See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/353481953

Thrust from Symmetric Capacitors using Quantised Inertia

Preprint · July 2021

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16916.01921

CITATIONS READS
0 7

1 author:

Mike Mcculloch
University of Plymouth
53 PUBLICATIONS   812 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Propellant-less Thrust View project

Testing quantised inertia on emdrives with dielectrics View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Mike Mcculloch on 27 July 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Thrust from Symmetric Capacitors using

Quantised Inertia.

∗
M.E. McCulloch

July 27, 2021

Abstract
It has been found, by some experiments, that during internal eld emis-
sion, capacitors thrust anomalously towards their anodes. It is shown here
that this thrust is predicted by quantised inertia, a theory that also pre-
dicts galaxy rotation without dark matter. One experiment has claimed
that the capacitors' thrust was as large as 120 N/kW, and quantised in-
ertia predicts that this is further enhanceable, making this a potential
launch system.

1 Introduction
Special relativity predicts that accelerating objects see a Rindler horizon behind
them because of the limitations of information transfer to the speed of light, and
this horizon splits virtual particles from the vacuum forming so called Unruh
radiation (Unruh, 1976).
A theory has been proposed suggesting that the horizon damps the Unruh ra-
diation on one side of the object causing an Unruh radiation imbalance that
pushes the object back against its acceleration (McCulloch, 2007, 2013). This
theory, called quantised inertia, provides the rst mechanistic explanation for
inertia and predicts galaxy rotation without dark matter (McCulloch, 2017).
Quantised inertia also predicts that instead of horizons, metal structures can be
used to damp the Unruh radiation in such a way as to produce a thrust that
does not require propellant (McCulloch, 2018).
It was observed by Canning et al. (1990), T. Musha (2008) and Becker and
Bhatt (2018) that capacitors which undergo highly-accelerated discharges or, in
Becker and Bhatt's case eld emission, thrust towards their anodes. The thrust
is many orders of magnitude larger than that expected from ion drift and many
∗ [email protected]. [email protected]. Plymouth University,

PL4 8AA, UK

1
times more than possible given that no ablation of the plates was seen. A good
sumamry of some of this work is available in Martins and Pinheiro (2011).
Becker and Bhatt (2018) attempted, after some liaison with the author, to
demonstrate that quantised inertia predicts the thrust they saw. However, al-
though it was useful qualitatively, their derivation was unfortunately nally
awed because they used an uncertainty relation with h not ~/2 which gives an
answer 12.5 times too large and they used an erroneous assumption resulting in
a formula that predicted well because these two errors cancelled (no oense to
Becker and Bhatt who should be commended for their technical skill & eort).
In this paper the correct derivation is presented and it is shown that quantised
inertia predicts the thrust from the capacitors and its dependence on plate
separtion very well, though some aspects, such as the reduction of thrust seen
when the cathode was thickened remain unmodelled.

2 Method
Figures 1a and 1b are schematics showing the dierence between the behaviour
of an electron, in quantised inertia, in both open space (1a, rst panel) and in
a capacitor (1b, second panel). Figure 1a shows that normally, in quantised
inertia, an accelerated electron sees more Unruh radiation in front (the orange
area) because there is no horizon there damping it, and less Unruh radiation
behind (the yellow area) because it is damped by the Rindler horizon (shown
as the vertical black line). So the electron sees a radiation imbalance pushing it
back against its acceleration and it has what we refer to as inertia.
Figure 1b show the situation in the capacitor. The electrons are accelerated to
the right by a potential dierence between the plates of 5000V and again it sees
a Rindler horizon, shown on the left by the vertical black line. The electron
cloud will see Unruh waves, but these will be deselected between the capacitor
plates so that the normal gradient is reversed and now there are more Unruh
waves behind (the yellow area) so the electrons get an extra kick forward which
is translated to the anode. In a sense the electrons' inertial mass reverses. The
corresponding gradient to the right outside the capacitor is far less important
because given the acceleration most of the electrons are on the left hand side
of the gap and the dynamics of the deceleration when hitting the anode are
dierent (see below). In the derivation that follows we start from the uncertainty
principle
~
∆p∆x ≥ (1)
2
So that
~
∆p ≥ (2)
2∆x

2
The quantised inertia model can be derived from this formula if ∆x is dened in
each direction seperately as the distance from the accelerating object to the clos-
est horizon (either a Rindler horizon or a solid metal) and ∆p is the momentum
available to it in the same direction (McCulloch, 2016). For the calculation here
we will assume that the electron is just leaving the cathode. On the electrons'
right (the white area) the boundaries will be the two plates of the capacitor and
so the momentum is
~
4p = (3)
2s
where s is the seperation between the plates. On the left of 1b (the yellow area)
the boundaries are the Rindler horizon and the cathode (grey vertical line) so
that the momentum in the Unruh eld will be
~
4p = (4)
2R

where R is the distance to the Rindler horizon, R = c2 /a,where a is the electrons'

acceleration due to the electrostatic force. The extra (new) force on the electron
will be given by F = ∂p/∂t = ∂p/∂x × ∂x/∂t = c/n × ∂p/∂x where n is the
refractive index of the dielectric, so we get
 
~c 1 1
F = − (5)
2ns R s
We can ignore the rst term in brackets because R>>s (for this experiment the
acceleration was so high that R was of the order of 2 cm, whereas s is of the order
of a micron - see the x axis of Figure 2). Even if this term is included, noting
that R depends on the electron acceleration, it causes a maximum possible 1%
of dierence to the result. Note that at this point, given the absense of R
the dependence on electron acceleration appears to be omitted. Although it
is not obvious from the equations, a high acceleration is still implicit because
you need an electron acceleration large enough so they see Unruh waves short
enough to interact with the capacitor plates and be damped between them. This
is assumed by equation 5. Also, Eq. 5 is the extra force per electron. For the
total extra force we multiply by the number of electrons, Ne which was derived
from Ne = I/q where I was the current fed into the capacitor (10µA) and q is
the charge on the electron so that Ne = 6.25 × 1013
Ne ~c
F = (6)
2ns2
This is the thrust predicted by quantised inertia and will be transmitted by
electron impacts to the anode and the capacitor structure. The dielectric used
was polyethylene which has a refective index of n = 1.2. The electron acceler-
ation occurs as the electron passes between the plates. The deceleration at the
anode is much larger, but the Rindler horizon in that case is very close (higher

3
acceleration) so the Unruh waves to the right are fewer or similar to those seen
between the plates, so if anything there will be an extra thrust rightwards (see
Fig.1, fourth panel).

3 Results
Figure 2 shows the results of the experiment on Becker and Bhatt (2018). The
black diamonds show the observed thrust on the y axis as a function of the
separation of the capacitor plates on the x axis. The error bars are also shown.
The predictions of quantised inertia are shown in two sets. The rst set (Xs)
assumes that Unruh waves travel at speed c independent of the dielectric (as
assumed by McCulloch, 2017, Eq. 6 with n=1) and the second set (squares)
assumes that the Unruh waves do slow down in the dielectric (Eq. 6 with
n=1.49). The error bars on the predictions of 20% assume an error in the
voltage of 10% plus an error in the estimated refractive index of 10% (Becker
and Bhatt, pers. comm.). The predictions agree within the error bars of the
data.
It can be seen that the thrust increases exponentially as the plate separation
is reduced and the largest force (on the left) was about 6 × 10−3 N for a input
Voltage of 5000V and a current of 10µA which implies a power of 0.05W. This
means that this capacitor has a thrust of 120 N/kW. If a thruster was built using
for example a Lithium-air battery that is capable of 1.8kW/kg then an upwards
force of 180N would be achieved, much larger than the downwards force from the
battery (1kg=10N) and thruster (a weight of up to 1kg = 10N). These results
therefore show that this thruster could be used to launch signicant payloads
into space. From Eq. 6 is is clear that the best way to enhance the thrust would
be to reduce the separation of the plates.

4 Discussion
It should be noted that this is only an approximate model, that assumes, for
example, that metal plates completely block Unruh radiation. A factor which
is simply unknown.
The model cannot cope with more complex arrangements. For example, when
the cathode was thickened to various degrees, the result was that the thrust
slowly reduced and when a neutral conductor was positioned between the cath-
ode and the Rindler horizon the force reversed (Becker and Bhatt, 2018). Mod-
elling this setup is beyond the scope of this paper due to the point made above.
In the case of the capacitor itself it was assumed that the plates completely
enforce a node on the Unruh waves at the position of the plate. In the case of
arbitrary arrangement of metal plates this is more dicult to model since more
than one node will be enforced and the thickness of the plates and the damping
factor will have to be considered.

4
Finally, a metal plate placed to the right of the calculated position of the Rindler
horizon caused a reversal, but when the plate was placed to the left of the
Rindler horizon it had no eect. This makes sense in quantised inertia since
events beyond the horizon cannot be 'known' by the accelerated electrons by
denition. Therefore this test by Becker and Bhatt (2018) may be the rst
direct observation of a horizon.

5 Conclusion
Capacitors with electron eld emissions show unexplained thrust towards their
anodes.
A theory called quantised inertia (QI) can predict this thrust.
The experimental results show the thruster is potentially a launch system.
QI predicts exponentially more thrust for closer plates.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to F. Becker and A. Bhatt who valiantly did the experiment, and
kindly provided all the data, J.R. Hall for comments on a draft and to DARPA
for funding grant HR001118C0125.

References
Becker, F.M. and A.S. Bhatt, 2018. Electrostatic accelerated electrons within
symmetric capacitors during eld emission condition events exert bidirectional
propellant-less thrust. Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04368
Canning, F.X., C. Melcher, W. Winet, 2004. Asymmetrical capacitors for
propulsion. NASA/CR-2004-213312
Martins, A.A., and M.J. Pinheiro, 2011. On the propulsive force developed
by asymmetric capacitors in a vacuum. SPESIF-2011., Physics Procedia, 2011:
20:112-119.
McCulloch, M.E., 2007. Modelling the Pioneer anomaly as modied inertia.
MNRAS, 376(1), 338-342

McCulloch, M.E., 2013. Inertia from an asymmetric Casimir eect. EPL, 101,
59001.
McCulloch, M.E., 2016. Quantised inertia from relativity and the uncertainty
principle. EPL, 115, 69001.
McCulloch, M.E., 2017. Galaxy rotations from quantised inertia and visible
matter only. Astro. Sp. Sci., 362,149.
McCulloch, M.E., 2018. Propellant-less propulsion from quantised inertia. J.
Space Exploration. 7(3).

5
McCulloch, M.E., 2020. Can nano-materials push o the vacuum? Progress in
Physics, 16, 73-74.
Musha, T., 2008. Explanation of Dynamical Biefeld-Brown eect from the
standpoint of zpf eld. JBIS, 61, 379-384.
Unruh, W.G., 1976. Notes on black hole evaporation, Phys. Rev. D., 14, 870.

Figures

Figure 1. Schematic showing (a) an electron accelerating to the right under

quantised inertia. It sees more Unruh radiation in front of it (orange) since
there are no horizons there. It sees less Unruh radiation to the left (yellow) as it
is damped by the horizon (black line). This pushes the electron back against it
acceleration - inertia. In the capacitor (b) the opposite occurs. The accelerating
electron sees few Unruh waves in front as they are damped by the capacitor
plates (white area) and more waves behind (yellow) so the electron is pushed
forwards more than expected and pushes the anode plate. The deceleration is
more abrupt when the electron hits the anode (c) which enhances the rightward
thrust.

6
 Figure 2. Results. The observed thrust (black diamonds), and that predicted
by QI using Eq. 6 with n=1.49 (squares) and n=1 (Xs).

View publication stats