Historical research guide · 0018 · 1994
Inertia as a zero-point-field Lorentz force
Bernard Haisch · Alfonso Rueda · Harold E. Puthoff
In one minute
Bernard Haisch, Alfonso Rueda and Hal Puthoff ask what physical interaction supplies inertia in F = ma. They model matter as charged subelementary constituents, called partons, bound as Planck oscillators and coupled to the electromagnetic zero-point field. In an accelerated frame, they derive a magnetic Lorentz-force term from the field’s spectral distortion. Its direction opposes acceleration; summed across the model’s constituents, it has the form of a macroscopic inertial reaction. This is a proposed account of inertia, not a change to the measured law F = ma. The derivation depends on the parton-oscillator model and a high-frequency coupling assumption. The paper connects its result to Mach’s principle and to later zero-point-field work on gravitation and the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass.
Connection
This paper gives Chapter 3 a concrete proposed mechanism: a body’s resistance to acceleration arises through its interaction with a universal electromagnetic field. Chapter 8 follows the engineering consequence. If that interaction can be characterized and altered without violating momentum and energy accounting, inertial response becomes a quantity to measure and design around rather than a fixed property to assume. The immediate experimental question is whether the predicted accelerated-frame coupling has a measurable signature beyond known electromagnetic forces.
From the source
Within the authors’ model, ordinary matter contains charged subelementary entities, or partons, bound as Planck oscillators. They derive a previously unexamined Lorentz force—specifically a magnetic component—in an accelerated reference frame from the partons’ interaction with the electromagnetic zero-point field of the vacuum.Abstract
The derived force points against acceleration. When the contribution is summed over a body’s partons, the authors obtain a macroscopic opposition to acceleration with the form expected of inertia.Abstract; derivation of the reaction force
The authors interpret inertia as electromagnetic resistance produced by the spectral distortion of the zero-point field in accelerated frames, rather than as an intrinsic property of matter. This is the paper’s proposed mechanism for the measured inertial response.Abstract; concluding discussion
The calculation requires the partons to couple to the zero-point field up to the Planck frequency. The authors use a sufficiently large bare mass to retain that coupling even though partons are asymptotically free at high frequencies; that assumption sets the scale needed for the derived effect to match inertia.Abstract; parton model section
The paper presents the result as a physically rigorous version of Mach’s principle: a body’s resistance to acceleration is set by interaction with a universal field rather than by the body alone.Abstract; concluding discussion
The final section connects the same treatment to zero-point-field models of gravitation and to the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. Those extensions are not a direct measurement in this paper; the authors developed them further in later NASA-funded work.Abstract; final section
The way in
https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.49.678How to cite it
Bernard Haisch, Alfonso Rueda, Harold E. Puthoff (1994) Inertia as a zero-point-field Lorentz force doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.49.678