indeed, Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news93599286.html

http://www.physorg.com/news93599286.html

looks like some people still

use there brains like this bright felow here,

Wow. I've never seen an article quite as dense as this one.

It fails to explain what it's talking about. I still have absolutely no idea what this is, why it is importent, or really anything about it other than that it involves being 80 degrees away from the equator.

I never want to see this kind of junk again.

Ignatiev's Suggestion is basically flawed, because it looks for a tiny error within statistical noise, and goes for headlines about Newton's 2nd Law, vs. the possibility that not all major causes of gravity in our solar system are known. His "Suggestion" gravity wobble could also be attributed to a Neptune-sized KBO 90 AU out. But that isn't NEARLY as sexy as saying you found some bend-over backwards-and-spit-nickles experiment to disprove a major fundamental property of physics. But hey, it got him an (ill-deserved) 15 minutes of fame...

Right. Saying what you said in my words:

Even without understanding the specifics, the question must be asked, if the effect is so slight and finicky that it requires a 1/1000th second experiment at just the right place and time on earth (assuming that place and time can be calculated accurately, enough), then doesn't that mean the signal to noise ratio of the data will be infinitesimal, and therefore, virtually useless?

Of course, the answer is "yes".

If this fellow doesn't understand the concept of SNR and data integration, then it seems reasonable to assume he doesn't understand certain other basic concepts, as well.

fleem

This post has been edited by fleem on Mar 20 2007, 04:37 PM

Is THAT why you can stand a raw egg on end only twice a year???

Obviously noise is a problem. That's the entire point of waiting for certain forces to naturally eliminate each other, right? I'm sure there are other experiments, such as involving gravitational waves or neutrinos that are just as prone to noise. Why do you rule this experiment out and not those?

According to Ignatiev, the possible places to conduct this experiment lie 80 degrees north and south of the equator. “These are latitudes in places like Antarctica and Greenland — not exactly hospitable areas.” But timing is important as well. “It must be very finely tuned,” Ignatiev insists. “Only two instances during the year, around the two equinox dates, for about 1/1000th of a second.”


If he thinks that this is going to be the one way to do it I believe he has got it wrong. I think in the nest few years because of the speed of changes in Sciences of late that someone will come up with something that shows we can break the 2nd law. If not then, call me nieve. Shoot maybe Orbo is going to actually work out at Steorn. I think anything is possible. The earths magnetic poles are going to shift for crying out loud. Why is that! accepted as possible/probable but breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics, so dang sacred?

Your right, I probably shouldn't presume the SNR would be exceptionally low since I've no idea what this experiment is about. What makes me suspect it, though, is that we've been given 1/1000th of a second to measure a miniscule effect in an already very weak force (gravity). Maybe if we'd been given more time, we could integrate out the noise.

But that 1/1000th second requirement is absurd. Its purpose cannot be to eliminate noise: If we have devices sufficiently accurate to measure the effect and to measure ambient forces so that we "know when to do the experiment", then why not just do the experiment any time we want and compensate, in analysis, for the ambient forces that we want to eliminate.

Or is this fellow claiming the effect, itself, is only present during that time and no others?! If so, what part of our current understanding and measurements, which do not include the effect, caused him to arrive at that conclusion?

This post has been edited by fleem on Mar 20 2007, 07:13 PM

What a quack! Physics demands equal and opposite reactions as well as repeatable experiments!

Check out the CIP engine if you want to see Newton violated!

The mentioned "Theoretical Physics Research Institute" in Melbourne (Australia), with which Ignatiev is supposedly affiliated, cannot be found via google. Does it exist? I have the impression he might be making this up.

Ignatiev was apparently a research fellow in the Theoretical Particle Physics group at Melbourne University, and no longer is a member of the staff there - I checked on the website (he co-authored several papers with Professors Volkas and McKellar, both from Melbourne University).

I sincerely could not follow his arguments, and trying to extract a signal from noise does not sound that good an idea to me. And didn't he learn that use of the pronoun "we" should be used instead of "I"?

The point is that I am suspicious, of Ignatiev's idea and affiliation.

Snork. A little early for this by about 5 days.
Go suck an egg.

Is the 1st day of the 4th Month one of those "special" days it can happen on?

Classical mechanics, within which Newton's second law is included, is only correct in a very specific domain. Because of general relativity even the planets don't obay classical mechanics, measurably. The article does not supply enought information to judge the domain of this effect but I espect, that it is not the domain of classical mechanics and therefor not the domain of newton's second law.

There may be a way to enhance the measurability of the effect, whatever it may be caused by, and that is to determine the track of the event (in advance) over the earth's surface over time. In this case a locus of points on the earth's surface (if not through the earth, perhaps in places along specially constructed tunnels) and place several detectors along this locus. The track of the 1/1000 second event should then be detectable as it passes through multiple detectors along this path over some short time. In this case, the track of points where the earth's spin would counteract its orbital motion around the sun (if I've understood correctly).

Time multiplexing is a wonderful thing - who knows we might even learn some new physics (again).