Olin, a very clear and straightforward explanation! I think I will even go out to the pump house and take a bath afore I hitch the wagon and go to town tonight to celebrate at the Square Dance, that is if the creek don't rise. -- Lawrence Lile Who DOES square dance and HAS been stranded by flooded creeks or snowed in many a time. Also made moonshine. Olin Lathrop Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list 01/08/2003 09:45 AM Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: Subject: Re: [EE]: Speed of gravity measured > Yes, and the work was performed by a guy in MY homely little midwest hick > town, Columbia, Missouri. We are all busting out of our overalls today. Gosh, paw, we is gonna celerbrate by dressin up fer dinner and eatin offa real plates ternight! Go fetch wonna grannies bottles of special moonshine. > In the report I heard, the physicist said that he had a 95% confidence > level that the speed of gravity measured was less than 2X the speed of > light. He explained how the measurement was done. I have understood > every planet finder scheme I have read about, but this one still stumps > me. He claimed they predicted that if gravity were infinite speed, a > certain Quasar's light would be bent by passing Jupiter in an elliptical > fashion, whereas a finite speed would make a more circular distortion. I > still can't figure out how this relates to the speed of the gravity. If the speed of gravity was infinite, then Jupiter's gravitational field would be radially symmetric. However, this is not the case if the speed of gravity is finite and Jupiter is accellerating. Note that Jupiter is always undergoing accelleration due to its circular motion around the sun. Since gravitational fields bend light, they can be measured by how they distort the apparent position of a distant light emitter (a quasar in this case) when viewed thru that field. The assymmetry of Jupiters gravitational field was thus measured, and worked backwards to derive the speed of gravity that would produce the measured assymmetry at the known accelleration. At least that's how I undertood it from that brief excerpt. I could, of course, have it all completely wrong. ***************************************************************** Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts (978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics