Proofs of varying gravity

So you don't trust the link I gave but trust wikipedia? Who do you trust?

I trust Wikipedia to mostly report the consensus of interested parties, backed up by citation, and to occasionally contain errors and deliberate misinformation. I don't trust it any further than that, and neither should you. Here I am just using it to find what RE scientists claim the deflection should be according to RE theory, not to prove that one model or another is correct (which should involve an experiment can be performed by me personally or someone I trust, so I don't have to worry about "the conspiracy").

Get some good equipment and this should be simple. Do multiple trials at different locations with different hardware, and you can eliminate error. If you do this like a real science lab (controls, lots of trials, etc) you can get pretty close to the correct answer.

You can't take an experiment that doesn't work and throw multiple trials at it to make it work. If my experiment isn't sensitive enough to detect the difference between the predictions of FE (no deflection due to gravity from large mountains) and RE (deflection due to gravity from large mountains), performing the same experiment many times is not going to help.

In this thread I was promised "conclusive evidence" that gravity varies based on location. We're now 5 pages into the thread, and still no such evidence has been forthcoming. Please tell me how to perform an experiment that is sufficiently sensitive to detect the difference between the two models, what equipment I will need to perform it, and how I can get that equipment without emptying my bank account (or perform the experiment yourself). Otherwise you should come up with some other evidence, or else stop claiming to have conclusive evidence when all you have is "I read it on the intertubes." Give me five minutes with Google, and I can find equally good evidence of working perpetual motion machines, and much better evidence that homeopathy works.

http://www.mansfieldct.org/schools/MMS/staff/hand/lawsgravaltitude.htm

Weigh yourself while flying. Use a sensitive scale. Need anything else?

Yes.  You could ask the pilot to maintain a prefect 1g; I'm sure he'd be delighted to do so even if he was capable.

Mrs. Peach FTW!

Yes.  You could ask the pilot to maintain a prefect 1g; I'm sure he'd be delighted to do so even if he was capable.

If the pilot maintained a perfect 1g, wouldn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose of the experiment?

The point is that flying in a plane can have the effect of nearly any amount of gravity with enough space to fly in

Quote from: Mrs. Peach on December 29, 2009, 11:48:26 AM

Yes.  You could ask the pilot to maintain a prefect 1g; I'm sure he'd be delighted to do so even if he was capable.

If the pilot maintained a perfect 1g, wouldn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose of the experiment?

The experiment is not feasible was my point.

Even easier, Hot Air balloon. Wait for no wind, and you can get a small change in your weight.

Quote from: markjo on December 29, 2009, 12:31:27 PM

Quote from: Mrs. Peach on December 29, 2009, 11:48:26 AM

Yes.  You could ask the pilot to maintain a prefect 1g; I'm sure he'd be delighted to do so even if he was capable.

If the pilot maintained a perfect 1g, wouldn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose of the experiment?

The experiment is not feasible was my point.

Actually, you would just need to set the auto-pilot to straight and level flight.  Sounds perfectly feasible to me.

Sounds like a conspiracy and that teh aeroplain would really be flying toward the FE in such a curve to show a reduction in gravitational pull.

Even easier, Hot Air balloon. Wait for no wind, and you can get a small change in your weight.

The world record for hot air balloon altitude is about 20 km (and I'm probably not about to set any world records in ballooning). At that altitude, the difference in gravity relative to sea level is .6%. In other words, to be sure I've detected a reading, I need to know that my balloon is not changing its rate of drifting by as little as .06 m/s². How do you propose I get a hot air balloon drifting at 20,000 meters that close to stationary? The same applies to commercial airline flights - the plane's trajectory must be exactly level or the experiment is worthless, and I can't know that it is.

You keep proposing experiments to measure variation in gravity, but I'm not sure that you properly understand how minor the variations are that you are trying to measure. The experiments you propose are all likely to have experimental errors which are many times greater than the magnitude of the variation you propose to measure when using equipment available to the general public (and hot air balloons capable of reaching high altitude are not exactly cheap).

Quote from: skeptical scientist on December 28, 2009, 09:26:24 PM

Quote from: Dino on December 28, 2009, 08:53:23 PM

Not at all. There is no force of gravity in relativity.

Sure there is, in the same way centrifugal force is a real force. Yes, it is an artifact of using certain frames of reference, but in those frames of reference it is a very real force.

Quote

And the theories make different predictions. They do not reconcile. Why are the REers here using such an archaic theory, one they know to be wrong?

They do make different predictions, but those predictions are very close together in most situations, and the force predicted by the Newtonian model is much easier to calculate, so there is nothing wrong with using the Newtonian model in the realm where it gives good predictions.

So REer's prefer models which are "easier to calculate". I agree with this. REer's look for convenient models. They are are biased toward the idea that truth is convenient.

Shouldnt the truth also be true?

So the more complex model is the true one, inconsistencies notwithstanding?

Quote from: parsec on December 28, 2009, 01:41:11 AM

How about when I try to boil my eggs on a high mountain-top? They're always too soft boiled.

I personally say that the stars have a slight attracting field.

However, other FE proponents vehemently deny any alteration of g at higher altitudes.

I thought FE'ers didnt believe in gravity, and that stars were merely a 'backdrop' painted some precise distance from the Earth?
I read the FAQ some time ago.

Quote from: Tom Bishop on December 28, 2009, 02:13:03 AM

Quote from: parsec on December 28, 2009, 01:41:11 AM

How about when I try to boil my eggs on a high mountain-top? They're always too soft boiled.

I personally say that the stars have a slight attracting field.

However, other FE proponents vehemently deny any alteration of g at higher altitudes.

I thought FE'ers didnt believe in gravity, and that stars were merely a 'backdrop' painted some precise distance from the Earth?
I read the FAQ some time ago.

Not all FET's reject gravity. See the gravity sticky.

I know...How about we take some men up into space and put them on the moon?  That way, we can get pictures of the earth, and measure the moon's gravity to compare.  I've heard somewhere that this might have already happened though.

Or if you fire a rocket straight up that is spewing fuel at a constant rate (kg/s) and put an accelerometer on the rocket, the accelerometer would read  large at first, and slowly drop as you moved away from the earth.  I think this may have been done already too.

Quote from: Yousmokecrackz on December 30, 2009, 01:03:14 PM

Quote from: Tom Bishop on December 28, 2009, 02:13:03 AM

Quote from: parsec on December 28, 2009, 01:41:11 AM

How about when I try to boil my eggs on a high mountain-top? They're always too soft boiled.

I personally say that the stars have a slight attracting field.

However, other FE proponents vehemently deny any alteration of g at higher altitudes.

I thought FE'ers didnt believe in gravity, and that stars were merely a 'backdrop' painted some precise distance from the Earth?
I read the FAQ some time ago.

Not all FET's reject gravity. See the gravity sticky.

But then wouldn't the Earth crumple into a ball?

But then wouldn't the Earth crumple into a ball?

I can appreciate you don't want to read the entire mega-thread that is the gravity sticky to find out the that answer to your question is "no, not necessarily", but if you want to dig up the conversation again I would suggest at least skimming it for relevant nuggets you find particularly objectionable.

Quote from: Canadark on January 03, 2010, 11:11:37 AM

But then wouldn't the Earth crumple into a ball?

I can appreciate you don't want to read the entire mega-thread that is the gravity sticky to find out the that answer to your question is "no, not necessarily", but if you want to dig up the conversation again I would suggest at least skimming it for relevant nuggets you find particularly objectionable.

You are asking Canadark to throw himself waist deep into a pile of rubbish to find the particular shell of rotten egg that he finds objectionable?

It has been shown several times that the gravitational pull exerted on the farthest edges of the disk are more than enough to crumple the disk you propose. You can either accept Newton's gravitational pull as close the the mark for all but extreme circumstances or throw it away completely. You cannot choose to believe in a complete model that gives almost perfect predictions for a variety of experiments and observations and just declare you believe in some of it.

Quote from: Canadark on January 03, 2010, 11:11:37 AM

But then wouldn't the Earth crumple into a ball?

I can appreciate you don't want to read the entire mega-thread that is the gravity sticky to find out the that answer to your question is "no, not necessarily", but if you want to dig up the conversation again I would suggest at least skimming it for relevant nuggets you find particularly objectionable.