Can the Emdrive Be Explained by Quantised Inertia?

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An Introduction to MiHsC - a model for inertia called: Modified inertia by a Hubble-scale Casimir effect (MiHsC) or quantised inertia.



The idea of inertia is that in a vacuum, where there is no friction, objects move along in a straight line at constant speed until you push on them. This tendency was first isolated by Galileo, who rolled balls down inclined planes (balls feel less friction). This tendency, inertia, has always been assumed but never explained.



Meanwhile physics has moved towards a study of information, and it has been realised in the past few decades that when you accelerate something, say, to the right, information from far to the left can never catch up to it, this means there is an information-boundary or 'horizon' to its left which is like a black hole event horizon (it is called a Rindler horizon). A kind of Hawking radiation comes off this horizon, which is called Unruh radiation (it was proposed by Bill Unruh) and is seen as background radiation, but is seen only by the accelerated object.



The new prediction from the model then is that objects with very low acceleration lose inertial mass in a new wa



It has been shown that cone-shaped cavities with microwaves resonating within them move slightly towards their narrow ends (the emdrive). There is no accepted explanation for this. Here it is shown that this effect can be predicted by assuming that the inertial mass of the photons in the cavity is caused by Unruh radiation whose wavelengths must fit exactly within the cavity, using a theory already applied with some success to astrophysical anomalies where the cavity is the Hubble volume. For the emdrive this means that more Unruh waves are “allowed” at the wide end, leading to a greater inertial mass for the photons there. The gain of inertia of the photons when they move from the narrow to the wide end, and the conservation of momentum, predicts that the cavity must then move towards the narrow end, as observed. This model predicts the available observations quite well, although the observational uncertainties are not well known.



(H / T Adam Crowl at Crowlspace )



Three independent experiments have shown that when microwaves resonate within an asymmetric cavity an anomalous force is generated pushing the cavity towards its narrow end.



This force can be predicted to some extent using a new model for inertia that has been applied quite successfully to predict galaxy rotation and cosmic acceleration, and which assumes in this case that the inertial mass of photons is caused by Unruh radiation and these have to fit exactly between the cavity walls so that the inertial mass is greater at the wide end of the cavity. To conserve momentum the cavity is predicted to move towards its narrow end, as seen.



This model predicts the published EmDrive results fairly well with a very simple formula and suggests that the thrust can be increased by increasing the input power, Q factor, or by increasing the degree of taper in the cavity or using a dielectric.

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Reposted via Next Big Future