Gravitational Breakthrough or Experimental Error? – Martin Tajmar

Date: Wed. October 24th, 2007, 11:30 am-12:30 pm
Location: Rockefeller 221

Accelerometer measurments indicate that a circular field is induced when the rotation rate of a Niobium superconducting ring changes. If found to be genuine, this would be the first-ever gravitational-like field induced by controllable means. The field is measured inside the ring and its magnitude and direction opposes the ring’s angular acceleration. Since this observation does not match any theory, the emphasis is to carefully verify the observations. This seminar will describe the observations, experimental methods, and next-step options. This includes data from independent experiments conducted at the University of Canterbury, NZ, where the world’s most accurate ring-laser-gyro was used to search for the noted effects, but instead used a lead mass and different instrumentation configurations. Their data shows a possible affect on the ring-laser-gyro, but a null effect can be interpreted as being within their error bars.