The gravitational shielding hypothesis may be checked with height observations of a geostationary satellite. If Earth canceles acceleration of free fall toward the Sun, the satellite should fly away from Earth at a distance of up to about 40 km during 1-hour shadowing (s=g_sun*t^2/2). If no, such an observation may be the independent confirmation of high penetration ability of gravity forces.
Locations based on GPS satellites are accurate to a few cm, no such effect occurs.
Dear George,
There is a number of orbital perturbations of GPS satellites. These are solar and lunar shiftings, solar wind pressure and other. Do you exactly know that during the eclipses there is no periodic height component which can be taking into account in GPS system?
Hi Alexander. I don't understand your logic. If the earth would shield the gravitation of the sun then why would the upper layers of the sun not shield the gravity effect of the inner layers? Regards, Paul Gradenwitz
Dear Paul,
Yes, they would be in such a case. One can modify gravity constant to gravity function depended on the source thickness. Look at Majorana theory.
The problem is not trivial. There are modern researches approving high penetrating ability of gravity forces and a number of alternative theories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_shielding#cite_ref-majorana_4-0
Additional experimental observations are always useful at least in reducing the number of theoretical speculations.
I don't get the logic of the question. A solar eclipse is caused by the Moon, not the Earth.
Dear Daniel,
Solar eclipse in the orbit of a satellite is caused mainly by the Earth. Solar eclipses by the Moon take place also but are not so interesting due to relatively small mass of the Moon.
Thanks, so by eclipse you just mean the satellite are in the Earth shadow. The only important effects are then radiation related, like the radiation pressure, and the Yarkovsky effect (the thermal radiation from a rotating satellite is anisotropic so cause a tiny force).
Dear Daniel,
Thank you for reminding of the theory. But do you know about measured orbital shiftings in height (in km) during the eclipses (shadowings) ?
GPS satellites form an absolute reference frame and so their individual position must be known to a very high precision, probably better than cm, as mentioned by George. So any discrepancy with gravitation theory (GR) would be detected. By the way the GPS system does not work with Newtonian gravitation, general relativity must be taken into account for your GPS device to work.
Dear Daniel,
The question is not about theory, but about experimental data. One can look at the sky and think about rotating stars ( theory №1). Another one can think about rotation of Earth ( theory №2). Without additional observations truly reason of star movement cannot be established.
Thank you for attention.
Dear Alexander, You pointed me at a Wiki page. There the conclusion is that we have not enough accurate measurements to conclude that some shielding is larger than 10^-20. There are reports that state that in superconducting extreme cold environments some gravitational changes were measured. What you want to know is if there is eveidence that during the time, when a satelite travels in the earth shadow, that then the gravity effects of the sun are shielded. The gravity field of the earth is bumpy. The gravity field of the sun is in such orbit much smaller than the field of the earth. I would compare it with driving with an ofroad 4wheel drive car over stones and then askink if you can feel the difference between stones that are covered with a layer of water or dry stones that are in principle smaller.
In other words, the effect, if any, is too small to take into account for the development of a new theory.
Dear Paul,
Simple Fourier transform allows to single out small periodic component from noisy signal, especially since it's magnitude may be up to about 40 km at first approximation.
Who can give orbital papameters of any geostationar satellite?
P.S. I strongly agree with Occam razor principle and have no purpose to create any new theory. Gravitational shielding hypothesis is old, and additional verification of it by original way may be useful.
Dear Alexander I. Korolev, I suppose the best testbed for verification or falsification of the shielding theory is a case of big, slow rotated binary 'dwarf' planets like Pluto, or KBO like Arrokoth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UltimaThule_CA06_color_vertical.png
Another useful case for verification same theory should be a constant shadowing of GPS satellites - measuring of evolution of their orbits with the phase measuring should be quite accurate.
One more idea: L2 point for Sun-Earth. Object in this point is in shadow for Sun constantly, shifting of its position could be measured by laser range meter with excellent accuracy.
Dear Eugene, Yes, constant shift from L2 toward Earth should take place in the case of gravity shielding presence. But variable shifting should be more demonstrative (if the shielding exists).
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