(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2) Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501 Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS on duplicating, publishing or distributing the files on KeelyNet except where noted! October 6, 1991 GRAV5.ASC -------------------------------------------------------------------- This file shared with KeelyNet courtesy of Tom Albion. Tom runs THC Online Systems in Canada at 604-361-4549. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Weighty Matters Could Newton's 300-year-old law of gravity finally be succumbing to age? Several recent findings seem to deviate from the theory, and now the most meticulous test yet--a measurement of the gravitational field in a mile-deep borehole in the Greenland ice sheet--has turned up further evidence of a discrepancy. The implications could be profound. Such small adjustments to gravity are in fact predicted by all the most promising attempts to forge a unified theory of the fundamental forces--the ultimate goal of physics. These new effects, which some people call a fifth force and even a sixth force, are expected to compare to gravity in strength, but they act over perhaps a few hundred or thousands of meters, whereas gravity has an infinite range. One possibile consequence of such new effects is that within the range of the new forces, Newton's inverse-square law (the strength of gravity falls as the square of the distance between two masses) may not be true. Another is that unlike standard gravity, which acts only on mass, the new effects may depend on some aspect of an object's composition, such as the total number of baryons (protons and neutrons). Nearly a dozen experiments have sought--inconclusively--to detect one of the effects (see "Force of a Different Color" in "Science and the Citizen," December, 1987). The Greenland project is the latest in a series of attempts to detect a violation of the inverse-square law by measuring local gravitational fields and comparing them to calculations based on the density of the surrounding terrain. An earlier experiment done inside an Australian mine found a repulsive effect of roughly 1 percent of the strength of ordinary gravity, acting over a range of a few hundred meters. Page 1 A second experiment, carried out on a 600-meter television tower in North Carolina, found an attractive effect of about 2 percent of the strength of gravity acting over a distance of 300 meters. The calculations worked out even better WHEN BOTH AND ATTRACTIVE AND A REPULSIVE EFFECT WERE PRESUMNED. Skeptics argue that these apparent effects could result from anomalies in local mass density, such as a hidden lode of metal ore. The Greenland group, led by Mark E. Ander of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Mark A. Zumberge of the University of California at San Diego, therefore chose a highly homogeneous site: a borehole surrounded by a two-kilometer-thick expanse of ice. The team took elaborate precautions: the bedrock was mapped by 42,000 high-frequency radar scans, and careful surveys determined the height of the ice surface to within a centimeter. A gravimeter took more than 100 readings at half a dozen locations, at depths of between 200 and 1,600 meters. The researchers assumed the density of the bedrock might range between 2.7 and three grams per cubic centimeter; densities outside this range are geologically improbable. Finally, different members analyzed the data at least three times. Their preliminary conclusion: there appears to be a single, attractive effect whose strength is between 1.7 and 3.9 percent that of gravity. It is thought to act over a distance of somewhere between 10 meters and slightly more than one kilometer. The new findings agree with the results from North Carolina but seem to contradict those from Australia. It may be possible to reconcile all three results by including both an attractive and a repulsive effect, but then the theoretical model "gets rather contrived," according to Ander's colleague Richard Hughes. To help determine whether these effects are real or are instead caused by hidden anomalies in the environment, the group is already planning future experiments in the Pacific Ocean and in Antarctica, where the ice is twice as thick as the ice in Greenland. -------------------------------------------------------------------- See CENTER1 and the GRAV & GRAVITY series on KeelyNet for other gravity anomalies. -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have comments or other information relating to such topics as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page. Thank you for your consideration, interest and support. Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we can be of service, you may contact Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 2