify;">I’ve been in the ‘New Physics’ arena for 17 years now, and things keep getting weirder. When I started out in 2006, peer reviewers of my early papers were of the opinion that they didn’t exactly believe QI but it was more likely than dark matter, they could not find anything logically wrong and the theory agreed with the data, so that was that. In other words, they put logic and facts before mere opinion.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Today, an article appeared on Universe Today (see below from the Wayback Machine) reporting two factual events that I’ve had to keep quiet about for months due to an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). The first is that a US company that I have been liaising with, called IVO Ltd, tested a QI thruster in a professional vacuum chamber and found it to agree with the QI theory. The quote from IVO CEO, Richard Mansell was “<i>All Quantum Drives showed thrust consistent with predicted Quantized Inertial calculations. Control Drives confirmed that thrust measurements were not consistent with any other known forces.</i>” The second piece of news was that they are to launch a QI drive on a SpaceX rocket on June 10th for a test in space. I was pleased that at last I could talk about these two pieces of news, but a few hours later the article had been deleted due to pressure apparently from ‘some physicists’ who doubted the QI theory. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiV4wAwl_U8qrlIFDqqF005T7i7XNOHyumUm-XDJD_Os12RKYgMyzBmEUhUajzbwsFibJxgyEgC3s3AI6DiU8UWXHyWxokDg46zP7v6TuE3lpL2D29Cn3WYVKZVaXMMy_Ez8cQA1N-Nh2RFTWosvzJQ0mNRNmhgQHAqD3ms-noaBF6HvI26dvNgWds/s680/Capture.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="680" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiV4wAwl_U8qrlIFDqqF005T7i7XNOHyumUm-XDJD_Os12RKYgMyzBmEUhUajzbwsFibJxgyEgC3s3AI6DiU8UWXHyWxokDg46zP7v6TuE3lpL2D29Cn3WYVKZVaXMMy_Ez8cQA1N-Nh2RFTWosvzJQ0mNRNmhgQHAqD3ms-noaBF6HvI26dvNgWds/s320/Capture.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">Who are these titans of physics who can erase facts that threaten their opinions within a few hours?! That would be like suppressing all news of the next SpaceX launch because you don’t believe in space: let them at least test the idea. Let’s hope this essay does not also magically disappear...</p><p>The article has of course been saved by the great Wayback Machine: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20230316185231/https://www.universetoday.com/160516/the-first-all-electrical-thruster-the-ivo-quantum-drive-is-headed-to-space/">Link</a></p><p>Kudos to Universe Today. They have republished the article with more balance. 'Tis here: <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/160516/the-first-all-electrical-thruster-the-ivo-quantum-drive-is-headed-to-space/" target="_blank">Newlink</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-35929755020571446662023-02-10T08:15:00.006-08:002023-02-10T08:26:04.600-08:00The Bullet Cluster May Prove QI<p style="text-align: justify;">The Bullet cluster has been a poster child for the dark side for years. The cluster is shown below (Source: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss - Chandra X-Ray Observatory). The pink areas show the lit matter that can be seen through a telescope, ie: that actually exists. The idea is that the pink 'bullet' on the right has smashed through the pink 'target' on the left and is still moving rightwards.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1lDpsKZHMNY9rC0m7OhGHgpSOiAhcveERksq59_qOxr8REgR5C7ptKi38eJThcarh068eWKDB1jWVYxtojkfsOMAj82pmLXrNgo7tYIv33OconwgmYZvoKkZJXMbZH83mt4iN4GOMlrpdMGrg8UJ50bW_WQnHGHimZtXH_Xm9jH7N2E1vjbb0OG6/s300/BulletCluster.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="300" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1lDpsKZHMNY9rC0m7OhGHgpSOiAhcveERksq59_qOxr8REgR5C7ptKi38eJThcarh068eWKDB1jWVYxtojkfsOMAj82pmLXrNgo7tYIv33OconwgmYZvoKkZJXMbZH83mt4iN4GOMlrpdMGrg8UJ50bW_WQnHGHimZtXH_Xm9jH7N2E1vjbb0OG6/w400-h289/BulletCluster.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Using the stars behind the cluster and distortions in them, it is possible to find out the amount of light bending (lensing) going on in the field of view and therefore, they assume, the invisible mass that is there. This is shown by the blue areas. This is their dark matter. For years they have been saying that the Bullet cluster proves the existence of dark matter because the dark is obviously separated from the visible.</div><p style="text-align: justify;">However, it was very clear to me that this system is spinning. The bullet at least is spinning, as real bullets do, around the axis which is horizontal, and the blue areas look as if they are along that spin axis. This is a clear prediction of quantised inertia, see my flyby anomaly paper (ref 1) in which space probes speed up near to the Earth's spin axis. This is a schematic of the cluster:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlvJRwYTLeTgtwPWkM0G43wq-NFgcmielASyJg2Kz2gYSciG_7IKh0qJCpoktv97Dt02I8XdpW_O3uer54VbGOiY6ZIwDFSO-hsiM8TGW4g6yZ9oceVBY-RohOJkq_qVFh_4GaNmQMNOOwMI7FgqSLGBtruUIOhzMZ1VLB6ecSaZxXNUigL83xuux/s459/Capture.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="459" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlvJRwYTLeTgtwPWkM0G43wq-NFgcmielASyJg2Kz2gYSciG_7IKh0qJCpoktv97Dt02I8XdpW_O3uer54VbGOiY6ZIwDFSO-hsiM8TGW4g6yZ9oceVBY-RohOJkq_qVFh_4GaNmQMNOOwMI7FgqSLGBtruUIOhzMZ1VLB6ecSaZxXNUigL83xuux/w400-h176/Capture.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'd been mulling this over for years, but last year I asked a student to find some data on these clusters (masses and radii) and then I calculated where the acceleration would be as low as 2x10^-10 m/s^2, calculating on a grid and adding both the gravitational accelerations (GM/r^2) and mutual rotational acceleration (v^2/r). This QI-zone is present of course in all regions away from the cluster but is especially large in just the areas shown by blue in the famous diagram (see the blue in both diagrams above). The hypothesis is that along the spin axis mutual acceleration are very low and QI bends light there, mimicking the effect of matter.</div><p style="text-align: justify;">They used to ask "Can MoND take a Bullet?" Well, MoND can't, but QI seems to do fine.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2008. Modelling the flyby anomalies using a modification of inertia. MNRAS Letters, 389 (1), L57-60</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-70024044835740102642023-01-18T04:07:00.001-08:002023-01-18T04:19:07.258-08:00A Solution for the Hubble Tension.<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">The sound of an object moving away from you will shift to a lower frequency as the waves from your point of view are spread out. This is the Doppler effect and applies to light waves as well. Edwin Hubble noticed that the light from distant galaxies was red shifted, that is, the wavelength of the light we received from them was longer, implying in a similar way that the galaxies were moving away and that the further ones were moving away faster. This was taken to mean that all the galaxies were moving away from a common centre as if there had been a Big Bang 13.6 billion years in the past. There are other ways to view it as well in QI, but let's stick with this image for simplicity for now.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Looking at local galaxies, the Hubble expansion rate has been measured to be 73 km/s/Mpc. That is, galaxies one megaparsec (Mpc) away from us are apparently moving away from us at 73 km/s. Recently, a new method was devised to predict the Hubble constant from observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background, that represents the cosmos at a redshift of Z=1000, and then extrapolate forward using standard models assuming dark matter and dark energy. Perhaps not surprisingly they predicted a slower cosmos: 67.7 km/s/Mpc. The difference between these values is now beyond a plausible level of chance, so it is a real problem (See Ref).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Now let us calculate what part of this predicted Hubble constant they would miss given that they do not include the extra acceleration due to quantised inertia. It would be 2x10-10 m/s2 over the lifetime of the universe (4.4x1017s) at the cosmic edge (radius = 4.4x1026m). OK. So what would it be at only 1Mpc distance (1Mpc = 3x1022m)?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">dH = 2x10^-10 x 3x10^22 x 4.4x10^17 / 4.4x10^26 = 6 km/s/Mpc</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">The observed discrepancy in the Hubble constant is 5.3 km/s/Mpc. Nice!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">For headaches and Hubble tension, just take QI!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b>References</b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Riess, A. et al., 2019. Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheid Standards Provide a 1% Foundation for the Determination of the Hubble Constant and Stronger Evidence for Physics beyond ΛCDM. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 876, Issue 1, article id. 85, 13 pp.</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-92167768351486349702022-11-24T05:23:00.001-08:002022-11-24T05:23:45.383-08:00On the Cusp?<p><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For the past five months my Chief Engineer (Richard Arundal)
and myself have been busy in the lab attempting to prove that one can extract
propellant-less thrust from a capacitor by using quantised inertia. QI thrust is
implied theoretically (McCulloch, 2013, 2017), but a capacitor approach was
first suggested and tested by Becker and Bhatt (2018) who had read
my paper on thrust and dielectrics (2017) and did some lab tests in liaison with
me. Their work has been seconded by Mansell/IVO Ltd.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjxVIu_ubm_2jgM24K2tGLLLftZfovJFYUEBQ6DkEh1olvr1ISrjkAW5lZcEOT6L396ejeDdV5o4t4CAU5KlB8r8Jhf2RiLoDjnk0adI910GrGi0sn5UfRD2NuVNVDDPMfXp36xJWiEa5tK2vZToMzShtlyOaz4_G9s9hUiETKNa9eUu-edKNYc3Yy" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="372" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjxVIu_ubm_2jgM24K2tGLLLftZfovJFYUEBQ6DkEh1olvr1ISrjkAW5lZcEOT6L396ejeDdV5o4t4CAU5KlB8r8Jhf2RiLoDjnk0adI910GrGi0sn5UfRD2NuVNVDDPMfXp36xJWiEa5tK2vZToMzShtlyOaz4_G9s9hUiETKNa9eUu-edKNYc3Yy" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Curious to test this approach I used
the last remaining DARPA money to set up a lab at Plymouth University, hiring
Richard. What we now have in the lab is shown above, with a few
details withheld for IP reasons. The capacitor (blue plates with orange dielectric) is placed on an
insulating tower on a digital balance on a heavy damping plate. The capacitor is charged up to 5 kV with a HiPot tester (on top) via
wires that pass their current through Galinstan, a cool liquid metal that breaks the
physical connection to the outside world and allows the capacitor to ‘float
free’ on the balance.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For the past month we have been struggling with an unwanted electrostatic
force, but we noticed an asymmetry as we flipped the capacitor. Recently I
have looked at all the data and used maths (including matrix algebra, that I always wanted to use for something useful!) to separate
out the EM force from the asymmetrical one. This extracted force is towards the
anode and looks like QI. It is about 10 milligrams, only 1/3 of the force
predicted (McCulloch, 2021) but there are good reasons why that might be, and
we will now look at those.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In short, unless we can think of another effect that could
cause a force towards the anode, then we have it and the transport & energy
industry will never be the same.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">References<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Becker, F.M. and A.S. Bhatt,
2018. Electrostatic accelerated electrons within symmetric capacitors during
field emission condition events exert bidirectional propellant-less thrust.
Arxiv: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368">https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">McCulloch, M.E., 2013. Inertia from
an asymmetric Casimir effect. EPL, 101, 59001. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.2775">https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.2775</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">McCulloch, M.E., 2017. Testing
quantised inertia on emdrives with dielectrics. EPL, 118, 34003. <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/118/34003">https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/118/34003</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">McCulloch., 2021. Thrust from symmetrical
capacitors. Preprint: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia</a>
(submitted to Adv.Sp. Res.)</span></span>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-32062900693936180542022-08-04T10:43:00.004-07:002022-08-07T09:33:51.003-07:00Glimpses of QI in the Lab?<p style="text-align: justify;">Starting in mid-June, Richard Arundal and I have completed 45 experiments, charging up capacitors 4x4 cm in area with either kapton or Polyethylene dielectrics between the plates. We have been carefully eliminating pesky artifacts, through trial and error, along with the appropriate amount of engineering, er, 'jargon', and taking readings with increasing accuracy. Here I summarise the cleanest data we have so far. The plot below shows the change in thrust up the y axis (a positive value is always a thrust towards the capacitor's anode) for eight runs. As we increase the voltage and move along the x axis, each point represents the weight change we saw (in grams) when we stepped the Voltage up by 100V. QI predicts that when we reach somewhere around the breakdown voltage for the capacitor, which is very uncertain but may be around 1 kV for the thin kapton and 1.5 kV for the thicker polyethylene, there should be a thrust towards the anode, ie: a shift up on the graph.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHd_5qYBMe4JEPR5jXvjFhrTGaOtb1FE2GeOj62Wh1zWpW7U8Cdmpd8-H11Q0yRIcXmWcgxIeLRqNrlu4xrZ6rr87bykgm5j6hacvIHvbCouD1A_oy2WLJhMZc_a-B7XZZsADyr54pngPCwotgRXQ0b0na5PFIMGYLFAsGZtdKfJ2a63zy-_c0ubpp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="570" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHd_5qYBMe4JEPR5jXvjFhrTGaOtb1FE2GeOj62Wh1zWpW7U8Cdmpd8-H11Q0yRIcXmWcgxIeLRqNrlu4xrZ6rr87bykgm5j6hacvIHvbCouD1A_oy2WLJhMZc_a-B7XZZsADyr54pngPCwotgRXQ0b0na5PFIMGYLFAsGZtdKfJ2a63zy-_c0ubpp=w400-h306" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;">The first two cases shown: x27 and x28 (blue squares) used the polyethylene dielectric (30 micron). In plain English this means 'the plastic from plastic bags', and QI predicts (McCulloch, 2021) that the thrust should be</span></div></div><p style="text-align: justify;">F = 0.00014IA/d^2</p><p style="text-align: justify;">where I is the leakage current between the plates, A is the plate area and d is the plate separation. If we assume that the leakage current = 10^-9 x voltage (which fits what we have seen with our measurements of voltage & leakage current) then</p><p style="text-align: justify;">F = 0.00014 x 10^-9 x VA/d^2</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So</p><p style="text-align: justify;">dF/dV = 0.00014 x 10^-9 x A/d^2</p><p style="text-align: justify;">To convert force in Newtons to grams we multiply by 100 and then by another 100 to get from g/V to g/100V. For the 4x4, 30 micron dielectric then we have 0.002 grams/100V (100V was our increment). This fits the x27 and x28 data (blue squares) as the peak at 1.6-1.9 kV reaches just above 0.002 g/100V. The peak thrust from these two capacitors is at a likely breakdown point.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The other runs show the 7 micron kapton dielectric runs (blue-red circles). Those that do show a positive peak: x38, x43 and maybe x45 show it at 1-1.3 kV which fits because these capacitors are thinner and should break down at lower voltage. From the equation above, the kapton should produce 0.046 grams/100V and that is close to what we saw. The faint box represents the area I expect for the QI thrust. It is uncertain in the x direction as the quoted breakdown voltages of dielectrics have a large range.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">One problem remaining is that we do not yet have a perfect example of turning the capacitor over and getting a reverse thrust. We can maybe see that in x37, x45 and especially x48 which were reversed but the peaks are small and these runs were not very clean (x45 was drifting well before 0.1kV was reached). x48 gave us a sustained peak at the right time, but there was a brief glitch while powering up.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In summary, we have a few positive peaks which are encouraging. So is the fact that the kapton runs show both a lower break down voltage and a higher thrust than the polyethylene. Are these peaks due to QI? If so, the world has changed, but time will tell. We need a good clean reversal of force. Richard Arundal has been excellent - he is a skilled engineer who does not give up. Please go and see his youtube channel linked below. The last six weeks have been a roller coaster, but with a slow geological scale uplift.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2021. Thrust from symmetric capacitors using quantised inertia: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia</a></p><p>Arundal, R., 2022. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO00nPk5WkpV0ggLGLnHHiQ">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO00nPk5WkpV0ggLGLnHHiQ</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-90206423635873389112022-07-09T04:41:00.005-07:002022-07-09T05:19:52.280-07:00How to (Maybe) See QI in Your Lab.<p><b>NOTE: Only act upon this if you have experience with high voltages.</b></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Here is a practical way to (maybe) see QI thrust at home. I've been musing about using Unruh radiation and QI for thrust for 17 years in my theoretical papers (McCulloch, 2008, 2013) but the capacitor method was proposed by Frank Becker and Ankur Bhatt (2018) and has since been improved by several people, many of whom wish to remain anonymous, but they especially include my post-doc & my research assistant Richard Arundal. Here I describe the thruster we are testing at Plymouth University.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">1. The QI Sail / Horizon Drive. A capacitor should be built consisting of a dielectric layer 10-20 micron thick made of kapton (or Krapton as Richard calls it - very fiddly to handle) or polyethylene, and 6x6 cm in area. This is sandwiched between two 4x4 cm aluminium foil plates, finely sanded in their inward facing sides to make sharp 'peaks' to encourage the field emission of electrons. Copper plates, of about 2x2cm are added outside these plates in electrical contact, and power wires are soldered to these copper plates.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">2. The power supply can be a 12V battery, but converted up to, 1kV, by a DC to DC converter. There are many other methods. The power is applied to the capacitor. Take care. In our case we slowly ramp up the voltage over 20 minutes, and then slowly discharge the capacitor at the end. The important thing is to have a potential difference between the plates of about 1-2kV, and make sure the dielectric reduces the current across itself to a so-called leakage current on the order of a microAmp. This ensures that the electrons are 'jumping' across at a very high acceleration and therefore see Unruh waves short enough to interact with and be damped asymmetrically by the metal plates. The plates damp the Unruh waves causing a gradient in the field that causes a push (McCulloch, 2021).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">3. Place the setup on a balance capable of measuring to 0.01g. Ideally the setup should be self-contained, but this is hard to do. We hope to see forces too large to be explained by interactions between the current & the Earth's magnetic field, for example. These other effects can be calculated anyway.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">4. You may want to use a vacuum bag, evacuated of air, around the capacitor to reduce the chance of air pockets in the gaps, which can cause tiny explosions (you see little <1mm punctures in the foil and hear a popping). Also, try to make sure the desk you use is stable (leaning on it can cause a reading) and there are a minimum of conductors nearby. Place a shield around the setup to reduce air flow.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">5. Switch on, ramp up the power, watch the balance. If the capacitor anode is facing up, you may see a force down, an increase in weight, since the copper plate below the capacitor is damping the Unruh field below and the drive will move down towards the damped part of the vacuum, or the horizon (which is the copper plate). In our 22 tests so far 14% of them have shown a thrust. See plot below. The rest showed no thrust, suggesting that electrostatics is not a problem). For a theoretical explanation of what is happening, see McCulloch (2021). The QI force you should expect is given by F = 0.00014IA/d^2 where I is the leakage current, A is the plate area and d is the plate separation. For videos of the setup see Arundal (2022) and other videos on his youtube channel.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">6. Since I am sharing this information openly, please do the same and tell me about your results. Also, take great care, and it is best if you try this only if you have experience of high voltage. 1kV is not trivial.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">7. Enjoy being cutting edge! You are now a Horizoneer.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgeRC7_U2K1tsYj-m8GeG-i45WwfTh4jkmjwpyD42GxvIh7rBhqhRNz0DfzOsBJHTHSMLh9N031JVv5ua4LItmCnYC8RHe7c_3TuCR88Rt8FDkJkV6s8HcRCMU75pFTRnH7Rapryc5yk1wqausEwxn8C-QcuW7DEQP9p2E8krMTIkp-Nx_7JYFBAXk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="283" data-original-width="629" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgeRC7_U2K1tsYj-m8GeG-i45WwfTh4jkmjwpyD42GxvIh7rBhqhRNz0DfzOsBJHTHSMLh9N031JVv5ua4LItmCnYC8RHe7c_3TuCR88Rt8FDkJkV6s8HcRCMU75pFTRnH7Rapryc5yk1wqausEwxn8C-QcuW7DEQP9p2E8krMTIkp-Nx_7JYFBAXk=w400-h180" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Plot: Our three positive thrusts so far. The thrust (y axis, in grams) increased with voltage (x axis, kV), until in the first two cases (grey and blue) it reduced & there was a fizzling as the dielectric burned out.</div><p></p><p><b>References</b></p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2013. Inertia from an asymmetric Casimir effect. EPL, 101, 59001. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.2775">https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.2775</a></p><p>Becker, F.M. and A.S. Bhatt, 2018. Electrostatic accelerated electrons within symmetric capacitors during field emission condition events exert bidirectional propellant-less thrust. Arxiv: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368">https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368</a></p><p>Arundal, R., 2022. Podcast on recent build: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB3pqlHvA_s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB3pqlHvA_s</a></p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2021. Thrust from symmetric capacitors. Preprint: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-83199623906619163162022-05-04T04:27:00.004-07:002022-05-04T07:37:39.414-07:00The Black Hole Information Paradox<p style="text-align: justify;">The cosmos, empty space, is known to be full of virtual particles. They appear in pairs to conserve momentum and then recombine after a short while. In 1976 Hawking showed that black hole event horizons can separate these pairs by trapping the one on the wrong side of the horizon. The star-crossed lovers are unable to recombine, so one of them becomes real and is emitted as Hawking radiation. This means that whereas black holes can hoover up information-full objects such as flowers and manuscripts (see below left), they can only emit thermal, random, Hawking radiation (see below right). This means the information in the flower and the manuscripts has been lost.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgT3Gbb_uwclRCO_DTuGj1XcrC6Cuq6hyB2yLOtRriiCOAD9rXREmzm-eJbflprj2C8JMw1UzAh6WLXxFShI1T5dmBnUKGfCoUDleYC-AsN3ARxYKkedVXeZsoDk-pIUJDR2zqYvAeJcT9B_uAIlG6aCGSZJ1sT5I8URZPiccJkK7hheUqTZ_5sTaS5" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="487" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgT3Gbb_uwclRCO_DTuGj1XcrC6Cuq6hyB2yLOtRriiCOAD9rXREmzm-eJbflprj2C8JMw1UzAh6WLXxFShI1T5dmBnUKGfCoUDleYC-AsN3ARxYKkedVXeZsoDk-pIUJDR2zqYvAeJcT9B_uAIlG6aCGSZJ1sT5I8URZPiccJkK7hheUqTZ_5sTaS5" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Hawking, Kip Thorne and Roger Penrose were perfectly happy to have information destroyed, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t’Hooft published a manuscript called The Black Hole War saying that Hawking was violating one of the laws of the universe: the conservation of information. Since when has that been a law? They argued that in quantum mechanics the wavefunction at any one time is supposed to be predictable from the wavefunction at any other time and if you lose information then you can't do that. You lose what they call the unitarity of the wavefunction. They suggested that the information that goes into the black hole survives and proposed the holographic principle which says that information is stored in horizons (a nice idea). Hawking conceded he had lost but Penrose and Thorne did not concede. In my opinion, there may be some merit to both approaches, if combined right.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The debate is at the heart of physics, which has still not come to grips with the new concept of information, but let us see what empiricism and a little logic can offer. Landauer’s principle (reference 1) argues that when computer memory is erased say from the complex 11010 to the uniform 00000, then this is a loss of information, and a reduction of disorder or entropy, which cannot be allowed, so heat must be released. This heat has now been observed (ref 2) whereas the 'unitarity of the wavefunction' has not. One point for information loss. Another point is that quantised inertia (QI) and therefore the observed galaxy rotation without dark matter can be derived beautifully by assuming information loss (ref 3).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The picture is not complete though. In QI, if you accelerate, a horizon obscures your backwards view of the world, erasing information and providing, via Landauer, exactly the right amount of energy to fuel the inertial back-push (ref 3). However, if you stop accelerating, then that information comes back again. Where was it hiding in the meantime? The QI approach may offer a compromise here since accelerating objects see Unruh radiation that inertial (unaccelerating) observers do not. In QI information is in the eye of the beholder. Each object has its own informational universe, and what has been deleted in one may be retrieved by negotiation from another.</p><p>References</p><p>Landauer, R., 1961. Irreversibility and heat generation in the computing process. IBM J. Research and Development. 5, 3, 183-191.</p><p>Hong et al., 2016. Experimental test of Landauer's principle in single-bit operations on nanomagnetic memory bits. Science Advances, 2, 3, e1501492 <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1501492" target="_blank">Link</a></p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2020. Quantised inertia, and galaxy rotation, from information theory. Adv. in Astrophysics, 5, 4, 92-94. <a href="http://www.isaacpub.org/images/PaperPDF/AdAp_100151_2020092601043297564.pdf" target="_blank">Link</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-28448788485690573492022-01-23T05:46:00.006-08:002022-01-23T08:11:11.226-08:00Learning from Experiments<p style="text-align: justify;">It's a tricky thing taking a cosmological theory (QI) and applying it to the lab, applied cosmology, because although I am sure of QI from a theoretical and astrophysical point of view because it predicts galaxies and wide binaries in a simple and specific way, its behaviour in the lab is more subject to detail.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">That was the reason I received my funds, to see if it could be done. The data from the project has partly changed my mind about solid state details, but I have not changed the fundamental QI theory.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I had originally thought that the best way to get thrust from QI was to use light or microwaves. Light is clean. The photons will see Unruh waves which will be damped by metal structures asymmetrically and the structures will move toward the damped regions. It turned out that QI thrusters based on light alone did not perform well (Tajmar, 2021) and yet QI thrusters that are based on electrons did (the capacitor approach of Becker and Bhatt, 2019). I have thought a lot about this over Christmas, and going back to the QI equations there is an explanation for this in that light, is well, light (it has very little mass), and it does not stick around in cavities for long so the mass-energy you can focus is low, whereas electrons have much lower speed and more mass, but still high accelerations and so the mass-energy you can focus is much higher. Thus thrusters based on electrons are 1000 times more effective and QI predicts them perfectly (see McCulloch 2021). Look at Eq. 2 in this paper. The problem was caused by me earlier assuming that v=c, not so for electrons! When you use the correct speed, you get this plot:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCFHuVU2yafs6zOYd-NfEDv5pqAOcilUavu4dxFUBykaGigpk53zPmsEOSsWHbyExXptzHtj7xRiFvD0PFh9YpU_jnctXOk6JZqMWObSyqqdGfh13Gdb0nx4K41AJtxDhVeuk5X3rZOOyA7rJsbi5nYA7sEdkTbvouHIGjekIV7J2BnZeyIGKnjplV=s465" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="465" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCFHuVU2yafs6zOYd-NfEDv5pqAOcilUavu4dxFUBykaGigpk53zPmsEOSsWHbyExXptzHtj7xRiFvD0PFh9YpU_jnctXOk6JZqMWObSyqqdGfh13Gdb0nx4K41AJtxDhVeuk5X3rZOOyA7rJsbi5nYA7sEdkTbvouHIGjekIV7J2BnZeyIGKnjplV=w400-h283" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">The graph shows a comparison between QI predictions (x axis) and the various experimental thrusts (y axis) from Shawyer, Tajmar, Madrid and Moddel. QI still predicts the emdrive (top right), which may now not be due to the Unruh waves from the microwaves but from the Unruh waves seen by electrons accelerated by the microwaves in the metal walls, if you make a resonance. This makes no difference to QI mathematically, but it is a different physical interpretation. It accounts for the effectively zero thrusts seen by Tajmar's team for the laser cavities (bottom left) and the tiny but confirmed force seen in Moddel's photoinjector. It implies that the positive Spanish result was an artefact (middle-left) (unless the electrons in glass were the accelerand) and QI predicts the capacitor results perfectly (top right): results now seen in two labs.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It would have been nice if I could have said this years ago, of course, but QI has been since 2005 a learning experience and I am doing the best I can. For example, my first attempt at galaxy rotation in 2006 did not work because I assumed the only accelerations were rotational. I later learned there are other accelerations, and with more detail - better prediction. Over all this time I have not needed to change the QI theory or the maths, but I have changed the detailed understanding of what is going on. I am not adding arbitrary factors either because the behaviour of stars or electrons are known quantities.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">QI has not been falsified. In systems where it is the only factor present, such as galaxies or wide binaries, it performs perfectly. In lab applications, my lack of awareness of physical or engineering details has been a problem, but I am willing to be wrong and therefore to learn.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Bhatt, A.S and F.M. Becker, 2019. Electrostatic accelerated electrons within symmetric capacitors during field emission condition events exert bidirectional propellant-less thrust. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368">https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368</a></p><p>Neunzig, O., M. Weikert and M. Tajmar, 2021. Thrust measurements of microwave-, superconducting and laser type emdrives. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355859493_THRUST_MEASUREMENTS_OF_MICROWAVE-_SUPERCONDUCTING-AND_LASER-TYPE_EMDRIVES">Link</a> 72nd IAC, Dubai.</p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2021. Thrust from Symmetric Capacitors using Quantised Inertia. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-73665736762587095192021-11-02T10:58:00.009-07:002021-11-05T05:59:26.426-07:00A Thrust from 'Nothing'.<p style="text-align: justify;">In a small lab in Plymouth, a new quantum thruster is taking shape. I have been theorising about getting thrust from quantised inertia and trying to work out how best to do it for DARPA (see ref 1). With Prof Perez-Diaz we managed to get a few microNewtons out, and I had considered asymmetric plates, but engineer Frank Becker read my papers, remembered a capacitor-based Biefeld-Brown-type experiment he had done, and with a few discussion with me, he and Ankur Bhatt tried it and produced milliNewtons of thrust (see ref 2). This test made my year. Even DARPA emailed me saying something like "What the heck is this!?". One problem was that they had used a high voltage with a digital balance so there was a potential for glitches. Then Richard Mansell of IVO Ltd tried it with an analogue method and agreed with them. This new Mansell group has also blazed the path in innovation as well.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In its simplest form, anyone, with a little care for safety, can try this experiment. If you have a humble desk and a power socket then the cost is £800. I know because I've just spent that much on it! Not bad for a technology that promises to revolutionise just about every industry we have: satellites, rockets, cars, energy...etc. The trick is to ensure no artefacts, and that we hope to do at Plymouth.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The method is to setup a potential difference of 5kV between the plates of a capacitor, and separate them by about 10 micron with a dielectric. You then allow electrons to quantum tunnel across the gap at a very low current (1 microAmp) but at a massive acceleration. The theory of quantised inertia says that they will see a field of nice hot Unruh radiation everywhere, except between the capacitor plates, as for the old Casimir effect. There will be then a quantum void between the plates that will pull the electrons out of the cathode faster than expected and this will add momentum to the system which will thrust towards the anode. A thrust from 'nothing'. As you can see in the theory paper below (ref 3), QI predicts the results of Becker and Bhatt and Mansell exactly, even the changes as you vary the plate separation.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I'm glad that my openness about QI theory and its possible applications, partly in this blog, encouraged talented engineers to contribute because in my opinion they have shaved years off the path to QI application. This includes the above-mentioned folk, but also many on twitter and many who made comments here. My question is, what is my role now? Of course, I will continue to develop the QI theory, and I have two novels describing it written, and a second text book in the works, but my DARPA funding ends at the end of 2022. I hope to give DARPA a quantum thrust of 10 mN by then. What then?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">What I'd like to do is to maintain freedom to continue to develop QI, to write about it, to not starve (!) and not have to be too distracted with business! One possibility would be to setup a Horizon Institute (HÎ)? Perhaps more like a Federation of Labs. The idea would be to use crowd funding or Venture Capital funding to provide support to labs developing QI thrusters, space & interstellar tests and new energy sources based on it, provide advice based on QI, and also a testing facility. In the present era it might be best outside academia? There are already two university labs (In California and Texas) crying out at me for money to start their experiments. As usual, I can see the horizon but not the detailed path to get there! Please make comments below - you might get us to Proxima Centauri quicker!</p><p><br /></p><p>References</p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2018. Propellant-less propulsion from quantised inertia. J Space Explo, Volume: 7(3). <a href="https://www.tsijournals.com/articles/propellantless-propulsion-from-quantized-inertia-13923.html">https://www.tsijournals.com/articles/propellantless-propulsion-from-quantized-inertia-13923.html</a></p><p>Becker, F. and A., Bhatt, 2018. Electrostatic accelerated electrons within symmetric capacitors during field emission condition events exert bidirectional propellant-less thrust. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368">https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368</a></p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2020. Thrust from symmetric capacitors using quantised inertia. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353481953_Thrust_from_Symmetric_Capacitors_using_Quantised_Inertia</a> (Submitted to JPC).</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-50359244165153779282021-10-12T05:27:00.001-07:002021-10-12T05:27:18.895-07:00The Mayflower Institute?<p style="text-align: justify;">The big change since I last wrote is that I have a new post-doc (Dmitri) who is tasked with testing for QI thrust right here at Plymouth. I'm pleased with him. He has suggested that, since we are dealing with radical new physics, our testing methods should be as conventional as possible. I like to call it the Caesar approach - Julius Caesar was seen to be too flashy by his stolid Roman peers so he made his memoires deliberately dull. Anyway, Dmitri has comprehensively studied the field of small thrust measurement, looking at techniques from the UK's NPL and the US's NIST and other esteemed places and has suggested a torsion balance method, in a soft vacuum, with an electrostatic or electromagnetic force source and capacitor transducers. He has produced a beautiful design which will take five months to build. In the meantime, I have many other labs to keep me occupied and the goal now is to enhance the thrust so it is above the noise. One of my funders said something like:</p><p style="text-align: justify;">"We'd like to see it floating over the desk, rather than just over the noise". That goes for everyone I guess.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Dmitri and I have also discussed setting up an more permanent thrust-test program here. I'd like to go further and set up an institute, not just for studying QI thrust, but to go all the way from lurch to launch. An Institute for Horizon Science and Engineering? (IfHSE) pronounced "Ifs". A good word for a testing centre? Or perhaps, alluding to Interstellar Possibilities, the Mayflower Institute as I have been discussing with my friend Bill Smith who visited me last week. Exactly how to do this is not clear yet.</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-1014150682437894112021-07-27T09:25:00.009-07:002021-07-27T12:05:28.150-07:00How to Predict (Almost) Everything<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Well, my title is a little cheeky but I think it's fair to say that if physicists and engineers actually knew what quantised inertia predicts, that they just can't, then they'd start work on it tomorrow. So here is a sort of abridged summary:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">QI predicts the recently-observed cosmic acceleration perfectly without needing any infusions of invented dark energy. QI explains why the universe is flat (PE=KE) and always has been, so gets rid of the need to imagine our particular era is 'special'. QI predicts the value of the gravity constant G from the cosmic mass and scale and speed of light. This means that physics has lost a free parameter and has become simpler for the first time since 1905. QI predicts galaxy rotation, and specifically why the oddities always begin at a particular acceleration. MoND has to input this acceleration, QI does not - it predicts it itself. QI further predicts the observed variation of this critical acceleration with cosmic time. QI predicts the low-l CMB anomaly in which it looks like the longest waves in the cosmos are smoothed out, and the CMB peaks as well, but not their heights. It predicts a relation between the area of something and its mass. QI predicts the first, and a few others of the quantised redshifts seen by Halton Arp - the others may appear when we look at other electron transitions. It shows why the Magellanic clouds appear to have broken free of the Milky Way but have left a 'stream' behind them that curves around the galaxy implying they are still bound. QI predicts the motion of wide binary stars which show identical anomalies to galaxies when they are far apart, and orbit below the critical acceleration. Dark matter can't explain them because it can't be packed into the small scales of binaries and still predict large galaxies. You can't have it both ways, so dark matter can now hit the road. QI predicts the very beautiful shape of Hoag's object which is almost like a poster child for the theory. It predicts the orbit of our neighbour Proxima Centauri, which is orbiting far too fast, just like those wide binaries and the larger galaxies. QI predicts the bending of light by the Sun, just as general relativity does, but it is successful with galaxies too, which GR is not. QI predicts relativistic jets in galaxies and so gets rid of the contrived & complex, and conveniently invisible, black hole explanation. QI predicts the Casimir effect, the emdrive, Mach effect thrusters and the asymmetric and symmetric capacitor thrusters that half the planet thinks are hoaxes and half think are the saviours of mankind. It predicts some aspects of the Podkletnov gravity shielding effects, which are much maligned but were published in good journals and have not yet been falsified. QI predicts the test results from my lab in Spain who observed thrust from a laser loop, shielded on one side. If this is confirmed then we become an interstellar species, which would be timely! QI predicts the photons seen coming out of the Dynamical Casimir Effect. It provides an explanation for cold fusion, or LENR if you prefer, and for the excess light seen coming out of nanocavities. A new source of energy from the vacuum? Similarly it predicts sonoluminescence. QI provides a new way to understand pair production and it predicts the ratio between the proton and electron mass, and the Planck mass. QI provides the first ever intuitive explanation for inertia which has always been brushed under the carpet in physics.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To finish, QI is conceptually challenging but technically very simple & can be used to predict a massive range of phenomena. I am writing a book to detail all this which might be called 'The Empiricist Strikes Back' or 'How to Predict (Almost) Everything'. Now I should say that of course I do not necessarily believe every anomaly listed here, but I think this list, which has taken me 15 years to present, implies something!</span></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-4413818170282639582021-06-06T03:42:00.004-07:002021-06-06T23:48:19.435-07:00Whose Hand on the Tiller?<p>Here is a Letter I just emailed to New Scientist. I doubt they will publish it so I am putting it here to avoid having wasted my time:</p><p><i>In 2007, I started to publish peer reviewed papers suggesting a new theory called quantised inertia which predicts disc galaxy rotations without dark matter, simply and without adjustment. I've published 25 peer-reviewed papers on it and I am now funded to test its predictions of propellantless thrust, but I have had difficulty getting the message out. The arXiv publishes preprints of papers before they appear in journals, but its anonymous editors have refused to publish some of my papers even after they were published in good journals. Those it did accept, it hid away in a section called 'general physics' which is a sort of naughty boys' room that few people look at. Anonymous people also wreak havoc on wikipedia & google. When you search for quantised inertia, you find excoriation, whereas in reality there is far more evidence for quantised inertia than for dark matter - though admittedly that is not difficult since dark matter has no evidence at all. Scientists use these public sources for their convenience and make decisions based on them so it is not right that anonymous people, who could be unqualified, or with a conflict or interest, are having such an impact on research that has been through rigorous peer review. We have to reinstate the scientific method or we may be manipulated into making the wrong decisions.</i></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-36841702490915114572021-04-27T01:58:00.006-07:002021-04-27T06:55:14.211-07:00Response to Tajmar's New Cavity Results<p style="text-align: justify;">First of all, there is no criticism of Tajmar's team here. Their work ethic & professionalism have always been impressive and their results are useful, as you will see. The problems that have arisen are my fault, and probably caused by not demanding detailed schematics before the experiments.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I employed the Tajmar group, to test quantised inertia as part of my DARPA project. They manufactured several very attractive copper and silver cavities. All of them had asymmetric distributions of metal to asymmetrically damp Unruh waves and hopefully cause thrust. A laser was fired into each and a sensitive double pendulum balance was used to detect very small (nanoNewton) forces.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Unfortunately, and I did not know this until I read their paper last month (mea culpa). On page 7 they say “every copper [and silver] cavity was encapsulated in an aluminium case, similar to the beam trap mentioned earlier to reduce heat radiation to balance components”. The problem is that the addition of a symmetric metal box will cancel the thrust from quantised inertia. Here is a schematic to explain.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vmAY7Nik2qo/YIfQccJNrvI/AAAAAAAAApU/O3aTRLk-2QgPrMYmqiaY-QET-n51F4CmQCNcBGAsYHQ/s579/Capture.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="131" data-original-width="579" height="90" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vmAY7Nik2qo/YIfQccJNrvI/AAAAAAAAApU/O3aTRLk-2QgPrMYmqiaY-QET-n51F4CmQCNcBGAsYHQ/w400-h90/Capture.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;">Figure (a) shows an incomplete understanding of quantised inertia. The Unruh waves seen by a highly-accelerated object (photon, black circle) in an asymmetric cavity are more energetic (hotter) at the wide end (red), and cooler at the narrow end (blue), so an internal object is pushed left, but the cavity is not: any forces are only internal. A better picture is (b): the Unruh waves seen by the accelerated object also exist outside the cavity which is partially transparent to them and therefore the cavity ‘falls down’ the Unruh gradient. This is how quantised inertia predicts thrust. In case (c), representing Tajmar’s copper or silver cavity tests, the cavity is inside a metal box so there will be a push (see colours) between the cavity & box but friction stops movement. QI predicts that the combined cavity+box must show no or much less thrust: there’s no background gradient.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Tajmar's thrust results indeed show no thrust. It is important to point out that none of the results I'm going to discuss now are significant since the error bars are about the same size as the values, but please look at this graph which I made to summarise Tajmar's thrust data. The x axis shows the expected photon thrust from the laser (F=P/c). The y axis shows the observed thrust minus the expected photon thrust. So dots above the x axis show the thrust we hope to see.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fLeZpN0YW_U/YIfQPVJ3e9I/AAAAAAAAApQ/IeSg4OtKF0wMi16xYFqrltwInSy01eMqgCNcBGAsYHQ/s376/Capture.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="302" data-original-width="376" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fLeZpN0YW_U/YIfQPVJ3e9I/AAAAAAAAApQ/IeSg4OtKF0wMi16xYFqrltwInSy01eMqgCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/Capture.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;">Firstly, most of the points are above the x axis, so there is slightly more than the photon thrust (but not significantly). This might be expected since all of the cavities, no matter what their geometrical shape had a thicker wall in the positive thrust direction, and quantised inertia predicts more Unruh damping in that direction which predicts a positive thrust. This 'wall thickness' effect should be more robust to the addition of the metal box than the variations in the geometry of the cavities which are thin walled, like the metal box.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Second, the silver cavities (labelled Ag) show more ‘thrust’ then the copper (Cu) ones. This is interesting & makes sense because the Q value for Cu was 9 and for the Ag it was 39 (silver is more reflective) so we would expect 4.3 times the energy to be present in the silver cavities and 4.3 times the thrust from them. The average thrust is shown on the plot as the narrow dashed line for copper at .05 nN and 0.16 nN for silver. The factor is 3.2.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Again, these results are all smaller than the errors, so we cannot say anything solid from them. Yes, I know, excruciatingly frustrating, blame me, but given that the cavities were inside a metal box, it's the best we can hope for from this data and on this blog I will give you the real deal, not just the slam-dunk stuff. The next step will be to do the same tests without a metal box while also trying out the capacitor method of Becker & Bhatt which is perhaps 1000 times more powerful.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><i>The true path never did run smooth!</i></p><p style="text-align: center;">I thank the Tajmar team because these results are very useful.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Neunzig, O., M. Weikert and M. Tajmar, 2021. Thrust measurements and evaluation of asymmetric infrared laser resonators for space propulsion. SP2020+1, March 2021. Link <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350108417_Thrust_Measurements_and_Evaluation_of_Asymmetric_Infrared_Laser_Resonators_for_Space_Propulsion">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350108417_Thrust_Measurements_and_Evaluation_of_Asymmetric_Infrared_Laser_Resonators_for_Space_Propulsion</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-52242947288122984812021-03-13T09:30:00.005-08:002021-03-13T10:48:15.085-08:00Bend Light, Not Space<p style="text-align: justify;">I feel like I am now entering the end game, which probably just means my troubles are just beginning. For a while now I've had a theoretical goal that can be boiled down to two things:</p><p style="text-align: justify;">1) Reproduce the bending of light by the Sun, just like general relativity.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">2) Retain the ability of quantised inertia to predict MoND-like behaviour in galaxies.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It was Alex Unzicker's books (especially "Einstein's Lost Key") that convinced me that the best way to do this would be to focus on a curious path followed by Einstein in 1911-1912 just before he was persuaded away into untestable geometry by Marcel Grossman. While in Prague Einstein devised a version of GR that treated space as if it had a refractive index. The idea was that the speed of light c=fL reduces close to masses because relativity reduces both f (frequency) and L (wavelength) there, and so light beams bend around the Sun twice as much as Newton would have predicted. Unfortunately, at the time he forgot the reduction in L and predicted only half the correct bending of light. This error was corrected by Dicke in 1957 but by then it was too late and the later geometrical-tensor GR had taken over because it was not stymied by the factor of two error.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">To agree with the data on light bending by the Sun (data: the only important consideration), the correct theory must predict this equation for the speed of light c a distance r away from a mass M:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6awzaH1_0qU/YEz0fgwvi-I/AAAAAAAAAo0/lT777k4qc2E_IX4fbw8_z7i_4LZsL4wsACNcBGAsYHQ/s146/Capture.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="50" data-original-width="146" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6awzaH1_0qU/YEz0fgwvi-I/AAAAAAAAAo0/lT777k4qc2E_IX4fbw8_z7i_4LZsL4wsACNcBGAsYHQ/s0/Capture.JPG" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;">For a lot of last year, on and off, and for several weeks this year I have been trying to get this relation from QI. I did it last year and rejected it for various intuitive reasons. Last week I did it again and realised that it was the right way! The solution is obvious and beautiful in a way that cannot be explained until you actually see it, but it's not published yet so I can't tell you the whole story.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">What quantised inertia says is that the zero point field (and its energised version: Unruh radiation) close to matter is damped (reduced) so light bends towards the matter, sliding down the zpf gradient. This gives Newtonian gravity (see my 2013 paper), but in QI we also have to consider the cosmic horizon of the light which reduces the inertial mass of the photons even more than expected so they bend towards the Sun twice as much as expected. It all works out nicely and gives the equation above. The great advantages of the new QI dynamics are that it gets rid of dark matter, it predicts cosmic acceleration and practical thrust and, unlike bent space which cannot be directly tested, it could be directly tested by measuring the zpf in different places with, say, a Casimir probe.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Given the lab results that are starting to come in (see my blog last month) and this latest theoretical result I expect breathless requests for zoom presentations will come flooding in from physics departments all over the globe! (I always like to end on a humorous note).</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2013. Gravity from the uncertainty principle. Astrophys & Space Science, 349, 957-959. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260941358_Gravity_from_the_uncertainty_principle">Link to Pdf</a></p><p>Unzicker, A., 2015. Einstein's Lost Key.</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-58756086964766432122021-02-06T11:17:00.005-08:002021-02-06T11:17:55.088-08:00Horizon Engineers<p>In 2017, an electrical engineer called Frank Becker contacted me, saying that he'd read my papers on quantised inertia and the emdrive and he particularly noted my discussion that dielectrics placed inside an emdrive might enhance thrust. It reminded him, he said, of an experiment that he'd done years ago trying to replicate the Biefeld-Brown effect with tin foil capacitors and dielectrics. Indeed he had seen thrust towards the anode just as Biefeld & Brown did.</p><p>After he emailed me, we liaised on occasion via skype, and the following year or so he teamed up with an actor called Ankur Bhatt who also has an MSc in engineering and they did some Frank-ly (forgive the pun) brilliant experiments. I advised them as much as I could on QI. A schematic of the experiment is shown in the Figure and you can find the details in the paper below. The capacitor plates are on the right hand side (the grey lines). You can see the electrons accelerating to the right from the cathode to the anode (red arrows).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6nEHUb_ebPE/YB7o05ezbtI/AAAAAAAAAoM/KzAny2QO9VY6qLxeFqVy1hb3avgmNuemgCNcBGAsYHQ/s283/Fig1a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="283" data-original-width="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6nEHUb_ebPE/YB7o05ezbtI/AAAAAAAAAoM/KzAny2QO9VY6qLxeFqVy1hb3avgmNuemgCNcBGAsYHQ/s0/Fig1a.JPG" /></a></div><p>The electrons accelerate to the right over an inter-plate distance of 10 microns and a potential difference of 5000V, so their acceleration is huge (10^19 m/s^2) so they see a Rindler horizon only about 2 cm to their left (the black line). Normally in QI, when an object accelerates rightwards the Rindler horizon on its left damps the quantum vacuum on that side pulling it back against the acceleration. But, here, this is reversed since the two plates damp the vacuum to the right (a Casimir effect) more than the horizon does. The yellow shading here denotes less vacuum energy than the orange shading. So, here there is an extra push to the right and the electrons accelerate more than you'd expect, pushing the anode more when they get there.</p><p>The most crucial component of this experiment is that Becker and Bhatt also played around with putting metal plates in various positions around the setup (Edmund Blackadder - "It's not what you've got, but where you stick it!") and found that when they placed a metal plate to the right of the horizon it reduced the force (it's like a closer horizon) but when they put the plate behind the horizon (to the left) the effect of it vanished. This may be the first direct observation of a Rindler horizon and backs quantised inertia very strongly. I've just written a paper, soon to be submitted, that shows that QI predicts the thrusts they saw.</p><p>Becker & Bhatt deserve a lot of thanks for this experiment. If the thrust can be confirmed, it is one thousand times what I was hoping for from my photon-based experiments. I am now funded to reproduce their experiment at my university, starting in May.</p><p>References</p><p>Becker, F. and A. Bhatt. Electrostatic accelerated electrons within symmetric capacitors during field emission condition events exert bidirectional propellant-less thrust. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368">https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-27506021636148641072020-10-11T12:03:00.001-07:002020-10-11T13:10:01.144-07:00Patreon Site<p>I'm trying an experiment on Patreon. I'm publishing two chapters per week of my sci-fi comedy novel, based on quantised inertia, and I'm also trying to write entries on the other days on whatever physics I happen to be thinking about at that time. A sort of online science diary. As my position in academia is becoming a little tenuous I thought this might be a good plan B, or a way to transition to more independence. The first chapter of the story is at: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/38133557">https://www.patreon.com/posts/38133557</a> I hope you enjoy it!</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-90549002701523743222020-09-30T03:54:00.005-07:002020-09-30T06:41:49.087-07:00Consider an Owl<p style="text-align: justify;">I've just published what is possibly the most elegant paper I have ever written. I sent it to various journals who all turned their noses up at it (one sympathetic editor told me that reviewers were refusing to review it en masse) so thank you to Advances in Astrophysics for giving it a home. In it, I derive quantised inertia in eight lines from information theory, just by assuming that information is stored in Planck-length spaces.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Consider the diagram below. This represents, in one-dimension, an object (say, an owl) by the thicker vertical dashed line on the left. Initially the owl is just sitting there so it sees the cosmic horizon on its right, the right-most vertical dashed line. The owl has a lot of information about space. The Planck length is the smallest region of space in which information can be stored and in the diagram (not to scale!) Mr Owl can see 26 bits of space. Then imagine someone rudely moves him abruptly to the left. Suddenly information cannot catch up to him from far to the right and the horizon he sees moves closer - see the middle vertical line. Now the owl can only see nine bits of space.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qEjF6RA729E/X3RoeGAMfyI/AAAAAAAAAnQ/s4VoDMSz9_gA3a7lCVQIN7NtYiLh4nWvwCNcBGAsYHQ/Figure1c.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="467" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qEjF6RA729E/X3RoeGAMfyI/AAAAAAAAAnQ/s4VoDMSz9_gA3a7lCVQIN7NtYiLh4nWvwCNcBGAsYHQ/Figure1c.JPG" width="272" /></a></div>This is a loss of information, and according to Landauer's principle, it also counts as a loss of entropy, just as deleting a computer memory would. This is a huge no-no from the point of view of thermodynamics - entropy must always go up. In the paper I show that if you calculate how much energy is released to Mr Owl in this case, it is exactly the amount of energy needed to produce, not just inertia, but specifically the form of inertia of quantised inertia, which models galaxy rotation without dark matter and predicts cosmic acceleration.<p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Now, of course, this example is only one-dimensional but I think it offers a new, simpler and deeper way to understand quantised inertia, and derive it. I hope that information theorists will pay attention. It is a sign that their subject is just about to conquer the rest of physics. Welcome to a new branch of physics. And the owl? Understandably, he's chosen a new branch to sit on. Higher up in the tree.</p><p>References</p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2020. Quantised inertia and galaxy rotation from information theory. Adv. Astrophy., 5, 4. <a href="http://www.isaacpub.org/4/2050/5/4/11/2020/AdAp.html">http://www.isaacpub.org/4/2050/5/4/11/2020/AdAp.html</a></p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-25233057133924345362020-09-08T09:36:00.007-07:002020-09-08T14:43:16.445-07:00The Ball and the Teapot<p style="text-align: justify;">Imagine a ball in space. Strictly speaking in physics and especially in quantised inertia you can't start talking about it being stationary or not because it has to be moving relative to some other object, so let's say it's static relative to a nearby teapot, but far enough away that the attraction from the teapot is small.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Now put a horizon on one side of it. According to quantised inertia this will damp the Unruh waves from the direction of the horizon and so the ball will be pushed by the imbalance in the Unruh radiation field towards the horizon. Another way to think about the same thing, the informational way (see reference) is that the horizon deletes the knowledge the ball has about the cosmos beyond it. Landauer's principle says that every time you delete information, say, you erase 101011 to 000000, then entropy decreases. That cannot be allowed, so the second law of thermodynamics says that high-entropy heat energy must appear to compensate. So computers get warm when you erase data. I've calculated this energy for the deletion of space, and it turns out to be just enough to power the movement of the ball predicted by quantised inertia (see ref).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So the ball accelerates towards the horizon. Now, as pointed out by several people online or in emails, what happens if suddenly the horizon disappears so the ball gets back all its knowledge about the cosmos behind it? The problem is, it still has the kinetic energy it picked up from the loss of information. Does it lose the energy when it gets the information back? The answer is not necessarily "Yes", because although the second law of thermodynamics says that 101011->000000 must release energy, there is no such imperative for 000000->101011, since there is no drop in entropy.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Can we use this asymmetry, and repeat the process to generate energy? I think that is what is happening with the cycling photons (near and horizon, then far..etc) in the emdrive. However, this brings up many fascinating new questions to ponder. Where is the information 'stored' while the horizon is close, so the system can get it back when the horizon is gone? Can information or heat be swapped between reference frames? How does this relate to the black hole information paradox?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Getting philosophical for a moment it makes sense that our new ability to model worlds ourselves (simulations, games) is inspiring new models of the one we are in, including my recent attempt to express quantised inertia using information theory. Is it just the latest useful analogy? (Probably). Is the cosmos a self-evolved bit-system? Or are we in a deliberate simulation? I'm sure the theologists will spend many a happy hour discussing that!</p><p>References</p><p>McCulloch, M.E., 2020. Quantised inertia, and galaxy rotation, from information theory. AdAp (accepted). Summarised in my ANPA talk <a href="https://youtu.be/341Yk4k51uY" target="_blank">here</a> (the relevant bit starts at 16:24)</p>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637778157419388168.post-66557169390805005532020-09-03T10:54:00.007-07:002020-09-03T11:03:38.091-07:00What I said to Wired<div style="text-align: justify;">An article has just appeared in WIRED about Woodward's theory. The author Daniel Oberhaus emailed me a couple of weeks ago asking my opinion of Woodward's work and he quotes me in the article as saying "In my opinion there is no merit to Woodward's theory". See this <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/mach-effect-thrusters-interstellar-travel/" target="_blank">link </a>for the article. This quote is a 'slight' truncation of what I said :) See his questions in bold, and my answers below:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Wired: How would you sum up your feelings about Jim's theory in a sentence or two? Is he crazy or is there merit to his ideas?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In my opinion there is no merit to Woodward's theory. It shares the problem of most of modern physics that it is constrained to work within the framework of general relativity so the derivation is complex and contrived and contains many unlikely assumptions and even some arbitrarily added factors, and yet it is still orders of magnitude away from predicting the Mach effect thrust it was intended to predict! The Mach Effect experiments are interesting but we have to consider the possibility that they are vibrational artefacts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Wired: There's clearly a lot of skepticism around Jim's Mach effect theories. If you count yourself a skeptic, what don't you buy about this theory?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are many theoretical problems with it, see eg Rodal 2019 and in going through the derivations you see that a lot of arbitrary factors are added in. However, my main reason for disregarding it is that it does not work. It fails to predict even the lab observations it was designed to explain - its predictions of observed thrust have been shown to be a factor of one thousand times out (eg: Mahood, 1999). I note that in the papers written about it the data is rarely compared with the observations directly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Wired: What would it take to convince you that it was correct, if anything?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To convince me it would need a simply-derived non-arbitrary formula that predicts all the Mach Effect thrust experiments and a demonstration that the thrust varies as expected given the parameters in the theory, to rule out artefacts. So pretty much the opposite of what has happened so far.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Wired: Jim's been claiming to have produced propellantless propulsion for years. Do you think these results are real, or just noise / measurement error?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I think the experimental results are more interesting than the theory, but there is a significant possibility with vibrating solid objects that artefacts can occur (as seen with the Dean drive).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Wired: If not Mach effects, what do you think is a better explanation for what could be producing this apparent thrust? Why do you feel its a better explanation?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Vibrating objects have artefacts that can appear to be thrust. If the thrust is real then it does not seem to agree with the Woodward theory anyway. I have suggested the theory of quantised inertia (McCulloch, 2007) which predicts galaxy rotation without dark matter and predicts some, not all, of the Mach effect tests (McCulloch, 2018).
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">References </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rodal, J.A., 2019. A Machian wave effect in conformal, scalar–tensor gravitational theory. General Relativity and Gravitation, Volume 51, Article number: 64.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mahood, T., 1999. Propellant-less propulsion: recent experimentla results exploiting transient mass modification. AIP Conf proc. STAIF-2000. AIP, 1014-20.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">McCulloch, M.E., 2007. Modelling the Pioneer anomaly as modified inertia. MNRAS, 376(1), 338-342. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">McCulloch, M.E., 2018. Propellant-less propulsion from quantised inertia. J Space Exploration, Volume: 7(3).</div>Mike McCullochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00985573443686082382noreply@blogger.com6