UncleAl Posted March 3, 2005 Report Share Posted March 3, 2005 General Relativity (metric gravitation, Einstein) begins by postulating the Equivalence Principle: all local bodies fall identically in vacuum. Affine gravitation (Weitzenboeck) makes no such assumption, has wildly different maths, and arrives at identical predictions - kinds and values. Only one class of theory can be correct. If there are two lumps of stuff that reproducibly fall differently in vacuum, then Einstein was wrong. Folks have looked for 400+ years. All chemical compositions fall identically in vacuum to one part in ten trillion difference/average, http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm#b22 http://wugrav.wustl.edu/people/CMW/update98.pdfhttp://www.astro.northwestern.edu/AspenW04/Papers/lorimer1.pdf Equivalence Principle testing http://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwash/pdf/prl83-3585.pdfhttp://arXiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0301024Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 261101 (2004) Nordtvedt Effect Spacetime geometry has never been challenged with test mass geometry. Nobody knows whether a right hand falls identically to a left hand. Suitable test masses are fabricated from single crystals of left- or right-handed quartz. Amorphous fused silica is the control. There are three circumstances: 1) Right-handed quartz vs. fused silica.2) Right-handed vs. left-handed quartz.3) Left-handed quartz vs. fused silica. http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf Technical summary The first experiment, (1), has been completed at Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, PR China. The results were... The second experiment has been given very high priority. We'll know by end of 2005. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paultrr Posted March 8, 2005 Report Share Posted March 8, 2005 I've been noticing some debate out there on that very subject. Since others make interesting conjectured bets from time to time here I'm willing to bet the results will support GR fully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qfwfq Posted March 8, 2005 Report Share Posted March 8, 2005 Parity violations for the gravitational field... hmmm, Miss Wu might have been willing to bet against you. :confused: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paultrr Posted March 8, 2005 Report Share Posted March 8, 2005 She probably would. However, I still stand that such will be validated. Besides, Kip and Hawking still have some bets going themselves yet to be answered fully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qfwfq Posted March 8, 2005 Report Share Posted March 8, 2005 I would be almost, not quite... but almost willing to bet the same as you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UncleAl Posted March 9, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 9, 2005 Parity violations for the gravitational field... hmmm, Miss Wu might have been willing to bet against you. :Alien: On the contrary, http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Parity/cover.html Madame Wu were she alive, would bet with me as she did in 1956 with Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang. All weak interactions, including the Weak Interaction, show parity effects. Gravitation is the weakest of all interactions. A parity violation would be no surprise at all. I excpect the full parity Eotvos experiment, left-handed vs. right-handed quartz, to show a 3x10^(-12) difference/average signal. Such a net output would have no effect on any prior observation in any venue. Current calculational methods would remain unchanged. Metric gravitation (General Relativity) would fall to affine gravitation, Lorentz invariance would be falsified, angular momentum would no longer be rigorously conserved, quantum mechanics would need a rewrite, most of M-theory would fall, lattice quantum gravitation would fall... It would be lots of fun dumping on the theorists while giving the experimentalists loads of new employment.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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