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DARPA Is Researching Quantized Inertia, a Theory Many Think Is Pseudoscience (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: DARPA just awarded a $1.3 million contract to an international team of researchers to study quantized inertia or QI. This is a controversial theory that many physicists think is pseudoscience, but according to the physicist that created it, QI may be the foundation for light-powered space travel that could open the door for interstellar travel. Motherboard looks at the fact and fiction of QI, its relationship to the 'impossible' EmDrive being developed by NASA and how these physicists are going to create experimental light-powered engines.
Quantized inertia (QI) is an alternative theory of inertia, a property of matter that describes an object's resistance to acceleration. QI was first proposed by University of Plymouth physicist Mike McCulloch in 2007, but it is still considered a fringe theory by many, if not most, physicists today. McCulloch has used the theory to explain galactic rotation speeds without the need for dark matter, but he believes it may one day provide the foundation for launching space vehicles without fuel. The DARPA grant will allow McCulloch and a team of collaborators from Germany and Spain to undertake a series of experiments that will apply QI in a laboratory setting for the first time.
Quantized inertia (QI) is an alternative theory of inertia, a property of matter that describes an object's resistance to acceleration. QI was first proposed by University of Plymouth physicist Mike McCulloch in 2007, but it is still considered a fringe theory by many, if not most, physicists today. McCulloch has used the theory to explain galactic rotation speeds without the need for dark matter, but he believes it may one day provide the foundation for launching space vehicles without fuel. The DARPA grant will allow McCulloch and a team of collaborators from Germany and Spain to undertake a series of experiments that will apply QI in a laboratory setting for the first time.
There's observational evidence for dark matter at large scales. Its density can be estimated by observing gravitational lensing, and there are now maps of such. The Bullet Cluster is a pretty neat example of a mass concentration that is detached from the "bright" matter to such a degree that there basically has to be something there that is very massive but doesn't radiate light.
Tickle Down Economics worked just fine in the 90s. Reagan advanced the theory, put it into motion with corporate tax deductions, and it led to a gigantic boom during the Clinton Era
> like a drowning man clutches at a straw
Possibly TDE is wrong. On the flip side, taxing corporations to death has never been shown to accomplish anything (except drive corporations out of the Northern Rustbelt USA into China and India where labor & taxes are cheap).
Deficit spending was Reagan's economy stimulus.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But the recent detection of heavy neutrinos (likely "s-tau" or stau) coming from inside the earth has been suggested might lead to either an explanation of "dark matter" or perhaps to a new, alternative hypothesis.
The problem with dark matter is that it would be preferable to have an answer that wasn't such a gross violation of Occam's Razor, which, as you probably recall, says the the correct answer is likely to be the one which makes the least assumptions (or, alternatively, requires the "least multiplication of entities").
Dark matter is an "external entity" brought in to explain the phenomenon, outside of otherwise understood physics.
Occam's Razor is not a physical principle of course. Or a universal law. It's more about falsifiability. It's pretty damned hard to falsify dark matter because at present it's pretty damned hard to devise any experiments which could. Because it's an entity that is external to our known physical framework.
And we prefer falsifiable science to unfalsifiable.
The point being: it's possible that these neutrinos point to a pathway to explain dark matter in terms of already-understood quantum physics, without having to introduce some kind of "ghost" particle.
It's also possible that McCulloch's theory could be an alternate explanation. But either of those might be "preferable", in a philosophical and falsifiability sense, to dark matter, and would likely "upset the applecart" less.