Superconductor Anomalies and Dark Energy When the Sunday Telegraph first reported on gravitational shielding experiments by the Russian engineer, Evgeny Podkletnov, in March, 1996, the news was met with derision and disbelief. After a flurry of attempts to replicate the phenomena failed, with a few possible exceptions, the field entered hibernation. But, scarcely a decade after Podkletnov first gained notoriety, a highly respected European Laboratory - the Austrian Research Center (ARC), reported detection of acceleration signals from a spun-up, ring shaped, niobium superconductor, which yielded about 100 micro-g's for tangential accelerations of less than 10 g's. They believed they were observing an enhanced gravitoelectric field induced by a changing gravitomagnetic field around their toroidal superconductor, in analogy with an electric field generatied by a changing magnetic field. Its great strength was attributed to a mass increase of the graviton, inside the superconductor, in analogy with a massive photon believed responsible for superconductivity. However, direct measurement of the gravitomagnetic field yielded only 1% of the expected value, casting doubt on this interpretation. An alternative explanation is suggested, involving the macro-scale wavefunction of the superconductor in conjunction with enormous dynamic forces within atoms. One easily calculates that the bound electron in a hydrogen atom's lowest orbital experiences an average centripedal acceleration of 1022 g's. Yet, as long as an integral number of deBroglie (matter) waves wrap around the orbit, there is no emission of synchroton radiation. Or, more properly, as long as the electron's probability distribution traces out any one spherical harmonic configuration corresponding to either an s, p, d, or f, orbital, or other solutions to the Schrodinger Wave Equation, it will not lose energy through the emission of EM radiation. Thus matter waves are intimately linked to stable orbits, and are speculated to be visible evidence for a micro-range, di-pole form of gravity, that matches the coulomb force in strength. The quanta of this field is proposed to be a TeV mass 'photon' with length and time variables, substituting for the usual electric and magnetic variables. A duality between the electro-weak and gravity-Higgs forces, in the TeV energy regime, is the proposed source of this field. It will be recalled that a gravity field is measured by length contraction and time retardation, at each point in space. For such a quanta to exist in the TeV energy scale, it is necessary to invoke new physics beyond the Standard Model; namely, the postulate of additional hidden dimensions beyond our 4D manifold, as set forth, for example, in the Randall-Sundrum paper "An Alternative to Compactification". By reacting to, and opposing, applied accelerations, this field would explain atomic stability by counterbalancing centripedal forces on electrons and nucleii that pirouette around their common center of mass. Such a field would embrace fundamental particles in a freefall 'cocoon', more specifically, a micro-Alcubierre metric, as long as the field's intensity is sychronous with cyclical acceleration forces, as in an elliptical orbit. At 10-19 meters, this field would not conflict with the scale of atomic structures, such as the lowest orbital in a hydrogen atom, with a radius of .528 x 10-10 meters. As the variables of this field are free to range in both directions (contract/expand for length, retard/advance for time) it follows that one half of each wave cycle corresponds to a negative energy state of the vacuum. This is proposed to be the source of the complex mathematical form of the wavefunction ψ. Sync shifting, 39 magnitudes stronger than seen in Relativitistic dynamics, would modulate a particle's position in both space and time, giving rise to Born's probabilistic interpretation of ψ2 . Since no force operates instantaneously, it's speculated that 10-5 g acceleration signals, detected near a niobium superconductor, at the Austrian Research Center (ARC), resulted from a lag in the response time of this field, to an applied acceleration of only 7.33 g's. Intriguingly, Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov, of the Moscow Chemical Scientific Research Center, reported acceleration pulses of ~ 1000 g's for durations of 10-4 seconds, from a superconductor subjected to 2 megavolt discharges. This claim is quite fantastic, and difficult to believe. On the other hand, such high voltage discharges would, presumably, have induced momentary displacements (accelerations) on the cooper pairs and lattice sites, orders of magnitudes larger than in the ARC experiments, who found a linear relationship between applied acceleration and signal. The bottom line in all these experiments, and the theoretical interpretation presented here, is does it entail violation of the fundamental conservation laws of physics - particularly conservation of energy and momentum? To the best of my knowledge I cannot see any reason for disagreement. A vitally important fact is that in both the Podkletnov and ARC experiments a repulsive acceleration force was observed. Gravity is always an attractive force. Quantum theory tells us that gravitational attraction must be mediated by a massless, spin-2 graviton; which like all other Standard Model particles possesses positive-energy. The conclusion seems inescapable. To produce a repulsive, gravity-like, acceleration force over macroscopic distances (meters, light-years), it would have to be mediated by a massless, spin-2, negative-energy graviton. Now, as noted above, the length-time field can range between negative and positive states of the local vacuum. So, it could be that during the excursions into a negative vacuum state, the evolution of negative-energy gravitons becomes possible. That, in turn, leads to several additional thoughts. Perhaps the inflationary expansion of our Universe is driven by these small, momentary, fluxes of negative-energy gravitons every time a piece of matter undergoes acceleration. But there's a problem with that - an equal quantity of postive-energy gravitons should also be momentarily evolved, during acceleration, cancelling the spatial expansion effect of the negative-energy gravitons. Plus, the expansionary force of dark energy is not associated with regions of baryonic matter, but instead seems to be harbored in the intergalactic voids. So, alternatively, it may be an adjacent brane-Universe, characterized by a negative-energy state, that provides a continuous 'feedstock' of negative-energy gravitons; driving inflation. That idea is expounded upon here: Dual Universe Model Comparing Podkletnov's experiment with the ARC group's experiment is, admittedly, like comparing apples with oranges. The one feature they do have in common is that they both accelerate cooper-pairs. The ARC experimenters apply 7.33 g's to both the cooper-pairs and lattice sites yielding 100 micro-g's signal. Podkletnov's experiment discharges 2 million volts between a YBCO superconductor and a copper plate, in a partially evacuated chamber, yielding 1000 g's. Electrons, in a vacuum, subjected to such a voltage will reach about 98% c. Assuming this occurs in the 100 micro-second interval, indicated in Dr. Giovanni Modanese's paper, the average acceleration on the electrons is something like 109 g's. Curiously, if one substitutes the proton's mass, in place of the electron's, the resulting acceleration is only 7.3% below a perfect linear extrapolation of the ARC team's applied acceleration versus signal yield. That is pretty remarkable, since this near perfect linearity is maintained across eight orders of magnitude. Also, since the proton has the opposite charge of the electron the acceleration pulse (on the protons) would be opposite in direction to the detected signal; as was the case in the ARC experiments. The puzzle here is that the superconductor in Podkletnov's experiment is stationary, meaning the proton's at the lattice sites can only be displaced a small amount in the rigid lattice structure, before they must rebound to their original positions. Presumably, some of the cooper-pairs exit the superconductor and traverse the near vacuum to the copper plate. Their acceleration through the near vacuum would be much larger than within the superconductor. The question is: Would they maintain their coherence outside the superconductor, perhaps via quantum entanglement, in the absence of flexing lattice sites needed to establish the bond in the BCS theory? In this regard, the reported flat, glowing discharge, originating at the superconductor, and transiting the partially evacuated chamber to the copper anode, is very suggestive of some kind of coherent electron behavior, unlike a normal spark discharge. By enveloping fundamental particles, this field would severly distort the rate, and direction at which time flows, as perceived by an external observer. Thus, electric and magnetic fields, from every fundamental particle, would be modulated forwards and backwards in time, but average to the local present. As Richard Feynman observed, a reversal of time equates to a reversal of a particle's charge. The weak binding of cooper-pairs - 10-4-10-3 eV, is therefore proposed to arise from a small phase difference in their relative times. Similar temporal phase differences, in portions of the outer electron clouds of neighboring atoms, may contribute to inter-atomic bonding. These temporal oscillations, along with the spatial oscillations, are proposed to be the origin of the wave nature of matter. The time-reversed portions of these waves, in conjunction with the negative metric excursions, would explain the complex structure of the wavefunction. On the celestial scale the large masses of stars, planets, and moons, imparts curvature to the local metric, so that these bodies move along geodesic, or acceleration-free, trajectories. Remarkably, aside from tidal friction, within these bodies, and a mininscule gravitoelectromagnetic radiation, no energy is lost; e.g. energy is conserved in geodesic motion. The postulated micro-range, di-pole, gravity field would also induce a local geodesic state for electrons and quarks that are in stable structures, but it is not yet clear whether this field can be modelled to be energy conserving. The fact that geodesic motion, with an entirely different structure, and origin, is energy conserving in the astronomical domain, is encouraging with respect to a possible similar situation in the particle realm. Home