Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: more Japanese gyro-dropping

On Sun, 28 Sep 1997 William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com> wrote:

It appears that the negative response to their earlier publication has
not stopped that one Japanese group from continuing to look for
unexplained inertia effects in gyroscopes. ....

In the London Sunday Telegraph of 21 Sept. 1997, Robert Matthews
reports that a team of Japanese scientists have spun up a gyroscope
to 18000 rpm and dropped it through a distance of 63 inches in vacuo.
The time taken to fall this distance was 1/25000 sec. longer than when
the gyroscope was not spinning, corresponding to a weight reduction of
1 part in 7000.

Was this an accidental discovery? I suspect the answer would be no.
They are probably guided by a theory which claims that G, in the law
of universal gravitation, depends on spinning.

Suppose that the observed difference of 40 micro-seconds (out of ~600000)
is real. I was properly reminded, in a private message, that a confirmation
of this fact does not automatically lead to a conclusion that G depends on
spinning. Some well known effects may be resposible. And the burden of
proof (that such effects are not responsible for an additional external
force) is on those who claim the discovery. It can be a very frustrating
path for them because the apparent weight reduction is only 0.014 %.

Let us assume that the gyroscope is replaced by a metallic cylinder. What
effects can possibly contribute to a force able to reduce the weight, m*g?

Ludwik Kowalski

The task of winning a recognition would be greatly simplified if a
preexisting theory predicted the effect of spinning on G, and if the
predicted magnitude were close to what was actually observed. The
theorist and the leader of the experimental team would share the Nobel
Prize and nobody would be bothered by a possibility that a well know
theory can also be used to account for what was actually observed.
Not fair, n'est pas? It is much easier to discover something that was
predicted (you know what to look for) than to recognize a phenomenon
while doing something else.