An absence of antigravity.An absence of antigravity an·ti·grav·i·ty n. The hypothetical effect of reducing or canceling a gravitational field. an Several research teams have failed to confirm the puzzling results of a recent experiment by two Japanese physicists, who reported that under certain circumstances a spinning gyroscope gyroscope (jī`rəskōp'), symmetrical mass, usually a wheel, mounted so that it can spin about an axis in any direction. When spinning, the gyroscope has special properties. may partially counter the Earth's gravitational grav·i·ta·tion n. 1. Physics a. The natural phenomenon of attraction between physical objects with mass or energy. b. The act or process of moving under the influence of this attraction. 2. pull (SN: 1/6/90, p.15). James E. Faller Dr. James E. Faller is an American Physicist who specializes in the field of Gravity. He conceived the Lunar Laser Ranging Program, that shoots laser beams at special retroreflectors placed on the Moon by Apollo program Astronauts. and his colleagues at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colo., repeated the Japanese experiment by looking for signs of weight loss in a spinning gyroscope consisting of a brass top about 2 inches in diameter sealed in a small plastic chamber. "We conclude that within our experimental sensitivity, which is approximately 35 times larger than needed to see the effect reported . . . , there is no weight change of the type . . . described," Faller and his team write in the Feb. 19 PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS Physical Review Letters is one of the most prestigious journals in physics.[1] Since 1958, it has been published by the American Physical Society as an outgrowth of The Physical Review. . A French group reporting in the Feb. 22 NATURE has obtained similarly negative results. Why the Japanese researchers detected such an effect in the first place remains a mystery. According to their paper in the Dec. 18 PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, they went to considerable trouble to eliminate possible sources of error. However, they may have overlooked some subtle but important details, says mechanical engineer S.H. Salter of the University of Edinburgh (body, education) University of Edinburgh - A university in the centre of Scotland's capital. The University of Edinburgh has been promoting and setting standards in education for over 400 years. in Scotland. The trick is to find a mechanism that could produce a small weight loss when the gyroscope is spinning clockwise (as seen from above) but not when it's spinning counterclockwise or standing still. "It is possible to construct an argument to show that vibration in the gyro, compounded by nonlinearity in the weighing mechanisms . . ., could lead to misleading result," Salter comments in the Feb. 8 NATURE. Tiny differences in the tracks that house the ball bearings at the two ends of the spinning gyroscope could produce vibrations sufficiently large to affect the results. Moreover, laboratory balances like the one used to weigh the spinning gyroscopes aren't necessarily designed to handle vibrating vibrating, v using quivering hand motions made across the client's body for therapeutic purposes. loads accurately. |
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