A friend e-mailed this to me. In conjunction with the Aug. 11th solar eclipse (uh, no pun intended), NASA was to conduct an unusual gravity experiment: the Allais global gravity experiment. As I understand the situation, back in the 1950's, Nobel laureate Maurice Allais noted that a pendulum's motion would change slightly during a total solar eclipse. Since then, a handfull of scientific organizations have reported varying results. NASA was going to use a sensitive gravitometer to check this out, and was planning on working with a worldwide group to see what others would report. Anybody heard anything? Jay? I think Allais' prize was for economics <grin>, but he was also interested in both theoretical and applied physics. ...Bob...
well yes, I am also anxiously awaiting more data but they said they had to wait for the next full moon, which was two days ago to confirm their results. I guess we will get results very soon now. ------------------ we are midgets standing on the backs of giants, Plato
Hey man, they are all homebrewed, that is until a prediction is actually verified to be true. Good question, though; I'd like an answer to that one.
Well, as far as I know he didn't give an explanation at all, only said that it was not confirm with existing theory. Since he was the only one spotting the effect he was very carefull of course untill he got some confirmation of others. You can read all about it on : http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast06aug99_1.htm I hope the results of these new experiments won't take that long any more to get published. ------------------ we are midgets standing on the backs of giants, Plato
I've got a question for you quantum physics buffs. I must confess I still haven't got my hands on that textbook Plato recommended a while back (though I'm going to eventually...) But, something strikes me as weird about the quantum interpretation of gravity fields (i.e. via gravitons). It seems that gravitons must be able to pass right through matter. But on the other hand, they must be able to interact with matter, no matter how little of it there is. This is something I find hard to swallow. For example, when the Moon comes between the Sun and the Earth, would it not shield the Earth from some of the Sun's gravitons? But in this case, the linear Newtonian addition of gravity fields would no longer work! Could someone who knows what they are talking about help me out here? (Plato? Aloysius?) ------------------ I am; therefore I think.
Yes, I think I can shed some light on this shielding problem. First of all this could also be applied to electromagnetism where three sources lie on the same line with regard to each other. The solution is that the actual force-fotons or gravitons are not real particles but virtual. This means that they live not long enough to complete one wavelength of distance. When two electrons interact they interchange fotons but these never realy come into existence, this is nescessary for them not to lose energy. Same thing goes for the earth, the sun and the moon. The virtual gravitons can't be stopped because they really aren't there. This might seem like some mathematical trick to you but it explains perfectly why all these forces are radial and have inverse square laws. You see a same amount of virtual photons have to mediate the force at different distances from their source. You can look at it as several shells of a sphere, these shells have increasingly bigger surfaces as their radius increases and these surfaces are proportioned to the square of their radious of course. Each surface harbors the same amount of virtual photons thus the density on the surface decreases inversely proportionate to the square of the radius. Hence the laws of Newton and Coulomb. The nuclear forces are a different matter since their force mediaters have mass themselves this makes them short distance forces which screws up the simplicity of the previous explanation. ------------------ "If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants." Isaac Newton
