Ioannis Iraklis Haranas

Ioannis Iraklis Haranas
Residence	Toronto, ONT, Canada
Nationality	Greek / Canadian
Known for	Satellite orbital dynamics; tests of the Dynamic Theory of Gravity and other non-Newtonian potentials
Scientific career
Fields	Physicist, Astronomer
Institutions	York University; Wilfrid Laurier University

Ioannis Iraklis Haranas is a Greek-Canadian astronomer and physicist who works on satellite orbital dynamics, space geodesy and the observable consequences of modified gravitational potentials. He has published some ninety papers, chiefly in Astrophysics and Space Science, and holds a Google Scholar h-index of about 11.

He occupies an unusual position in this catalogue. Most of his work is ordinary refereed astronomy; a cluster of papers from 2001 to 2011, however, appeared in Journal of Theoretics, Progress in Physics, Galilean Electrodynamics and the Natural Philosophy Alliance proceedings. The dividing line is not what he was studying — it is largely the same physics throughout — but where he was able to publish it at the time.

Career

Haranas holds a doctorate in astronomy and space science and a master's in astronomy, both from York University in Toronto, a further master's (ABD) in solid-state physics from Brock University, and a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from the University of Western Ontario.

His papers of the early 2000s carry a York University address, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy; he was later an adjunct professor in York's Faculty of Graduate Studies. From about 2008 he was associated with Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, in the Department of Physics and Computer Science — described variously as adjunct assistant professor, adjunct professor and assistant professor, a discrepancy the sources do not resolve. Laurier featured him in 2018 in an article on research mentorship. His faculty page there is no longer online, and he has more recently held a post as associate professor of astrophysics at an American university in Iraq.

He has served as a reviewer for Astrophysics and Space Science and belongs to the Canadian Geophysical Union, the Canadian Lunar Research Network, the Astronomy and Space Exploration Society and the Volos Hellenic Astronomical and Space Society.

Research

Orbital dynamics and modified potentials

The bulk of Haranas's work asks a single well-posed question: if the gravitational potential departed slightly from Newton's, what would we see in the motion of satellites and planets? He has worked through the consequences for the anomalistic period of celestial bodies, for Gauss's planetary equations, for the Poynting–Robertson effect, for geodetic precession, and for radar signal delay near the Sun.

The modifications tested include the Yukawa potential of the fifth-force literature, Hořava–Lifshitz gravity in the Kehagias–Sfetsos solution, Dvali–Gabadadze–Porrati braneworld gravity, the Manev potential, and quantum corrections to the Newtonian potential. This is mainstream work: the Yukawa papers cite Fischbach and Talmadge, Iorio and Lucchesi, and appear in Springer journals.

A separate applied strand concerns Mars dust storms and their effect on low-orbiting spacecraft, published in Acta Astronautica and presented as a video lecture in 2010. He also has a substantial body of work — perhaps a quarter of his output — in gravitational biology and biomedical physics, on cell mechanics under altered gravity and on hyperthermia cancer treatment.

The Dynamic Theory of Gravity

The papers that bring Haranas into this catalogue test the Dynamic Theory of Pharis E Williams, a framework that takes classical thermodynamics as the foundational layer of physics and derives relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics from it within a five-dimensional manifold of space, time and mass density. Williams's use of Weyl's quantum principle yields a non-singular gravitational potential:

$V(r)=-\frac{GM}{r}{e}^{-\lambda /r},\lambda =\frac{GM}{c^2}$

The exponent is λ/r rather than r/λ, so this is not a Yukawa potential despite the superficial resemblance — a distinction that matters when reading Haranas's bibliography, since he works on both and the titles sound alike.

It should be said clearly that this is not Nikola Tesla's "dynamic theory of gravity", announced in 1937 and never published. The two share a name and nothing else; Haranas cites Williams throughout and Tesla nowhere.

Between 2004 and 2005 Haranas ran Williams's potential through the classical tests:

• Radar Time Delays in the Dynamic Theory of Gravity (Serbian Astronomical Journal, 2004) — computes round-trip radar times to the planets, finding the dynamic theory differs from general relativity by roughly one part in 10¹⁴.
• The Deflection of Light in the Dynamic Theory of Gravity (Romanian Astronomical Journal, 2004) — a correction of about 1.5 × 10⁻⁶ arcseconds to the Sun's 1.750″ deflection.
• Pressure Calculation of a Constant Density Star in the Dynamic Theory of Gravity (Romanian Astronomical Journal, 2005) — a central-pressure change of one part in 10⁴ and a redshift identical to the Newtonian value.

The programme returns the same verdict each time: the predicted deviations exist but are far below detection. The reason is visible in the theory itself — λ is 1.4822 km for a solar-mass body, so λ/r is of order 10⁻⁶ at the solar radius.

How the work continued

The most interesting feature of Haranas's career, and the one least visible from his bibliography, is that the Dynamic Theory work did not stop in 2005. It changed name.

From 2008 the same potential reappears under the neutral description of "a non-singular gravitational potential which appears in the literature", with Williams cited as its source — first in Progress in Physics ("Geodetic Precession of the Spin in a Non-Singular Gravitational Potential" and "Detection of the Relativistic Corrections to the Gravitational Potential using a Sagnac Interferometer", both 2008, the latter written with Michael Harney), and then in Springer's Astrophysics and Space Science ("Satellite motion in a non-singular gravitational potential", 2010, with Spiros Pagiatakis, and the Poynting–Robertson paper of the same year). Williams's 1997 paper is still being cited in Haranas's work as recently as 2023.

The physics was accepted into refereed astronomy once it was framed as a general question about non-singular potentials rather than as a test of a named heterodox theory.

Publishing venues

Haranas's output divides by period rather than by subject:

• Refereed: Astrophysics and Space Science (18 papers), Advances in Space Research, Acta Astronautica, Serbian Astronomical Journal, Romanian Astronomical Journal (around seven papers, 2002–2010), Earth, Moon and Planets, and the American Journal of Physics (1984, on microwave attenuation in liquid media).
• Dissident and marginal: Journal of Theoretics (seven papers, chiefly 2001), Progress in Physics (five, 2008–2010), Galilean Electrodynamics (2007), and the Natural Philosophy Alliance proceedings (Long Beach 2010, College Park 2011).

The fringe publications cluster in the years when he appears to have been unaffiliated or in junior positions; from about 2010 he becomes a steady Springer author and the marginal venues cease. A set of viXra postings in 2010 are re-postings of already-published work rather than new papers.

Reception

His mainstream work is modestly but genuinely cited — around 380 citations in total, with the best-known papers being on the graviton mass and the holographic principle, on Yukawa effects in satellite dynamics, and on Mars dust storms.

The Dynamic Theory papers are a different matter: the 2004 and 2005 papers have no citations at all, and no published critique or engagement with them exists. Williams's theory itself has almost no independent literature — outside Williams and Haranas its citation record is close to a single paper.

The 2008 Progress in Physics papers fared better, and the Astrophysics and Space Science versions better still, but those citations attach to the orbital-mechanics results rather than to the theory behind the potential.

Papers on this wiki

• 2012 – Radar Signal Delay in the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati Gravity
• 2011 – Calculation of Radar Signal Delays in the Vicinity of the Sun due to the Contribution of a Yukawa Correction Term in the Gravitational Potential
• 2011 – Eccentricity Functions in the Higher Degree and Order Sectorial Gravitational Harmonic Coefficients
• 2010 – Gauss' Planetary Equations in a Non-Singular Potential
• 2010 – Quantum Corrections to the Gravitational Potential and Orbital Motion
• 2010 – Satellite Motion in a Non-Singular Gravitational Potential
• 2010 – Satellite orbit perturbations in a dusty Martian atmosphere
• 2010 – Yukawa-type Effects in Satellites Dynamics
• 2010 – Yukawa-Type Potential Effects in the Anomalistic Period of Celestial Bodies
• 2009 – The Mass of the Universe and Other Relations in the Idea of a Possible Cosmic Quantum Mechanics
• 2008 – Detection of the Relativistic Corrections to the Gravitational Potential using a Sagnac Interferometer
• 2008 – Geodetic Precession of the Spin in a Non-Singular Gravitational Potential
• 2007 – Solution of Einstein's Field Equations Using Harrison's Method
• 2005 – Pressure Calculation of a Constant Density Star in the Dynamic Theory of Gravity
• 2004 – The Deflection of Light in the Dynamic Theory of Gravity
• 2004 – Radar Time Delays in the Dynamic Theory of Gravity
• 2003 – Derivation of Weinberg's Relation in a Inflationary Universe
• 2003 – A Variable Model of the Fine-Structure Constant
• 2002 – Sakharov's Temperature Limit in a Schwarzchild Metric Modified by a Cosmological Constant Λ
• 2002 – The Temperature of a Black Hole in a De-Sitter Space-Time

Media

• 2010 – Satellite Orbit Perturbations in a Dusty Martian Atmosphere (video lecture)

See also

• Pharis E Williams
• Michael Harney
• Sagnac Effect
• Journal of Theoretics
• Galilean Electrodynamics

External links

• Google Scholar profile.
• "Astrophysics researcher Ioannis Haranas shares how mentorship can inspire excellence" — Wilfrid Laurier University, 2018.