Stargazing New Scientist Article - Pendulums + Solar Eclipse

[davidmerritt]

Just wondered if anyone read this weeks New Scientist and more to the point the article on gravity.

Aparently experiments have shown that pendulums behave irratically during a solar eclipse, and hence this has lead to some scientist questioning the laws of gravity and the work of Einstien. According to a french researcher the pendlum starts to reverse from a clockwise movement to an anticlockwise movement. Once the eclipse is over the movement returns to a clockwise movement (matching the Earth's spin as expected).

I'm sure this is old news to some of you (indeed it is old research lol) but I think it'd be interesting to see a discussion on the topic. And let's see you all theorise!

If your all yanks then New Scientist is the UK's version of Scientific American. lol

David

 

[dcl]

I'd love to see more infomation on this if anyone has any.

 

[Tide]

Frankly, I'd be somewhat skeptical (sceptical, for you Brits!). It sounds like a variation on the hemispheric dependence of bathtub drain vorticity theme. :-)

 

[gerben]

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast06aug99_1.htm

 

[Chronos]

The Allias effect [weird pendulum stuff during solar eclipses] is rather poorly documented, which may or may not mean anything. The most recent treatise I know about is here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0408023

 

[davidmerritt]

well i think the New Scientist website may have the article on their sometime soon http://www.newscientist.com/

It sounds quite strange, and it leads you ask how serious questions about gravity. The comments above are accurate, the work on the topic sketchy at best, though in the following years many more experiments are planned.

Personally I woudn't be too suprised if they gained some decent results next time round, its one of those things that intuition tells you sounds like it could be true.

David

 

[ph_low]

yep i read it, extremely interesting.

 

[Akihiro]

If such phenomenum truly occur, then as far as we know, the only forms of interaction possible between the pendulum and, either the moon and the sun or both, are solar radiation and gravitational waves. I doubt solar radiation has any effect on changing the path of a foucault pedulum, so I think it should be something to do with gravity.

Probably some not yet known gravitational interaction occurred between the Moon, Earth and the sun.