Neal Graneau
Neal Graneau | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Residence | Oxford, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | USA / English |
| Known for | New Energy, Newtonian Physics, IAAD, Mach's Principle, Water Arcing, Ampère's longitudinal force |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Research Scientist, Physics |
| Institutions | University of Oxford |
Neal Graneau is a British-American experimental physicist based in Oxford, United Kingdom, known for his experimental and theoretical work on Ampère's original electrodynamic force law, high-current water-arc explosions, and Machian, instantaneous action-at-a-distance accounts of inertia. With his father Peter Graneau he co-authored the books Newtonian Electrodynamics, Newton Versus Einstein and In the Grip of the Distant Universe: The Science of Inertia, which together argue that a Newtonian, action-at-a-distance paradigm explains a range of electrodynamic and inertial phenomena that field-based relativistic physics leaves unresolved.
Biography
Neal Graneau was born in London, and attended Fenn School in Concord, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Winchester College in England. He travelled with school theater and poetry groups, and played piano recitals. He studied physics at King's College of London University, and at Oxford University as a graduate student, completing his doctorate at Oxford in 1992. For ten years he spent his summers at his father's MIT laboratory. There this father-and-son team researched, invented, built, and performed experiments. When not at work, Neal finds time to relax by playing the drums.
From 1992 he worked in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where his projects included the development of novel pulsed-power transformers and the investigation of renewable electricity generation from high-current-density water arc explosions. He has continued to publish experimental work on longitudinal electromagnetic forces, including a 2025 single-author paper on measurements made with a copper armature submerged in a liquid-metal trough carrying DC current.
Scientific contributions
Ampère's longitudinal force and Newtonian electrodynamics
The central theme of Graneau's research is that the electrodynamic force law published by André-Marie Ampère in 1822 — which acts along the line joining two current elements and therefore obeys Newton's third law — remains experimentally superior, in certain regimes, to the Lorentz force derived from Maxwellian field theory. Where the Lorentz force predicts only transverse forces on a current element, the Ampère law also predicts a longitudinal component that can place a current-carrying conductor under tension along its own axis.
In Newtonian Electrodynamics (World Scientific, 1996), Peter and Neal Graneau collected the experimental evidence for these longitudinal forces and argued that the anomalies deserve investigation rather than dismissal. Experiments discussed include the mercury fountain, in which mercury in a cup with sealed electrodes is driven upward at currents of several hundred to a thousand amperes in a manner explicable by Ampère's law but not by the Lorentz force; wire fragmentation, in which conductors break in the solid state at points of predicted longitudinal tension; and railgun recoil, including the observation of an armature driven toward the current source rather than away from it. Their earlier joint book Newton Versus Einstein: How Matter Interacts with Matter (1993) set out the same case for a matter-to-matter, rather than matter-to-field, account of physical interaction.
Neal Graneau's more recent experimental programme has sought to isolate the longitudinal force cleanly by using a solid–liquid metal contact, a technique intended to discriminate between axial mechanical contact forces and a genuine longitudinal electromagnetic force. He has argued that if confirmed, such forces would have consequences for any technology involving very high current densities, including railguns and fusion devices.
Water-arc explosions and energy release from water
With Peter Graneau and collaborators, Neal Graneau performed calorimetric and mechanical studies of electric arcs discharged through water. Their reported result was that the kinetic energy of the cold fog ejected from a water arc can exceed the electrical energy supplied to strike and sustain the arc, and that the explosion is driven by electrodynamic forces rather than by thermal expansion of gas in the arc column. The Graneaus interpreted the excess as chemical energy — solar energy previously stored in the hydrogen bonds of liquid water — being liberated by the arc, and argued that the mechanical behaviour of the explosion follows from longitudinal Ampère forces acting in a dense arc plasma rather than from Lorentz forces. This work is the basis of the "New Energy" strand of their research and of the monograph Unlimited Renewable Solar Energy from Water.
Inertia, Mach's principle and instantaneous action at a distance
In a series of papers and in In the Grip of the Distant Universe: The Science of Inertia (World Scientific, 2006), Peter and Neal Graneau developed a Machian account of inertia based on instantaneous action at a distance (IAAD). On their proposal, inertia is not a property intrinsic to a body but a real force arising from the body's instantaneous interaction with all the matter in the universe, as Ernst Mach suggested. They set out a Newton–Mach interaction force between every pair of particles that depends on their relative acceleration and is proportional to the gravitational force between them, so that the motion of any object is directly influenced by the distant universe.
The Graneaus argue that this restores physical reality to the inertia forces that modern physics labels "fictitious", and that it requires abandoning the assumption that no influence can propagate faster than light. Their book traces the history of the problem from Aristotle, Galileo and Descartes through Newton, Mach and Einstein, and concentrates on twentieth-century inertia research carried out in the shadow of general relativity.
Discussed in CNPS talks
- "Newtonian Electrodynamics" by David M Bower (14 October 2023) — a report on the work of Dr. Peter Graneau and Dr. Neal Graneau in Newtonian electrodynamics.
Abstracts
- 2005 - "The Evidence and Consequences of Newtonian Instantaneous Forces"
- 2003 - "Machian Inertia and the Isotropic Universe"
- 1994 - "Only Ampere Forces Explain Railgun Recoil and Wire Explosions"
- 1993 - "Ampere Electrodynamics"
- 1992 - "Heavy-Water-Arc Gun for Impact Fusion"
- 1987 - "The Pivoted Current Element and Diamagnetism"
Books
- 2006 - "In the Grip of the Distant Universe: The Science of Inertia" (with Peter Graneau; World Scientific) (Read in full)
- 2006 - "Unlimited Renewable Solar Energy from Water" (Read in full)
- 1996 - "Newtonian Electrodynamics" (with Peter Graneau; World Scientific) (Read in full)
- 1993 - "Newton Versus Einstein: How Matter Interacts with Matter" (with Peter Graneau) (Read in full)
Selected papers
- Neal Graneau, "Fundamental longitudinal electromagnetic (EM) force investigation using DC current" (2025), arXiv:2504.08749
- P. Graneau and N. Graneau, "Machian Inertia and the Isotropic Universe", General Relativity and Gravitation 35 (2003), 751–770
- P. Graneau, N. Graneau, G. Hathaway and R. Hull, "Arc-liberated chemical energy exceeds electrical input energy", Journal of Plasma Physics 63 (2000), 115–128
- N. Graneau, "The Anomalous Strength of Cold Fog Explosions caused by High Current Water Arcs" (1998)
- P. Graneau and N. Graneau, "Solar-energy liberation from water by electric arcs", Journal of Plasma Physics