Not only that, but it's prior work that is based on a false premise. The author's proposed "solution" is based on Unruh radiation, but Unruh radiation is zero for an object in a free-fall orbit. To get nonzero Unruh radiation, you need proper acceleration, i.e., some non-gravitational force has to be acting on the object. Unless the author is claiming that Proxima Centauri has a rocket attached to it, his model fails at step one. I believe other physicists have pointed this out but the author prefers not to mention or address this criticism.
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2017/02/aa29930-16/aa2...
> ... the question as to whether they actually form a single gravitationally bound triple system has been open since the discovery of Proxima one century ago. Owing to HARPS high-precision absolute radial velocity measurements and the recent revision of the parameters of the α Cen pair, we show that Proxima and α Cen are gravitationally bound with a high degree of confidence. The orbital period of Proxima is ≈ 550 000 yr.
Since when? For example these measurements from 2016 say the opposite: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2017/02/aa29930-...
If indeed there is a minimum acceleration I wonder if it might not be measurable with some atomic physics experiment (atomic clock, etc..) in space a bit away from earth.
>The Alpha Centauri system is ideal for testing quantised inertia since it is close to us and well-observed.
Yet they're using 1994 estimate for AB mass, have nobody measured alpha centaury AB mass since 1994?
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0307/
and this paper from 2016 also has very close mass estimation (see table 1)
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2016/10/aa29201-...
This is a weak assumption IMO. It is also possible that the stars "just" have a common origin and move at similar enough trajectories without being gravitationally bound.
Google indicates that mainstream physics regards it sceptically ("pseudoscience"), but it was difficult for me to find out why.
I found a single paper containing criticism from an actual physicist ("A sceptical analysis of quantized inertia" by Michele Renda: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/489/1/881/5545603), but that did not make the theory sound that bad, and it even mentions "absence of arbitrary tunable parameters", which sounds very promising to me...
I'd be very curious on why this is so controversial from an actual physicist (e.g. compared to MoND). Hopefully Hossenfelder will cover this at some point on youtube, those videos are always quite merciless with overhyped results...
And if quantization was a visible effect at the scale of stars, it should be very visible in our own solar system. But no, our solar system operates classically to a crazy number of decimal places, and the deviations follow general relativity - with no evidence of quantization.
I am not an orbital mechanic, but the word "chemistry" is jarring to me here. Is it just a strained metaphor or is there some sense it which it fits? Maybe the romantic chemistry of mutually attracting bodies?
Anyway, I think I can see why QI is so appealing. The paper contains a very short and sweet explanation.
Funny. “This discrepancy can be accounted for by accounting for the discrepancy using the number fudging we developed specifically to account for the discrepancy.”
Discrepancy’s been accounted for, boss!
As the saying goes, all complex questions have simple, easy to understand wrong answers. This is an example. See my response to georgeburdell upthread.
As for galaxy rotation curves, yes, the paper's claim is overblown.
