Electrogravitational Coupling: Empirical and Theoretical Arguments

Scientific Paper
Title	Electrogravitational Coupling: Empirical and Theoretical Arguments
Read in full	Link to paper
Author(s)	Toivo Jaakkola
Keywords	Electrogravitational, Coupling
Published	1991
Journal	Apeiron
Volume	1
Number	9-10
No. of pages	42
Pages	76-90

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Abstract

In a cosmological approach to a unified physical theory, it is first shown that certain general global-scale arguments suggest a coupling of the electromagnetic and gravitational interactions. Three historically important and still actual issues further motivate the study. Several more recent and still unexplained observations are introduced as evidence that neither electromagnetic nor gravitational phenomena can be interpreted consistently by the current standard theories, and as indicators of the important role of the EGC in the physics of all scales of nature.

The universal redshift effect, containing the cosmological redshift, intrinsic redshifts in QSOs and intermediate strengths of z depending on the density of a system, is interpreted as a quantized loss of energy from the photon to a vacuum composed of gravitational quanta. The model covers consistently all the observed features of redshift, including its quantized fine-structure, observed both in distant-dependent and distance independent redshifts.

Gravitation thus appears as a pressure effect of cosmic gravitational quanta. The apparent two-body attraction results from mutual screening of the gravitational pressure of the background vacuum. Denoting the distance from the centre as r, the density as ρ, the strength of gravitation as G and the strength of redshift as α, we find that the functions A = G(r)α(r) and a_c = G(r)ρ(r)/α(r) are universal constants. Here A is the electrogravitational coupling constant, and a_c is the gravitational pressure constant which determines not only the global mass-to-radius structure of galaxies and systems of galaxies, but also intrinsic structure and dynamics, and also affects density evolution. The non-Newtonian dynamics deduced for the galaxies explains the flat rotation curves without non-luminous matter. On smaller scales, anomalous accelerations found for planets and satellites in the inner solar system, tidal anomalies during the solar eclipses as well as data usually presented in terms of a "fifth force", fit into the new picture of gravitation. On both the small and the large scale, the EGC seems to make sense of the data.

Overview

This is Toivo Jaakkola's programmatic statement of electrogravitational coupling (EGC), delivered to the 1990 workshop whose proceedings fill this double issue of Apeiron. Jaakkola, an observational astronomer at Tuorla Observatory, arrived at it by working backwards from redshift: having concluded from four independent families of cosmological tests that the redshift is not a Doppler effect and that no evolutionary effects exist in the data, he needed a physical mechanism, and the only agent universal enough to serve was gravitation. The hypothesis is that the two long-range interactions, electromagnetism and gravity, are coupled, so that light loses energy to the gravitational vacuum and gravitation is in turn modified by the presence of radiation.

He distinguishes two strategies for unification. The laboratory strategy proceeds "from the non-unified to the unified" by cranking up experimental energies until gravity joins the other forces, which requires the energies of a hypothetical Big Bang; Jaakkola calls it mechanistic and suggests, "ironically", that it is a product of an era dominated by energy politics. His own strategy begins from the one thing in nature that is genuinely unique — the Universe — and asks a unified theory to solve the standing cosmological paradoxes. The result is a static, infinite, equilibrium cosmology in which gravitation is not attraction at all but a screening of the pressure of a graviton-filled vacuum, and in which dark matter is unnecessary.

The argument

Global-scale problems

Jaakkola lists eight problems he takes as evidence that neither interaction is understood. On the radiation side: the non-Doppler character of the cosmological redshift; Olbers' paradox, whose standard solution by expansion and finite cosmic time he rejects; and the cosmic background radiation, which he argues a non-expanding equilibrium universe containing stars predicts a priori — intensity, temperature, deviations from the Planck spectrum, photon-baryon ratio and dipole anisotropy alike — whereas the Big Bang "could have produced anything one might imagine: if not centaurs or animals with two noses…" On the gravitational side: the gravity paradox (in an infinite static universe the Newtonian potential is indeterminate), the abrupt halt of hierarchical structure at second-order clusters, the homogeneity and isotropy Hubble reported in 1934, and the density problem. Overarching all of them is his equilibrium principle: "Everything evolves — the whole does not evolve."

Three historical deductions

Jaakkola then joins two nineteenth- and twentieth-century strands. Seeliger and Neumann (1895) cured the gravity paradox by adding an exponential factor to the Newtonian potential; Einstein's Λ-term, he says, had the same physical meaning. Both were rightly criticised as ad hoc, but Jaakkola argues the exponential is correct and is not an extra force at all: since "an interaction entails absorption of energy" and all absorption effects obey exponential distance laws, the factor is what coupling to the other long-range force must produce. In the same year Hubble announced his law, Fritz Zwicky proposed that a photon passing masses feels a gravitational "drag" because gravitational action propagates at finite speed. Combining the two, Jaakkola claims the ingredients of a unification were already present by 1929.

The second strand is experimental: Mossotti's 1836 derivation of gravity from a slight imbalance of electrical attraction and repulsion; Faraday's null experiments on gravitational induction of electric fields, quoted at length ("All this is a dream. Still, examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true…"); and Woodward's 1980s results, which reported a positive coupling Q = bma with b = 3.3 × 10⁻¹¹ statcoulomb/dyne, and a rotating-cylinder result scaling as the square of the spin. The third strand is a re-reading of the solar tests of general relativity: the centre-to-limb variation of the solar redshift is not predicted by GR at all and behaves as a redshift-distance relation; grazing redshifts of Taurus A and of the Pioneer-6 2292 MHz signal show the same; optical light deflections within 5 solar radii show a 10 % excess significant at 4σ; and cosmological tests, he says, offer GR "no support whatsoever".

Redshift as energy loss to gravitons

The theoretical core is short. A photon moving through a graviton bath loses momentum and energy linearly with distance, dE/E = −α dr, which integrates to E = E₀e^−αr and hence ln(1 + z) = αr. This both reproduces the Seeliger–Neumann exponential and yields a magnitude-redshift relation m = 5 log z + 2.5 log(1 + z) + ln(1 + z)/z + K(z) + C, which departs from Hubble's linear (m, log z) relation by only 0.0008 mag at z = 0.1 and 0.043 mag at z = 1. Estimating α from the mass within an effective radius D of the photon path gives α = 1.04(Gρ)^1/2/c, or 0.90 × 10⁻²⁹ cm⁻¹ for ρ = 10⁻³⁰ g cm⁻³ — about seven times smaller than H/c = 6.33 × 10⁻²⁹ cm⁻¹, a gap Jaakkola closes by arguing that the cosmological G_c is about ten times the locally measured G₀. Because the interaction is quantised, energy is lost in constant fractions over constant intervals, so Δln(1 + z) = constant: periodicity is predicted in ln(1 + z) rather than in z itself, reducing to periodicity in z for z < 0.05. He identifies C₁ = 2.4 × 10⁻⁴ with Tifft's 72 km/s interval and C₂ = 0.206 with the Karlsson periodicity in quasar redshifts.

Gravitation as vacuum pressure and screening

Gravitation is then rebuilt as a pressure effect. Gravitons streaming in from the cosmic vacuum press on a body; a second body screens a fraction R₂²/4r² of that inflow, producing a net momentum change toward it. "The relation between B₂ and B₁ is thus physical in the same sense that the relationship between a shade and a shadowed wall is physical." The familiar 1/r² emerges from the contraction of the solid angle, not from a force law. Bodies also emit gravitons, giving a direct term S₃ that must be repulsive and much weaker if orbits are to close. Four dynamical regimes follow according to the ratio S₁/S₂; the Newtonian limit is recovered for the Earth–Sun case when κ equals the Earth's surface gravity. Integrating the graviton energy loss over all masses gives a finite background acceleration a_c = Gρ/α ≈ 1.05 × 10⁻⁸ cm s⁻², the "Machian force". With G(r)α(r) = A constant and α(r) ∝ r⁻¹, the force law in a galaxy becomes F ∝ r⁻¹ and therefore V(r) = (G*m)^1/2 = constant — flat rotation curves without unseen mass. He adds that half the background comes from within z = 1, giving an "effective radius of the Universe" of 3465.7 Mpc for H = 60, and that with a_l > a_c required, the Oort cloud at 10⁵ a.u. is seriously unstable and cannot be primordial.

Assessment

The paper's real strength is its refusal to solve one problem at a time. Most tired-light proposals give a redshift mechanism and stop; Jaakkola insists that whatever redshifts light must also be what does the gravitating, and he follows that constraint into galactic dynamics, solar-system anomalies and laboratory electrogravitics. The demand is a genuine one, and it yields a distinctive testable structure: the redshift periodicity is predicted in ln(1 + z) rather than z, the coefficient α is derived from ρ, G and c rather than fitted, and the flat rotation curves follow from the same α(r) ∝ r⁻¹ relation he had measured observationally in 1978, independently of rotation data. Equation (24), giving a constant gravitational pressure for a quasi-stationary stellar system, is a clean equation of state with an obvious physical reading — any gradient in a(r) means contraction or expansion. His remark that quantisation of redshift by itself refutes the Doppler reading, since a Doppler periodicity would require geocentric shells, is a fair point that does not depend on the rest of the theory.

The difficulties begin with the derivations, which are compressed to the point of assertion. The screening account of gravity inherits the classic objection to push gravity models that Jaakkola does not address: a flux dense enough to produce gravity should deposit its absorbed momentum as heat, and moving bodies should feel drag against the graviton bath. He introduces a repulsive emission term S₃ to keep orbits closed but does not estimate it or show the balance holds. The seven-fold discrepancy between the derived α and the observed H/c is removed by setting G_c ≈ 10G₀, a factor obtained from the very relation G(r)α(r) = A that the fit is supposed to support; the reasoning is close to circular, and Jaakkola concedes a_c is "uncertain by a factor of a few integers". The exponent p in α ∝ r^−p is observationally 0.8 on cosmic scales and 1.25 in the Galaxy, but is set "tentatively" to exactly 1 to obtain the flat-rotation result — the one value that makes the derivation work, and one his own data do not give.

Against measurement, the static interpretation faces obstacles not confronted here. A tired-light redshift of the kind derived, in which the photon loses energy continuously along its path, must be reconciled with the (1 + z) time dilation observed in Type Ia supernova light curves, which was not yet available in 1991 but is now the sharpest discriminator against static models; and with the angular-blurring problem, since incremental energy loss by scattering off vacuum quanta should degrade the images of distant sources, which remain sharp. The blackbody accuracy of the CBR to the COBE limits, published the year after this paper, likewise constrains any reprocessing mechanism far more tightly than the order-of-magnitude arguments offered in Section 2. The empirical catalogue in Sections 3 and 4 is also uneven: the Saxl–Allen eclipse pendulum result and the 1980s "fifth force" have both since failed replication, and Woodward's electrogravitational induction remains unconfirmed, so several of the load-bearing anomalies are weaker than presented. Finally, Section 7 is a survey of workshop colleagues rather than a test of the theory, and the paper ends without the detailed empirical comparison it repeatedly promises — Jaakkola says frankly that every topic "deserves a separate investigation", and that is the fairest description of what the paper is: a research programme sketched with unusual scope and candour, not a completed theory.

See also

• Toivo Jaakkola
• Redshift
• Tired Light
• Push Gravity
• Georges-Louis Le Sage
• Dark Matter
• Halton Arp
• Paul Marmet
• Jean-Pierre Vigier
• Amitabha Ghosh
• Konrad Rudnicki
• James F Woodward
• Victor Clube
• Adolphe Martin
• Fifth Force
• Big Bang
• General Relativity
• Apeiron