Inertia as a zero-point-field Lorentz force

Journal Article · Tue Feb 01 00:00:00 EST 1994 · Physical Review A; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.49.678· OSTI ID:5200267

Haisch, B ^[1]; Rueda, A ^[2]; Puthoff, H E ^[3]

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1. Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory, Division 91-30, Building 252, 3251 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, California 94304 (United States) Max-Planck-Institut fuer Extraterrestrische Physik, D-85740 Garching (Germany)
2. Department of Electrical Engineering, California State University, Long Beach, California 90840 (United States)
3. Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, 4030 Braker Lane West, Suite 300, Austin, Texas 78759 (United States)

Under the hypothesis that ordinary matter is ultimately made of subelementary constitutive primary charged entities or partons'' bound in the manner of traditional elementary Planck oscillators (a time-honored classical technique), it is shown that a heretofore uninvestigated Lorentz force (specifically, the magnetic component of the Lorentz force) arises in any accelerated reference frame from the interaction of the partons with the vacuum electromagnetic zero-point field (ZPF). Partons, though asymptotically free at the highest frequencies, are endowed with a sufficiently large bare mass'' to allow interactions with the ZPF at very high frequencies up to the Planck frequencies. This Lorentz force, though originating at the subelementary parton level, appears to produce an opposition to the acceleration of material objects at a macroscopic level having the correct characteristics to account for the property of inertia. We thus propose the interpretation that inertia is an electromagnetic resistance arising from the known spectral distortion of the ZPF in accelerated frames. The proposed concept also suggests a physically rigorous version of Mach's principle. Moreover, some preliminary independent corroboration is suggested for ideas proposed by Sakharov (Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 177, 70 (1968) [Sov. Phys. Dokl. 12, 1040 (1968)]) and further explored by one of us [H. E. Puthoff, Phys. Rev. A 39, 2333 (1989)] concerning a ZPF-based model of Newtonian gravity, and for the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass as dictated by the principle of equivalence.

• OSTI ID: 5200267
• Journal Information: Physical Review A; (United States), Vol. 49:2; ISSN 1050-2947
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
MACH PRINCIPLE
PARTONS
LORENTZ FORCE
ACCELERATION
EQUATIONS OF MOTION
EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE
GRAVITATION
MASS RENORMALIZATION
SPECTRAL DENSITY
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EQUATIONS
FUNCTIONS
HYPOTHESIS
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
POSTULATED PARTICLES
RENORMALIZATION
SPECTRAL FUNCTIONS
661100* - Classical & Quantum Mechanics- (1992-)
662100 - General Theory of Particles & Fields- (1992-)