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May 22, 2008: Meet MIT professor of physics Maria Zuber. She's dynamic, intelligent, intense, and she's on a quest for the Grail. No, not that Grail. Zuber is the principal investigator of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory — "GRAIL" for short. It's a new NASA mission slated for launch in 2011 that will probe the moon's quirky gravity field. Data from GRAIL will help scientists understand forces at play beneath the lunar surface and learn how the moon, Earth and other terrestrial planets evolved. "We're going to study the moon's interior from crust to core," says Zuber. "It's very...

Pioneer spacecraft mystery may be laid to rest 14:30 15 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Valerie Jamieson, St Louis What is making NASA's twin Pioneer spacecraft mysteriously drift off course, apparently defying the laws of physics? A rigorous new analysis suggests ordinary heat emission can at least partly explain the wayward probes' strange trajectories.Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in the early 1970s and explored the outer solar system. But in 1980, mission scientists noticed that the spacecraft have unexpectedly drifted off course.Both spacecraft have been pulled a little harder than expected towards the sun, and since their launch, they...

Everyone knows the score with black holes: even if light strays too close, the immense gravity will drag it inside, never to be seen again. They are thought to be created when large stars finally spend all their fuel and collapse. It might come as a surprise, therefore, to find that physicists in the UK have now managed to create an “artificial” black hole in the lab. Originally, theorists studying black holes focused almost exclusively on applying Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes how the gravity of massive objects arises from the curvature of space–time. Then, in 1974, the...

Gravity Powered Lamp, Designed By Student, Provides As Much Light As 40 Watt BulbThe Gravia LED lamp will be powered by gravity. It will be about 4 feet high and the entire column will glow. (Credit: Clay Moulton) ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2008) — A Virginia Tech student has created a floor lamp powered by gravity. Clay Moulton of Springfield, Va., who received his Master of Science in Architecture with a concentration in industrial design from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies in 2007, created the lamp as a part of this master’s thesis. The LED lamp, named Gravia, has...

I have a small LSA airplane that is kind of weak on instruments. One thing I do not have is an attitude indicator so when I am in a cloud or fog, I do not know if I am in a bank, a dive, or a climb. Some of my "friends" and experienced aviators suggested I carry one of my cats with me. I was told to fly with my left hand on the yoke and toss the cat up and down with my right hand. As we all know, cats always land on their feet. I was told to...

Obesity is more dangerous than smoking and will dramatically shorten the lives of millions, a landmark study has found. While smoking reduces life by an average of ten years, the research says being seriously overweight can cut life expectancy by as much as 13 years. The Foresight report, written by 250 leading scientists, says Britain's obesity crisis is so severe that it would take at least 30 years to reverse. If current trends continue, by 2050 about 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children in the UK will be clinically obese...

The 'Pioneer anomaly' – the mystifying observation that NASA's two Pioneer spacecraft have drifted far off their expected paths – cannot be explained by tinkering with the law of gravity, a new study concludes. The study's author suggests an unknown, but conventional, force is instead acting on the spacecraft. But others say even more radical changes to the laws of physics could explain the phenomenon. Launched in the early 1970s, NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft are drifting out of the solar system in opposite directions, gradually slowing down as the Sun's gravity pulls back on them. But they are...

...what if the equivalence principle (EP) is wrong? Galileo's experiments were only accurate to about 1 [per cent], leaving room for doubt, and skeptical physicists have been "testing EP" ever since. The best modern limits, based on, e.g., laser ranging of the Moon to measure how fast it falls around Earth, show that EP holds within a few parts in a trillion (1012). This is fantastically accurate, yet the possibility remains that the equivalence principle could fail at some more subtle level. "It's a possibility we must investigate," says physicist Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Discovering...

Satellites solve mystery of low gravity over Canada 20:16 10 May 2007 NewScientist.com news service Kelly Young The GRACE satellites have detected changes in the gravitational field over regions of Canada that can be attributed to the crust bouncing back after the melting of a glacier 20,000 years ago and convection in Earth's mantle (Illustration: Science/M Tamisiea) If it seems Canadians weigh less than their American neighbours, they do – but not for the reasons you might think. A large swath of Canada actually boasts lower gravity than its surroundings. Researchers have puzzled for years over whether this was due...

NEW YORK – It’s been years since NASA last heard from either of its two Pioneer probes hurtling out of the solar system, but scientists are still debating the source of an odd force pushing against the outbound spacecraft. Dubbed the Pioneer Anomaly, the unexplained force appears to be acting against NASA’s identical Pioneer 10 and 11 probes, holding them back as they head away from the Sun

Ramanath Cowsik, a Washington University physicist, will poke and prod at some of the most daunting problems remaining in physics: What is causing the universe to fly apart, faster and faster each year?Why is gravity so weak and so different from the other basic forces in the universe? And what is the true shape of the universe? In an era of big science -- billion-dollar space telescopes and atom smashers -- Cowsik's approach is refreshingly small. The apparatus, called a torsion balance, is cheap and based on a centuries-old idea. He says the torsion balance will cost about $100,000. When...

Al-Jazeera is reporting that Saddam Hussein, a former President of Iraq, has discovered “The Law of Gravity” according to The Grand Muff-Tea cleric of the Al Akbar Mosque. “Saddam Hussein is a great scientist. Yesterday, he made a great discovery, and has proven what we Muslims now call The Law of Gravity”, said the Grand Muff-Tea. According to the leader of the Al Akbar Mosque, “. . . all great achievements come from Islam, as we see in this great discovery from Islamic scientist Saddam Hussein . . . the West cannot defeat our genius . . .” Others in...

In the standard theory of gravity—general relativity—dark matter plays a vital role, explaining many observations that the standard theory cannot explain by itself. But for 70 years, cosmologists have never observed dark matter, and the lack of direct observation has created skepticism about what is really out there.Lately, some scientists have turned the question around, from “is dark matter correct?” to “is our standard theory of gravity correct?” Most recently, Fermilab scientists Scott Dodelson and former Brinson Fellow Michele Liguori demonstrated one of the first pieces of theoretical evidence that an alternative theory of gravity can explain the large scale...

When Douglas Clowe of the University of Arizona in Tucson announced on 21 August that his team had "direct proof of dark matter's existence", it seemed the issue had been settled. Now proponents of the so-called modified theories of gravity, who explain the motion of stars and galaxies without resorting to dark matter, have hit back and are suggesting that Clowe's team has jumped the gun. "One should not draw premature conclusions about the existence of dark matter without a careful analysis of alternative gravity theories," writes John Moffat, of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, who pioneered an...

Gravity's quantum leaps detected   19:00 16 January 02 Hazel Muir   Gravity's subtle influence in the quantum world has been directly observed for the first time. On tiny scales, nature makes particles behave according to curiously rigid rules. For instance, negatively charged electrons trapped around a positive nucleus under the pull of the electromagnetic force cannot have any energy they want -they have to fall into a set of distinct energy levels. In the same way, the pull of gravity should make particles fall into discrete energy levels. But because gravity is extremely weak on small scales, the effect has been ...

Scientists use quantum gravity to describe the universe before the Big Bang.Scientists may finally have an answer to a "big" question: If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what could have caused it to happen? Using a theory called "loop quantum gravity," a group led by Penn State professor Abhay Ashtekar has shown that just before the Big Bang occurred, another universe very similar to ours may have been contracting. According to the group's findings, this previous universe eventually became so dense that a normally negligible repulsive component of the gravitational force overpowered the attractive component, causing...

Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was originally a member of a duo orbiting the Sun but was kidnapped during a close encounter with Neptune, a new model suggests. Triton is unique among large moons in that it orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation, which long ago led scientists to speculate that the moon originally orbited the Sun. But until now, no convincing theory for how Triton paired with Neptune existed. Gravity might have pulled Triton away from its companion to make it an orbiting satellite of Neptune, researchers report in a new study published in the May...

Not really a game, but fun to play with. Gravity Based Movement

The simple common belief that UFOs propagate with anti-gravity lift and “known gyroscopic” principles is not correct. That is what may have misguided country after country as they have tried to mimic UFO propulsion and navigation. What really induced engineers to develop the computer models is that simple anti-gravity lift and propulsion systems were not taking them anywhere. Soon they realized that anti-gravity is the secondary dynamic force. The computer models were showing that the flight trajectories were too flexible for any gyroscope driven just with anti-gravity lift. The model brought engineers to look into something called “inertia of an...

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Relativity mission achieves two major milestones Relativity mission achieves two major milestones NASA-MSFC NEWS RELEASEPosted: March 6, 2002 The NASA Gravity Probe B (GP-B) Relativity Mission has successfully mated its science payload to its spacecraft and after successful systems testing, the GP-B space vehicle was shipped to Sunnyvale, Calif., on Feb. 9, 2002, to prepare for upcoming rigorous environmental tests. The Gravity Probe B spacecraft on a modal stand in preparation for environmental testing. Photo: Lockheed Martin  "These milestones are a huge accomplishment for this dedicated team," said Gravity Probe B program manager Rex ...

Painstaking observations of a kind of subatomic dance suggest that the universe may contain a shadowy form of matter that has never been seen directly and is unexplained by standard physics theories, a team of scientists working at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island announced yesterday. The studies appear to confirm similar findings the scientists reported last year. The research involves muons, rare subatomic particles similar to electrons but 207 times as heavy. The work has been controversial, though for reasons that have little to do with the experiment itself. Theorists who are not involved in the research, but whose...

Gravity waves analysis opens 'completely new sense' PRESS RELEASE Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO. -- Sometime within the next two years, researchers will detect the first signals of gravity waves -- those weak blips from the far edges of the universe passing through our bodies every second. Predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity waves are expected to reveal, ultimately, previously unattainable mysteries of the universe. Wai-Mo Suen, Ph.D., professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis is collaborating with researchers nationwide to develop waveform templates to comprehend the signals to be analyzed. In...

Red faces, and empty pockets, at the bookies Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 07 Nov 2005 Scientists working on the detection of gravity waves could be in line for huge payouts from bookmakers Ladbrokes. Ladbrokes began promoting bets on scientific discoveries last summer, and offered 500:1 on gravity waves not being detected before 2010. After scientists flocked to the betting shops the odds were cut to 5:1 and Ladbrokes closed the book a few weeks later when odds had fallen further. Ladbrokes spokesman Karl Williams said: "We've been blinded by science. We're looking at a £150,000 loss if the experiments are successful....

Is Earth in a vortex of space-time? We'll soon know the answer: A NASA/Stanford physics experiment called Gravity Probe B (GP-B) recently finished a year of gathering science data in Earth orbit. The results, which will take another year to analyze, should reveal the shape of space-time around Earth--and, possibly, the vortex. Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time." The tremendous mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. patent office has reportedly granted a patent for an anti-gravity device -- breaking its rule to reject inventions that defy the laws of physics. The journal Nature said patent 6,960,975 was granted Nov. 1 to Boris Volfson of Huntington, Ind., for a space vehicle propelled by a superconducting shield that alters the curvature of space-time outside the craft in a way that counteracts gravity. One of the main theoretical arguments against anti-gravity is that it implies the availability of unlimited energy. "If you design an anti-gravity machine, you've got a perpetual-motion machine," Robert...

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light. New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts. Felber's antigravity discovery solves the two greatest engineering challenges to space travel near the speed of light: identifying an energy source capable of producing the acceleration; and limiting stresses on humans and equipment during...

<p>The US military is considering testing the principle behind a type of space drive which holds the promise of reaching Mars in just three hours. The problem is, as New Scientist explains, it's entirely theoretical and many physicists admit they don't understand the science behind it.</p>

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=16902006 Welcome to Mars express: only a three hour trip IAN JOHNSTON SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government. The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine. The theoretical engine works by...

Supersymmetry and Parallel Dimensions Harvard Physicst Randall among world’s leading string theorists Published On Friday, January 06, 2006  1:00 AM By ADRIAN J. SMITH Crimson Staff Writer Professor of Physics Lisa Randall ’83, recently named one of Newsweek’s most influential people of 2006, rose to the top with her theories on gravity. (Photo credit: CRIMSON/GLORIA B. HO) Professor of Physics Lisa Randall ’83 saw how strong gravity could be during a climbing fall in New Hampshire two years ago. She was performing a “challenging” move when she took a surprising fall, she says. Instead of stopping the fall, her support...

In the first direct, comprehensive mass survey of the entire Greenland ice sheet, scientists using data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) have measured a significant decrease in the mass of the Greenland ice cap. Grace is a satellite mission that measures movement in Earth's mass. In an update to findings published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a team led by Dr. Isabella Velicogna of the University of Colorado, Boulder, found that Greenland's ice sheet decreased by 162 (plus or minus 22) cubic kilometers a year between 2002 and 2005. This is higher than...

Dark Matter: Invisible, Mysterious and Perhaps Nonexistent - By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer 10 October 2005 Galaxies don't have enough regular matter to keep them from flying apart, scientists have been telling us for years. So there must be a bunch of unseen "dark matter" lurking in every galaxy. But dark matter has never been directly detected, and nobody knows what it might be made of. A few scientists remeain skeptical. To a lay person, it might sound downright crazy. Now a new study suggests there may be no such thing as dark matter. Fred Cooperstock of Northeastern...

NEWS RELEASE October 3, 2005 Contact: Bob Kahn, Gravity Probe B Public Affairs: (650) 723-2540, kahn@relgyro.stanford.edu Comment: Francis Everitt, Gravity Probe B Principal Investigator: (650) 725-4104, francis@relgyro.stanford.edu Editor Note: Photos and graphics are available on the web at http://einstein.stanford.edu/pao/newspix/hires. Relevant Web URLs: http://einstein.stanford.edu http://www.gravityprobeb.com Putting relativity to the test, NASA's Gravity Probe B experiment is one step away from revealing if Einstein was right Almost 90 years after Einstein postulated his general theory of relativity—our current theory of gravity—scientists have finally finished collecting the data that will put this theory to an experimental test. For the past 17 months, NASA's...

Scientists attempt to measure speed of gravity UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI NEWS RELEASE Posted: September 4, 2002 Ever since Albert Einstein proposed the general theory of relativity in 1916, physicists worldwide have tested the theory's underlying principles. Whil some principles - such as the speed of light is a constant - have been proven, others have enot. Now, through a combination of modern technology, the alignment of a unique group of celestial bodies on Sept. 8, and an experiment conceived by a University of Missouri-Columbia physicist, one more of those principles might soon be proven. "According to Einstein's theory, the...

At the invitation of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biomedical Problems, investigators from NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley are participating in pre- and post-flight science experiments designed to examine gravity's relationship to biological processes. The experiments were launched May 31 aboard the Russian Foton-M2 mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and will be recovered 16 days later when the capsule returns to Earth near the border between Russia and Kazakhstan. The European Space Agency and a number of other space agencies also are cooperating with Russia on this mission. "We have a rich history...

Light Speed a Barrier? To go, the children of tomorrow may have had to discover what is believed impossible today -- how to travel faster than light. Mel Zisfein, deputy director of the national Air and Space Museum, and an aerosynamicist amoung other things, has noted a similarity between the way most people today regard "C," the speed of light, and the way many people a generation or so ago regarded "a", the speed of sound. For this publication, he sketched the illustrations which appear on the following page, and drafted the following... "Some people used to look at...

It began with the search for Planet X. By 1979, Pioneer 10 had accomplished its original mission to become the first Earth-born spacecraft to explore Jupiter and was on its way out of our solar system, flying toward the star Aldebaran — a destination it should reach some two million years from now. On its way out, Pioneer 10 became a useful partner in an experiment of celestial mechanics. By closely monitoring its trajectory, scientists might detect an unexpected gravitational tug that could betray the existence of the long-hypothesized Planet X. Based largely on unexplained motions in the orbits of...

NASA Gives Artificial Gravity a New Spin NASA will use a new human centrifuge to explore artificial gravity as a way to counter the physiologic effects of extended weightlessness for future space exploration. The new research will begin this summer at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, overseen by NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. A NASA-provided Short-Radius Centrifuge will attempt to protect normal human test subjects from deconditioning when confined to strict bed rest.

If the universe contains more than three spatial dimensions, as many physicists believe, our current laws of gravity should break down at small distances. Nothing seems more certain than the "fact" that there are three dimensions of space. But can we be sure that there are only three dimensions? Imagine a tightrope walker balancing on a cable high above the ground. To the tightrope walker the cable is effectively a 1D object, because he only needs one coordinate to specify his position as he walks back and forth. But an ant, for instance, sees the cable as a 2D object,...

A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity. On this occasion, Euronews' Space magazine plunges into the subject of gravitational waves and features the joint ESA-NASA "LISA" mission which hopes to detect them in space. The existence of gravitational waves stems from Einstein's postulates. When very massive bodies are disturbed, they radiate waves or ripples that travel through space. When these waves hit an object, this will make minute movements as a consequence of the deformation of the space-time texture in which it is at rest. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, whose launch is envisaged...

The gravity of being overweight BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Oct. 29, 1995.) I am pleased to report that we finally have a scientific explanation for why everybody in the world is gaining weight. At least I am, and I know it's not my fault. Granted, I do not have the best dietary habits. Sometimes in a restaurant I will order fried, fatty foods (''Give me a plate of fried, fatty foods, and hurry'' are my exact words). But I compensate for this by engaging in a strict exercise regimen of vigorously pounding...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Scientists may not have to go over to the dark side to explain the fate of the universe.The theory that the accelerated expansion of the universe is caused by mysterious "dark energy" is being challenged by New York University physicist Georgi Dvali. He thinks there's just a gravity leak.Scientists have known since the 1920s that the universe is expanding. In the late 1990s, they realized that it is expanding at an ever-increasing pace. At a loss to explain the stunning discovery, cosmologists blamed it on dark energy, a newly coined term to describe the mysterious antigravity force...

HOME PCS MAY PROVE POINT FOR EINSTEIN Published: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 NEWS 01A By Mike Lafferty THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH WASHINGTON -- Want to help Albert Einstein? Turn on your computer. Physicists have announced a plan to marshal hundreds of thousands of computers to confirm one of the great physicist's predictions: Gravity waves exist in the universe. Einstein, who predicted in 1916 that these ripples exist in the fabric of space and time, never thought his theory could be proved. Now, in the centennial year of one of his two theories of relativity, scientists think they have the equipment to...

Plans to trace the Moon's orbit with extraordinary new accuracy could reveal kinks in Einstein's theory of gravity and help explain the mysterious accelerating expansion of the universe, says a US researcher. The acceleration cannot be explained by known forces in the Universe. To account for the behaviour, cosmologists have introduced the concept of a new, as yet unseen, force - dark energy. But Gia Dvali, of New York University, US, believes there could be another explanation. He thinks the accelerating expansion might be caused by unexpected properties of gravity, which are only seen over very large distances. Taking inspiration...

An outcast star is zooming out of the Milky Way, the first ever seen escaping the galaxy, astronomers reported on Tuesday. The star is heading for the emptiness of intergalactic space after being ejected from the heart of the Milky Way following a close encounter with a black hole, said Warren Brown, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The outcast is going so fast -- over 1.5 million mph -- that astronomers believe it was lobbed out of the galaxy by the tremendous force of a black hole thought to sit at the Milky Way's center. That speed...

Space Future - http://www.spacefuture.com/pr/archive/on_the_practical_and_sporting_aspects_of_football_in_zero_gravity.shtml O Thornton & P Collins, 19 September 2001, "On the Practical and Sporting Aspects of Football in Zero-Gravity", Presented at Symposium on The Popular Commercialisation of Space, British Interplanetary Society, 19 September 2001. Also downloadable from http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/on_the_practical_and_sporting_aspects_of_football_in_zero_gravity.shtml Presented at Symposium on The Popular Commercialisation of Space, British Interplanetary Society , 19 September 2001 On the Practical and Sporting Aspects of Football in Zero-Gravity Oliver Thornton & Patrick Collins Introduction: Association Football, or 'soccer', is the major spectator sport in the world, as well the most widely-played. When space becomes a practical living space for the...

It was in 1980 that John Anderson first wondered if something funny was going on with gravity. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory physicist was looking over data from two Pioneer spacecraft that had been speeding through the solar system for nearly a decade. Only something was off base. The craft weren't where they were supposed to be.

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Was Einstein a plagiarist? By Lucy Sherriff Published Monday 15th November 2004 15:57 GMT A theoretical physicist at the University of Nevada has published a paper alleging that Einstein did not derive the gravitational field equations at the heart of the General Theory of Relativity, and might in fact have copied key equations from fellow physicist David Hilbert. The two scientists were working in the same area in 1915, and were developing their theories independently but concurrently. Each submitted papers for publication throughout November of that year. The two were also corresponding about their research, making it hard to unravel...

Earth's spin warps space around the planet, according to a new study that confirms a key prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity. After 11 years of watching the movements of two Earth-orbiting satellites, researchers found each is dragged by about 6 feet (2 meters) every year because the very fabric of space is twisted by our whirling world. The results, announced today, are much more precise than preliminary findings published by the same group in the late 1990s. Frame dragging The effect is called frame dragging. It is a modification to the simpler aspects of gravity set out by...

Imagine the weight of a nagging suspicion that what held your world together, a constant and consistent presence you had come to understand and rely on, wasn't what it seemed. That's how scientists feel when they ponder gravity these days.