We report on the progress of a NASA-funded study being carried out at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto and the California State University in Long Beach to investigate the proposed link between the zero-point field of the quantum vacuum and inertia. It is well known that an accelerating observer will experience a bath of radiation resulting from the quantum vacuum which mimics that of a heat bath, the so-called Davies-Unruh effect. We have further analyzed this problem of an accelerated object moving through the vacuum and have shown that the zero-point field will yield a non-zero Poynting vector to an accelerating observer. Scattering of this radiation by the quarks and electrons constituting matter would result in an acceleration-dependent reaction force that would appear to be the origin of inertia of matter (Rueda and Haisch 1998a, 1998b). In the subrelativistic case this inertia reaction force is exactly newtonian and in the relativistic case it exactly reproduces the well known relativistic extension of Newton’s Law. This analysis demonstrates then that both the ordinary, F⃗=ma⃗, and the relativistic forms of Newton’s equation of motion may be derived from Maxwell’s equations as applied to the electromagnetic zero-point field. We expect to be able to extend this analysis in the future to more general versions of the quantum vacuum than just the electromagnetic one discussed herein.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Progress in establishing a connection between the electromagnetic zero-point field and inertia


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    Space technology and applications international forum -1999 ; 1999 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA)


    Published in:

    AIP Conference Proceedings ; 458 , 1 ; 988-993


    Publication date :

    1999-01-22


    Size :

    6 pages





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Advances in the proposed electromagnetic zero-point field theory of inertia

    Haisch, Bernhard / Rueda, Alfonso / Puthoff, H. | AIAA | 1998


    Advances in the Proposed Electromagnetic Zero-Point Field Theory of Inertia

    Haisch, B. / Rueda, A. / Puthoff, H. E. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1998


    Toward an interstellar mission: Zeroing in on the zero-point-field inertia resonance

    Haisch, Bernhard / Rueda, Alfonso | American Institute of Physics | 2000


    Toward an Interstellar Mission: Zeroing in on the Zero-Point-Field Inertia Resonance

    Haisch, B. / Rueda, A. / University of New Mexico | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000