[X] My Assistant

[elakdawalla]

In response to my recent plea for questions for Planetary Radio, I got this one, mentioning an event I hadn't been aware of.

Back in 1979, literally a week or so before Voyager I encountered Jupiter, a planetary scientist published a paper (in Science, I believe) postulating that tidal forces created by Jupiter's gravitational pull would trigger volcanic eruptions. It was a remarkably prescient article. There must be other examples of successful predictions of conditions on other planets or their moons. It would be fascinating to learn about them.

Here's the Science article he refers to.

Does anybody else know some other examples of spectacularly successful predictions that were actually published by researchers? (Lots of people speculate, but I think it's probably rarer to get this stuff past peer review.) And, for fairness, what about spectacularly unsuccessful predictions?

--Emily

[nprev]

Relativity (general & special) surely has to stand out as perhaps the most successful set of predictions/theorems in science, period. It's humbling to realize that almost a hundred years later we're still testing its bounds (GP-B, anyone? ) and finding them solid...astonishing.

[Littlebit]

Relativity (general & special) surely has to stand out as perhaps the most successful set of predictions/theorems in science, period. It's humbling to realize that almost a hundred years later we're still testing its bounds (GP-B, anyone? ) and finding them solid...astonishing.

There should be a partial release of Gravity probe B data in the April APS meeting.

http://einstein.stanford.edu/

The data reduction has proven much more challenging than expected, due unexpected Polhodes in the individual spheres and difficulty figuring out the probes exact position.

Reading between the lines in some of the presentation titles, there is a lot of unexpected variability:


In addition, on Saturday afternoon, two papers related to GP-B will be delivered in Session C12: Experimental Tests of Gravity.

C12.00004: " Lessons Learned from Gravity Probe B for STEP, LISA and other experiments" by GP-B team members Paul Worden and Sasha Buchman

C12.00005: "Proper Motion of the GP-B Guide Star" by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Gp-B guide star tracking team: Irwin Shapiro, Daniel Lebach, Michael Ratner, Norbert Bartel, Ryan Ransom, Michael Bietenholz, Jerusha Lederman, and Jean-Francois Lestrade

On Sunday morning, April 15th, three members of the GP-B team have been invited to give special talks on three aspects of the GP-B program:

H7.00001: "The Gravity Probe B Science Instrument," by GP-B Co-Principal Investigator, John Turneaure

H7.00002: "The Development Challenges of Gravity Probe-B—an ongoing partnership between Physics and Engineering" by GP-B Co-Prinipal Investigator, Bradford Parkinson

H7.00003: "Gravity Probe B Data Analysis Challenges, Insights, and Results" by GP-B Co-Investigator and Chief Scientist, George (Mac) Keiser
Finally, on Sunday afternoon, April 15th, a large part of the GP-B team and associated scientists and engineers will present 22 poster sessions on a host of scientific and technology topics, as listed below.

Session L1: Poster Session II L1.00011: GRAVITATION

L1.00012: "Radio Imaging of the Gravity Probe B Guide Star IM Pegasi" by Michael Bietenholz, Ryan Ransom, Norbert Bartel, Daniel Lebach, Michael Ratner, Irwin Shapiro, Jean-Francois Lestrade

L1.00013: "The 'Core' of the Quasar 3C454.3 as the Extragalactic Reference for the Proper Motion of the Gravity Probe B Guide Star" by Norbert Bartel, Ryan Ransom, Michael Bietenholz, Jerusha Lederman, Daniel Lebach, Michael Ratner, Irwin Shapiro, Leonid Petrov

L1.00014: "Performance of the Gravity Probe B Inertial Reference Telescope" by Suwen Wang, John Goebel, John Lipa John Turneaure

L1.00015: "Gravity Probe B Timing System and Roll Phase Determination" by Jie Li , Jeffery Kolodziejczak

L1.00016: "The Gravity Probe B SQUID Readout Detector" by Barry Muhlfelder, Bruce Clarke, Gregory Gutt, James Lockhart, Ming Luo

L1.00017: "SQUID Control, Temperature Regulation, and Signal Processing Electronics for Gravity Probe B" by James Lockhart, Barry Muhlfelder, Jie Li, Bruce Clarke, Terry McGinnis, Peter Boretsky, Gregory Gutt

L1.00018: "Gravity Probe B Science Instrument Assembly (SIA)" by Saps Buchman, Barry Muhlfelder, John Turneaure

L1.00019: "Polhode Motion of the Gravity Probe-B Gyroscopes" by Michael Dolphin, Alex Silbergleit, Michael Salomon, Paul Worden, Daniel DeBra

L1.00020: "Evidence for Patch Effect Forces on the Gravity Probe B Gyroscopes" by Dale Gill, Saps Buchman

L1.00021: "Gravity Probe B Orbit Determination" by Paul Shestople , Huntington Small


Anybody know what "Patch Effect Forces Are?

[Guest_Edward Schmitz_*]

Anybody know what "Patch Effect Forces Are?

I found this in a Google search. Still not clear to me...

One of the possible noise sources for the space-based gravitational wave
detector LISA (the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), associated with its
test masses, is that due to spatial variations in surface potential (or patch effect)
across the surfaces of the test mass and its housing.

Source

ed