Is the speed of gravity really being tested with this experiment?

[wolram]

http://wugrav.wustl.edu/people/CMW/SpeedofGravity.html

Papers by Kopeikin claiming this tests the speed of gravity

Papers by authors claiming the measurement is NOT sensitive to the speed of gravity

 

[wolram]

http://Newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.620.html

Kopeiken and Fomolont interpret this slight displacement as providing an experimental handle on the speed of gravity itself, and thereby calculate the value of 1.06 times c. Other scientists disagree with this interpretation, and say that the radio lensing data can do little more than provide a measurement of the speed of light, not gravity. Two such opinions, by scientists who did not report at the AAS meeting, are as follows: Clifford Will of Washington University in the US (preprint at (www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0301145 ) and Hideki Asada of Hirosaki University in Japan

 

[wolram]

http://www.metaresearch.org/media%20and%20links/press/SOG-Kopeikin.asp

Abstract. New findings were announced on 2003/01/08 by S. Kopeikin, claiming to have measured the "speed of gravity" and finding it essentially equal to the speed of light. These findings are invalid by both experimental and theoretical standards because the quantity measured was already known to propagate at the speed of light. The hyped claims therefore do a disservice to science in general and the advancement of physics in particular because the announced findings do not represent the meaning of the actual experimental results and cannot possibly represent the physical quantity heretofore called "the speed of gravity", which has already been proved by six experiments to propagate much faster than light, perhaps billions of times faster. Several mainstream relativists have also stated their disagreement that the experiment really measured what it claimed to measure.

 

[wolram]

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020902/020902-13.html

The accuracy needed to verify Kopeikin's calculations is challenging. The telescopes must pick up angular differences of less than a third of a billionth of a degree. But Kopeikin is confident that his techniques, developed in collaboration with Ed Fomalont of the NRAO, are sensitive to discrepancies 100 times smaller than that - just enough to confirm Einstein's predictions.