I've suggested (& published in 21 journal papers) a new theory called quantised inertia (or MiHsC) that assumes that inertia is caused by horizons damping quantum fields. It predicts galaxy rotation & lab thrusts without any dark stuff or adjustment. My University webpage is here, I've written a book called Physics from the Edge and I'm on twitter as @memcculloch. Most of my content is at patreon now: here

Monday 3 November 2014

The hidden crisis in physics

There are exciting times ahead in physics since new data is rocking old theories and opening up new possibilities, but you wouldn't think it for the horrified faces I've seen at conferences whenever I explain MiHsC. The crisis in physics we now have, downplayed by most, dwarfs the crisis in 1900 which was presaged by Lord Kelvin mentioning what he saw as two insignificant little details 'two clouds on the horizon'. These were the inability of the Michelson and Morley experiment to detect the invisible aether that people thought must exist for light to travel through, and the prediction that hot bodies must radiate infinite amounts at short wavelengths, the ultraviolet catastrophe. The first little cloud led to special relativity and the second to quantum mechanics. These were little experimental acorns that led to huge oak trees because people, typically curious outsiders, realised they were important and worked to bring theory into line.

In the present time we really are spoiled by our new ability to look into deep space, and instead of two modest clouds on the horizon we have something more resembling the childrens' bedroom in the film poltergeist (I saw that film on Halloween) with all the furniture flying around in a mad chaos.

Consider the galaxy rotation problem. Galaxies spin far too fast for general relativity to hold them together, so huge amounts of invisible (dark) matter must be added to them in a weird halo-like formation that has no explanation. There is no experimental evidence for dark matter, and for each different galaxy the dark matter has to be added by hand in such a way as to make general relativity work. This means dark matter is ad hoc and not predictive and so we may as well attribute the rotation to lingering poltergeists. In contrast, MiHsC predicts galaxy rotation without any 'fiddling'.

Now considering cosmic expansion: this is accelerating, an act that requires a tremendous input of energy from somewhere. The problem cannot be solved by a mathematical and linguistic trick, as it is done, by simple adding a term to the Einstein field equation and calling it dark energy. It must be fundamentally understood. MiHsC explains this acceleration in an intuitive and elegant manner by disallowing any pattern, including radiation, that does not fit exactly within the Hubble scale.

There is also a telling anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background, which looks too smooth on the largest scales in a way that agrees exactly with the suppression of large scale patterns by MiHsC.

If we enter more controversial territory, the fertile ground where observations that can't be made to fit current theory but have not yet been proven wrong are found: the Pioneer craft slowed down as they entered deep space in agreement with MiHsC (the thermal explanation now apparently 'accepted' relies on complex models with over 2000 finite elements, and fitting parameters). The flyby anomalies, odd dynamics of spacecraft passing Earth, are also predicted by MiHsC, as are the Podkletnov and Tajmar experiments, and the EmDrive anomaly found in the UK, China and at NASA.

I hope you can see that if you take all the evidence together, then at low accelerations (in deep space), or when you change the acceleration by spinning something (flybys, Podkletnov, Tajmar experiments) or you bring the Hubble horizon artificially closer to disallow more patterns (the EmDrive) standard physics fails, but MiHsC does not.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

It is claimed ( http://xxx.tau.ac.il/abs/astro-ph/0312273 ) that gravitational lensing of the Bullet Cluster is direct evidence for the existence of dark matter. If Dark Matter is not needed to explain that galaxies spin far too fast for general relativity to hold them together, how can one then simultaneously reconcile gravitational lensing of the Bullet Cluster as direct evidence for Dark Matter? Are there other explanations for gravitational lensing of the Bullet Cluster that do not involve dark matter?

Thanks.

Mike McCulloch said...

With the Bullet Cluster, I'd need to model how MiHsC would bend the light, but that would depend on the baryonic mass and the spin of it (mutual accelerations matter), eg: if there's spin around the axis of symmetry MiHsC would predict two blobs of apparent mass at either end (as seen), but I can't get any data on spin to properly model this so the question remains open.

mpc755 said...

Aether has mass. Aether physically occupies three dimensional space. Aether is physically displaced by the particles of matter which exist in it and move through it.

The Milky Way's halo is not a clump of stuff anchored to the Milky Way. The Milky Way is moving through and displacing the aether.
The Milky Way's halo is the state of displacement of the aether.

The Milky Way's halo is the deformation of spacetime.

What is referred to geometrically as the deformation of spacetime physically exists in nature as the state of displacement of the aether.

A moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave. In a double slit experiment the particle travels through a single slit and the associated wave in the aether passes through both.

Q. Why is the particle always detected traveling through a single slit in a double slit experiment?
A. The particle always travels through a single slit. It is the associated wave in the aether which passes through both.

What ripples when galaxy clusters collide is what waves in a double slit experiment; the aether.

Einstein's gravitational wave is de Broglie's wave of wave-particle duality; both are waves in the aether.

Aether displaced by matter relates general relativity and quantum mechanics.