On Feb 2, 2006, at 11:33 AM, Harry Veeder wrote:
Horace Heffner wrote:
On Feb 1, 2006, at 10:20 AM, Harry Veeder wrote:
Could Gravimagnetism be involved in the precession of the perihelion
of planet mercury?
http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node98.html
[snip]
Presumably then gravimagnetism is not required to explain _any_ of the
orbital precession since it can all be explained by classical and
relativistic physics.
Harry
This is true. Gravimagnetism is consistent with the above with regard
to the retardation effects, and adds no changes to the retardation
results calculated by conventional means. It adds nothing to the
final results. Its primary value in this case is the fact it
circumvents the incomprehensible math behind things like the Thirring-
Lense effect and brings some important gravitational concepts down to
a high school math level. It makes some intuitive sense of the
Thirring-Lense effect at a mundane level.
The Thirring-Lense effect is becoming more important to astronomy.
For example, see:
http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/Research/CTA/news/sidebands/. Simple
mental models are vitally important to sorting out the nature of
various gravitational effects, and to approaching a quantum theory of
gravity. They are also of important to basic engineering of gravity
effects, and to distinguishing real from retardation relativistic
effects. The gravimagnetic model, with corrections for real effects,
both in the EM and gK realms, may lead to alternate explanations for
observed effects.
If I had the concepts roughly right and did the calculations
correctly in
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/GraviCalcs.pdf
then the ambient gravimagnetic field overwhelms the Earth's local
gravimagnetic field. The ambient gravimagnetic field has little
effect on orbital precession however, only on average orbital
height. The GRACE mission:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/earth_drag.html
did actually see the effects of the Earth's gravimagnetic field on
orbital precession, because it is an *incremental* effect due to
incremental changes in distance from the Earth. The Gravity Probe B
satellite, however, is measuring the effect of the *absolute*
gravimagnetic field by looking at precession of a small silicon ball,
so gravimagnetism predicts a 50-100 fold difference in results.
If I did things right (still much in doubt!) then NASA is in for some
surprising results! We should hear in early 2007. If that actually
happens then the value of the concept will be permanently cast in
cement.
There is a far more significant value to the concept, however, at
least when it is developed and applied under the isomorphism proposed
in:
http://mtaonline.net/~hheffner/GR-and-QM.pdf.
This isomorphism, in addition to immediately bringing to bear every
EM equation on gravitational problems, points to underlying
symmetries and opens up a large number of difficult questions and
implications, some of which are discussed in the referenced document.
It demonstrates the power of the imaginary number i in gravitational
computations.
Then again, this could all be bunk! 8^)
Horace Heffner
