Gravity attenuation and consistency with observed solar eclipse gravitational anomalies

摘要

During the solar eclipse of March 9, 1997, a Chinese group carried out an experiment specifically designed to detect possible gravity variations. They identified two significant anomalous lateral valleys, interpreted by them as a possible shielding effect of the Moon on the gravitational force of the Sun. This interpretation was criticized because only one central valley centered at maximum eclipse is conventionally expected. In April of 1918, Quirino Majorana started his work on gravity absorption at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin (Italy); experimentally he found that the value of his universal gravity quenching coefficient was h≈10~(-12)cm~2/g. In 1922, Majorana moved to the University of Bologna where he repeated the experiments obtaining h-values of the same order of magnitude. Estimates for h from the shielding of solar gravity by the Moon during solar eclipses typically are 2-3 orders of magnitude smaller, down to h≈10~(-21)cm~2/g from fluctuations of Moon's orbit. Then, some theoreticians discount the higher empirical laboratory values as being wrong. By analogy with photon attenuation in matter, an extension of Majorana's hypothesis is proposed here, where h represents both absorption and scattering, and becomes a variable parameter, dependent on the baryonic mix (Z, N) of the substance interacting with gravity. When attenuation is dominated by scattering, the residual gravity curve may exhibit two lateral valleys, as effectively observed in at least six solar eclipses from 1954 to 1999, described in the text. Therefore, gravity attenuation during solar eclipses is dominated by scattering instead of absorption as conventionally believed.