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Full obituary of Dr. Peter Graneau, with passages by Andre Assis, Thomas E. Phipps and Cynthia K. Whitney.

If Mach's Principle is not valid, how does the universe negate the effects of its mass to accomodate more far-out theories like warped space and the Big Bang? The following is a slightly opinionated condensed version of Chapter 7 from Peter and Neal Graneau's book, In the Grip of the Distant Universe: The Science of Inertia (River Edge, NJ: World Scientific, 2006). The net (Gm₁m₂/r²) force from all bodies in a Newtonian universe, acting on an object, should be measurable. Mach and others were certain this force was what other scientists referred to as the mysterious inertial force. Misperceptions about the cosmos have allowed detracting theories to gain traction, but more recent scienctific discoveries are corraborating Mach's claims.

In the July 2007 issue of the journal Physics World, Chi-Jen Yang, a prominent member of the International Affairs Department of Princeton University, wrote about tackling global climate change under the headline "Manhattan versus Kyoto." (Physics World is the membership journal of the British Institute of Physics.) The first paragraph of Yang's article reads:

In advance of the G8 summit held in Germany last month, U.S. President George Bush reiterated his view that to tackle global climate change is through technology, rather than by regulating emissions of green house gases. . . He is not alone in this view. Indeed political leaders of all persuasions, including U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, as well as many scientists, are arguing that global warming can only be solved through a crash research and development programme similar to the Manhattan or Apollo projects.

The most significant new energy development of the past hundred years has been electricity generation with nuclear reactors. This complex technology was stamped out of the ground in a couple of decades because of a guilty conscience of scientists and the U.S. government for having created nuclear weapons. Under the banner of ?atoms for peace? Eisenhower promised that the nuclear sword would be beaten into a nuclear plowshare.

The ?atoms for peace? campaign soon ran into trouble. A chief concern became the proliferation of nuclear arms. Where there are nuclear power plants, there exists the possibility of producing plutonium for weapons of mass destruction. This alone is sufficient reason to halt the construction of further nuclear power plants. But it was for additional problems of the nuclear industry that new plant construction in the United States virtually ceased in the late 1970s...

Energy from the intermolecular hydrogen bonds in water represents a clean, readily available source of energy that is naturally renewed with solar radiation. The means of releasing this energy via water arc explosions is now sufficiently reliable that attention needs to turn toward harnessing it.

The 2005 John Edgar Chappell Memorial Lecture of the Natural Philosophy Alliance. Over the course of some years I had many long and intense telephone conversations with John Chappell. We were in full agreement with regard to the unsatisfactory status of the teaching of physics. Our arguments concerned what the Natural Philosophy Alliance should do to try and remedy the situation. John felt our primary purpose was to reveal to the profession and the general public what is wrong with Einstein?s relativity theories. My view has been - and still is - that science would be better served if we proposed and discussed alternative physics paradigms. To honor Chappell?s wish in this lecture I will comply with it and criticize relativity theory.

Chapter 6 of Immediate Distant Action, this essay discusses several topics surrounding instantaneous interactions.

Sections:

1. Newtonian gravitation 121
2. IAAAD in electrodynamics 124
3. Delay of radiation effects 128
4. A new theory of light 136
5. Proposed Machian law of inertia 143
6. Proposed Machian principle interaction law 149
7. The paradox of a Newtonian homogeneous universe 155
8. The discovery of cosmic hierarchical structure 157
9. An enhanced synthesis of IAAAD Newtonian forces 165

The European Physical Journal D - Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Plasma Physics

The 1998 call for a missing magnetic force law [1] has not produced an answer giving the mutual force and torque between two magnetic dipoles, one being an Amperian current element and the other a paramagnetic (or ferromagnetic) atom. That such interactions exists was the essence of Oersted's 1820 discovery of electromagnetism. Three responses [2, 3, 4] were published which discuss the subject. A number of scientists have confirmed the experiment of retrograde railgun motion with a steel armature. They submitted their findings in private communications. Of particular interest are two new experimental facts provided by Ligon [5] and Mueller [6].

Ligon found that if the armature is a metallic permanent magnet rod, this rod will roll either in the forward or the retrograde direction, depending on the magnetic rod polarity in relation to the direction of current flow through the rod. This seems to prove that the magnetic interaction between rails and armature is superimposed on the electrodynamic Ampere interactions. The missing force law must agree with this finding.

Mueller suspended the whole railgun circuit on strings to form, what we have called, an impulse pendulum [7]. He then found that when the steel rod rolled in the retrograde direction. the rail "recoil" was also reversed and became a forward motion. This proves that the magnetic interaction forces between the rails and the unmagnetized steel armature are definitely mutual attractions overpowering the Ampere electrodynamic repulsions.

Some investigators have argued that the retrograde armature motion may be a result of the mechanics of rolling. When the center of the horizontal armature acceleration force lies below the rod axis, they suspect, the rod may roll in the opposite direction to the force. Textbooks on the Newtonian mechanics [8] show this to be incorrect. In slip-free rolling, the instantaneous center of rotation is not the rod axis. but a line through the points of contact between rod and rails. Any horizontal force perpendicular to the rod axis will therefore transport the armature in the same direction as the applied force. regardless of whether this force is applied above or below the rod axis.

Nasilowski [2] points out that our understanding of magnetism advanced by three giant leaps during the second millennium. The last of the great discoveries was made by Oersted when he revealed the interaction of a compass needle with an electric current. The microscopic mechanism underlying this discovery has remained concealed in spite of the introduction of field theory, atomism, the electron theory, and quantum mechanics. We're dealing with a very hard problem.

Dring [3] is undoubtedly correct in stressing that more attention should be paid to spins and magnetic moments of fundamental particles. It is interesting that he thinks of spins as consisting of magnetic dipoles. The Ampere current element is such a dipole. Magnetic flux density and Maxwell's equations are unlikely to be of any help. Retrograde railgun motion is an instance in which B is not equal to (mu)H. Magnetic and electric dipoles not only produce mutual attractions and repulsions; they also give rise to mutual torques.

Hughes [4] appears to believe that metallic current-carrying circuits always tend to deform themselves so that the stored magnetic (potential) energy is minimized. This applies to retrograde rail gun motion but not to the forward motion of a non-magnetic armature. In the latter case the forward force and motion increases the loop self-inductance and with it the stored energy 1/2LF, where i is the instantaneous current.

Worst of all, retrograde rail gun motion literally flies in the face of quantum electrodynamics (QED). In our book [7] we devote a whole chapter to "The railgun: Testbed of the Newtonian electrodynamics". Field theory and QED require energy to fly from the battery, between the rails, to the armature and give up its momentum on impact with the armature. We have shown that if momentum is conserved. E=mc2 is violated by a huge factor. In QED this traveling energy consists of photons which collide with the electrons of the armature and thereby produce the Lorentz force. Since QED is supposed
to account for everything except gravitation and nuclear physics, it should apply to retrograde rail gun motion. The photons must then, somehow, navigate around the armature and strike it in the back. How can intelligent physicists, engineers, and mathematicians be so misled by their teachers?

The full paper will outline how retrograde railgun motion contradicts the theories of Faraday, Maxwell, Poynting, Lorentz, Einstein, and Feynman.

1. P. Graneau, "The missing magnetic force law", Galilean Electrodynamics, Vol. 9, p.35 (1998).
2. J. Nasilowski, "Necessary but missing research on magnetism", Galilean Electrodynamics, Vol. 10, p.17 (1999).
3. A. Dring, "Comments on Graneau's retrograde railgun", Galilean Electrodynamics, Vol. 10, p.18 (1999).
4. W.L. Hughes, "About railgun motion", Galilean Electrodynamics, Vol. 10. p.18 (1999).
5. T. Ligon (8504 Saddle Court. Manassas, V A 20110), private communication.
6. F. Mueller (8025 SW 15th Street, Miami. FL 33144), private communication.
7. P. Graneau, N. Graneau, Newtonian Electrodynamics, World Scientific. New Jersey (1996).
8. C. Kittel, W.D. Knight, M.A. Ruderman, Mechanics, McGraw Hill, New York (1973).

The following summarizes ideas presented by Peter Graneau at the Northeast Regional Meeting of the Natural Philosophy Alliance at the University of Connecticut ? Storrs. Sign conventions for energy and forces in electrostatics and electrodynamics present paradoxes which may be resolved with minor changes to classical perspectives.

The concept of potential energy and the principle of energy conservation arose first in the middle of the nineteenth century when Newton's 'Principia' was already 170 years old. Quite remarkably, physics had progressed without much thought being given to energy. All this changed with Helmholtz 1847 epoch-making lecture on the conservation of energy, a principle which crossed the borders between all branches of science.

The first important papers dealing with potential energy were published by F.E. Neumann in 1845 and 1847. A potential energy paradox is pointed out. Positive and negative potential energy do not add algebraically! We have to conclude that positive and negative potential energy are two different kinds of energy which might as well have been named "red" and "green" energy.

We comment on and translate Gustav Kirchhoff?s important paper of 1857 entitled ?On the motion of electricity in conductors.? The significance of this paper is that Kirchhoff proved with action at a distance that electric disturbances travel along wires of negligible resistance with the velocity of light. He accomplished this with the laws of Newtonian electrodynamics (Coulomb, Ampere, F. Neumann and Weber) before Maxwell had formulated his equations.

We correct two serious errors made by Robson and Sethian (Am.J.Phys 60 p.1111, 1992).  These authors have ignored the well established methods of Newtonian stress analysis, and then they erroneously claimed that the Newtonian stresses did not exist.  Secondly, the misrepresented railgun recoil and wire fragmentation experiments by wrongly asserting that the observed effects had been caused by metal heating.  Robson and Sethian were not aware that the thermo-mechanical wire fracture mechanism had already been disproved by experiment.  They also ignored a large body of the metallurgical literature which deals with the annealing of metals.

Peter and Neal Graneau present some strong experimental and theoretical arguments for the validity of Ampere?s electrodynamics and Newton?s action-at-a-distance, in place of the current-day ?field? concepts. They are certainly eminently qualified to question such issues. Peter Graneau has given ESJ permission to extract portions from Newton versus Einstein. This article presents excerpts from the chapter, ?Fact and Fiction in Electrodynamics.?

The paper mentions the essential experimental and theoretical facts which rule out heat as being the driving force of water-arc explosions. The only reasonable explanation of these powerful explosions is the presence in the water of electrodynamic forces. The pinch forces are shown to make a negligible contribution to the arc expansion forces. The analysis had, therefore, to be directed toward longitudinal Ampere forces and their hydrostatic translation to lateral outward pressure. Only order of magnitude estimates have so far been made of Ampere-pressure generation in liquid conductors. It is hoped the paper will be the beginning of the development of an Ampere magneto-hydrostatic theory.

Inertia has been misunderstood ever since the time of Galileo.

In the 'Dialogues concerning two new sciences' [1] Galileo (1564-1642) wrote: "I, Simplicio, who have made the test, can assure you that a cannon ball weighing one or two hundred pounds, or even more, will not reach the ground by as much as a span ahead of a musket ball weighing only a half a pound." Whether or not this experiment was performed before the doubting professors of the University of Pisa by dropping weights from the Leaning Tower is still being discussed by historians. The debate takes away nothing from the stunning discovery by Galileo which will forever remain a landmark of science. What kind of force counteracted the force of gravitational attraction to the center of the earth by just the right amount to make the heavy object fall no faster than the light object?

Electrodynamic pendulum experiments have shown there is insufficient magnetic energy in the field to balance the Lorentz force on metallic conductors by field-energy momentum destruction. Local action (magnetic pressure) on metal conductors is therefore an illusion that should be replaced by simultaneous far-action between current elements. This means the forces across air gaps of electric motors and generators are the action-at-a-distance forces of Amp?re-Neumann electrodynamics. Neumann's electrodynamic potential which in modern terminology is called magnetic energy, is potential energy bound to the atoms of the conductor metal The Amp?rian current element turns out to be a diamagnetic conductor atom. The diamagnetism has to arise from the electronic structure of the atom and could be an ?electron hole? left by the absent conduction electron. A finite amount of magnetic energy has been assigned to every pair of Amp?rian current elements. As a result of this, every pair of conductor elements is associated with a finite amount of mutual inductance. The mutual magnetic energy of the current element pair led to the theoretical discovery of a new ponderomotive torque and a new electromotive torque acting between the members of the current element pair. The torques involve the two angular degrees of freedom of the current elements and, therefore, have been termed the alpha-torque and the epsilon-torque.

Experimentally demonstrated Ampere tension cannot be the result of forces acting only on conduction electrons. Therefore a new model of the metallic current-element has been developed. It comprises the conduction electron and the lattice ion which jointly form an electric dipole pivoted at the lattice site. This dipole is capable of transferring mechanical forces of electromagnetic origin directly to the body of the metal, as required by Ampere's force law. With the aid of Neumann's electrodynamic potential and the principle of virtual work it is shown that pivoted current-elements should exert mutual torques on each other which give rise to the induction of electromotive forces. Furthermore, the elemental mutual torques set up diamagnetic currents which have the magnetic appearance of ordinary conduction currents but do not involve charge transport. The induction of diamagnetic currents leads directly to the Meissner effect in superconductors. These currents assume the role of persistent screening currents and are accompanied by the expulsion of the magnetic vector potential and Neuman's electromagnetic potential (magnetic energy) from the interior of the superconductor. In this model the quenching of superconductivity by a magnetic field is replaced by diamagnetic saturation. The theory predicts the Meissner effect should occur in a superconducting ring surrounding a very long solenoid, that is in a region where the magnetic field is effectively zero. Hence the validity of the pivoted current-element model may be tested by experiment.