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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    I found this extremely interesting, The Allais Effect is recognized but controversial, and to this day there's no agreed explanation for it.

    An excellent article about this was actually by NASA, 21 years ago:
    The main article title is Decrypting the Eclipse. But my thread title is a lot better.

    ~~~

    A Solar Eclipse, Global Measurements, and a Mystery

    6 August, 1999


    "During the total eclipses of the sun on June 30, 1954, and October 22, 1959, quite analogous deviations of the plane of oscillation of the paraconical pendulum were observed..." - Maurice Allais, 1988 Nobel autobiographical lecture.

    The natural phenomenon of a solar eclipse has historically brought kings to assemble armies and, in the modern era, brought camera-toting astronomers to remote locations around the world. On August 11 [1999], a solar eclipse will bring scientists together in an effort to solve a 45-year mystery.



    When the Moon eclipses the Sun, the solar corona becomes visible. The corona is faint compared to the Sun, so it can only be seen when the Sun is blocked from view. Jean Bernard Leon Foucault, with the physicist Armand Fizeau, took the first clear photograph of the Sun in 1845.

    The mystery lies in the question: Does a solar eclipse somehow affect a Foucault pendulum? In 1954, Maurice Allais reported that a Foucault pendulum exhibited peculiar movements at the time of a solar eclipse. If true, his finding raises new questions about the nature of such phenomena.

    For the upcoming eclipse, the NASA/Marshall Space Sciences Lab is coordinating an internet and video collaboration between observatories and universities to test the Allais effect. Participants on 4 continents (Central Europe, North America, Middle Asia, and Australasia), are from at least 7 countries (US, Austria, Germany, Italy, Australia, 4 sites in the United Arab Emirates, and England) and 11 cities (Huntsville AL, Indianapolis, Louisville, Denver, Boulder, Richmond, Vienna, Greifswald, Trento, Abu Dhabi, and Sydney).

    The inventor of the gyroscope, Jean Bernard Leon Foucault, demonstrated during the 1851 World's Fair that a pendulum could track the rotation of the Earth. A scientific tour de force, Foucault's demonstration forever attached his name both to the effect itself (the Foucault effect) and to the universal joint pendulum that freely swings and rotates at the same time (the Foucault pendulum).



    Time-elapsed photo of a Foucault pendulum at the Smithsonian Museum. As the Earth rotates under the pendulum, the bob strikes down red pegs.

    A basic Foucault pendulum is simply a weight on a wire. Practically any pocket watch has the potential to act as a pendulum, exhibiting up to a 10 to 15 degree rotation per hour around its hinge point. To an observer in a windowless room, the rotation that accompanies the swing is a kind of optical illusion: the pendulum is not turning, instead the Earth is actually rotating under the pendulum. Foucault's dramatic proof at the World's Fair is considered to be the first non-astronomical proof of the Earth's rotation.

    With rotating hinges raised to heights in excess of 90 feet, Foucault pendulums are now massive display pieces in the lobbies of more than 60 museums and entrance halls around the world, including the United Nations Building in New York and at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.

    Remarkably, little more than two long-term scientific records for Foucault pendulums have been published. Both experiments were conducted by eventual Nobel Prize winners: Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, who won the 1913 Nobel prize in Physics for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures (which led to the production of liquid helium), and Maurice Allais, who won the 1988 Nobel prize in Economics for his contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources.

    An Abrupt Excursion in the Plane: What Allais Published

    In a marathon experiment, Maurice Allais released a Foucault pendulum every 14 minutes - for 30 days and nights -without missing a data point. He recorded the direction of rotation (in degrees) at his Paris laboratory. This energetic show of human endurance happened to overlap with the 1954 solar eclipse. During the eclipse, the pendulum took an unexpected turn, changing its angle of rotation by 13.5 degrees.



    Maurice Allais (1911 - ) won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1988. He stated, "All my researches in theoretical and applied physics which, at first sight, appear to be remote from my main activity as an economist, have, in reality, enriched me with valuable experience." Both before and after the eclipse, the pendulum experienced normal rotation (Foucault effect of 0.19 degrees/minute). This 13.5-degree excursion in the angular plane persisted throughout the length of the eclipse, a total of 2.5 hours of observations. Allais got similar results when he later repeated the experiment during a solar eclipse in 1959.



    Click the image above for a Foucault clock animation - each tick shown is one hour worth of observed rotation. Depending on geographic position, the rotation of the Earth on a Foucault clock can be measured as different rotation rates: infinite period at the equator; approximately 24 hours at the poles; clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere; counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. The Allais effect observed over 2 and an half hours during the shadow of an extended solar eclipse's onset and departure equals nearly the magnitude of the Foucault effect itself (or about one tick shown).

    Allais' pendulum experiments earned him the 1959 Galabert Prize of the French Astronautical Society, and in 1959 he was made a laureate of the United States Gravity Research Foundation.

    A handful of scientists have since tested Allais' findings, and the results have polarized the publication record:

    An Overview of Publications About Eclipse Phenomena

    France, June 1954;
    October 1959 pendulum
    YES:
    Allais' original observations were repeated 3 times in 1954 and 1959 in France. In two locations: "two identical installations at St. Germain and Bougival, in an underground gallery (57 m deep) showing that the previously observed anomalies are still present." Allais, 1959.

    Scotland, 1954;
    Italy, 1965 gravimeter
    NO:

    Given a null report in 1954 in Shetland, Scotland using static gravity meters, and in 1965 in Trieste, Italy.

    Romania, 1961
    pendulum
    YES:

    The Allais effect was repeated in 1961 in Romania. "A number of observations were made of the behavior of a Foucault pendulum during the eclipse of the Sun of February 15, 1961. A similar result concerning a shift of the oscillation plane on June 30, 1954 was seen by Prof. Maurice Allais at St. Germain-Laye. These experiments should be repeated during other total eclipses of the sun." G.T. Jeverdan, et al, 1961 (A footnote states that after recording their deviations in the Foucault pendulum, the researchers discovered the Allais observations. In other words, they weren't looking for it.)

    Boston, 1970
    pendulum
    YES:
    Allais effect repeated using a torsion pendulum. In the observations at Harvard, a 0.0372% increase in the period (29.570 second baseline) began with the eclipse onset, peaked just after the eclipse maximum (29.581 second max.) and then decreased to an offset value. The researchers conclude that "this agrees qualitatively with the work of Allais with a paraconical (Foucault) pendulum. The change of azimuth increased substantially in the first half of the eclipse of June 30, 1954." These effects manifest as an "apparent wavelike structure observed over the course of many years at our Harvard laboratory. It cannot be predicted on the basis of classical gravitational theory nor has it been observed in the quasistationary experiments underlying this theory (e.g. spring-operated gravimeters, seismographs, and interferometer devices)." Saxl and Allen, Phys. Rev. D3, 1971.

    Finland, 1990
    pendulum
    NO:
    Not observed in 1990 Finland eclipse using a torsion pendulum. "In July 1990 there was a total solar eclipse in Helsinki, Finland. The results of Saxl and Allen, made at Harvard University during the total solar eclipse in March 1970, were tested using equipment which was quite similar to that used in Harvard. Four measurements, each lasting nine hours, were performed during the night preceding the eclipse, during the eclipse and the night after the eclipse and two weeks after the eclipse. In the limits of errors no effects were observed." Ullakko, et al, 1991.

    Mexico City, 1991
    pendulum
    MAYBE:
    The team that conducted the Finland 1990 study detected an indefinite signal one year later in Mexico City. "In the y-position of the pendulum there are two distinct shifts which seem to appear at the beginning and the end of the eclipse... Our experiment cannot determine whether these shifts are produced by some eclipse-coordinated phenomena, e.g. some sort of tidal waves on the shell of the Earth which has altered the position of the pendulum system."

    India, 1995
    gravimeter
    YES:
    A gravimeter detected slight changes during a solar eclipse. "[A one hour feature of the gravimeter record] of 10-12 microGal (10-8cm/s2)...can neither be classified under short period variations due to tidal effect or drift of the gravimeter nor under high frequency noise which have special patterns. Therefore, this variation is highly significant as it occurs with the onset of an eclipse...to understand its actual nature and mechanism, more planned experiments of this kind should be carried out during solar eclipses throughout the world whenever such opportunities are available." D.C. Mishra, M.B.S. Rao, National Geophysical Research Institute, Current Science, 72 (11) 1997 (783).

    "The initial interpretation of the record points to three possibilities," says Dr. David Noever of NASA/Marshall, "A systematic error, a local effect, or the unexplored. To eliminate the first two possibilities, we and several other observers will use different kinds of measuring instruments in a distributed global network of observing stations."

    Worldwide Effort, August 11, 1999

    Testing and then verifying the effects of a solar eclipse is a difficult enterprise. Because an eclipse has a short duration, it is difficult to conduct very many tests. Also, eclipse effects usually get attributed to some local effect like seismic or temperature changes because the experiments are not conducted in several different places at once. Therefore, in order to determine whether or not the effects of any single eclipse are one-time, localized events, many observing stations are needed to test eclipse peculiarities.

    During the next solar eclipse, Noever's team and volunteer scientists at several museums will simultaneously observe Foucault pendulums. Noever and other scientists will also use a gravimeter - a super-sensitive device that reports very small changes in the gravitational force acting on a mechanical spring.

    After the eclipse, Noever's team will compare the results of all the tests, including observations from areas in Europe that lie in the path of the eclipse.



    Cutaway view of gravimeter, with magnetic, thermal and pressure shielding. The instrument reports very small changes in the gravitational force acting on a mechanical spring-mass. Gravitational changes are expressed as the electrical force (measured as voltage) required to maintain the spring-mass system at a predetermined position (the null point). The modified LaCoste-Romberg gravimeter (Edcon, Inc. Denver, CO) measures relative gravity until calibrated against a reference. The instrument is routinely calibrated along the 10-station Rocky Mountain Calibration range established by NOAA, Edcon and the Colorado School of Mines. The calibration is validated by comparing the measure of absolute gravity in Huntsville Alabama with reference values from the USAF gravity disk. Data collection begins on August 11. The times of the solar eclipse are 3am-9am in North America, and 9a.m.-3p.m. in Europe and Middle Asia. These times can be adjusted for exact locations, for instance, in Boulder, CO, a data set for recording would be about 2:30a.m., continuing until 8:30a.m. That would cover the approach of the shadow, the actual eclipse, and the retreat of the shadow. The total length of the eclipse from initial contact in the Atlantic to last contact in the Indian Ocean is about 3½ hours.

    Eclipsing Speculation

    If the scientists do observe the Allais effect, the prevailing question will be "Why does it occur?" So far, explanations have included the anisotropy of space (the condition of having different properties in different directions), gravitational waves, and solar radiation.

    But before the cause of the Allais effect can be determined, scientists first need to settle the question about whether a pendulum really does act differently during a solar eclipse. By having a global network of scientists collaborating on a single eclipse, the answer to that question will perhaps finally be resolved. Results of August 11 eclipse will have to be coordinated with lunar opposition (2 weeks later) before a first summary of eclipse data will be available. Realistically, scientists think it will take at least a decade before all opinions are settled.

    In his Nobel Prize autobiographical speech, Allais stated, "My main idea at the start was that a link could be established between magnetism and gravitation by observing the movements of a pendulum consisting of a glass ball oscillating in a magnetic field. Of all the observations made in 1952 and 1953 I was not able to draw any definitive conclusion. Through certain experimental devices, I obtained positive effects, but with other devices I obtained no effect whatsoever....all these phenomena are quite inexplicable within the framework of the currently accepted theories."

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    Lightbulb Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    Anomalous Physical Effects During Solar Eclipses | Goodey Verreault:

    • Tip: you may want to play above video at 0.75 slower speed or download the video use VLC Player and then 0.85 speed which YouTube can not do!

    I wonder what "Flat Earthers" would say to this video:


    Last edited by ExomatrixTV; 12th August 2020 at 22:49.
    No need to follow anyone, only consider broadening (y)our horizon of possibilities ...

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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    Talking of "eclipses", conjunctions and alignments, the following might have some relevance:


    Quote Posted by Hervé (here)
    As for "gravity," "motion" and the "stars":

    Quote As the following graphs show, several major and minor fluctuations in sidereal time have occurred over certain periods throughout the years 1989 to 2000. For instance, a significant deviation from mean sidereal time occurred in the spring of 1989, when Sirius A, Sirius B and the sun were in direct conjunction and earth was still in the perihelion section of its orbit (see also diagram Solar system - Sirius system). Interesting is the fact that also a major time deviation from the negative into the positive range occurred during this conjunction at the end of February 1989. Furthermore, seemingly 'regular' fluctuations appear around March of each year. Also, at the end of 1989 towards the beginning of 1990, as earth went through its perihelion, significant positive deviations were observed. In the following years, around the same period, only positive deviations occurred, although diminishing in magnitude.

    INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA:
    Significant time deviations in earth's period of rotation, as measured with respect to Sirius have occurred over certain months (e.g. in the spring of 1989, when Sirius A, Sirius B and the sun were in direct conjunction). Some minor, but nevertheless distinct deviations appear at regular yearly intervals (usually around March). Since these deviations occur annually, the gravitational influence of the moon or perturbations caused by other planets in the solar system can be excluded. Since such deviations from mean sidereal time CANNOT be caused by an increase or decrease in the speed of earth's rotation, I suspect a combined 'gravitational' effect of the sun and the Sirius system on the earth's axis of rotation. In my article "Some more thoughts on gravitation" I have tried to describe how the Sirius system might be responsible for a 'curvature in space' that can reach as far as to our solar system. As we know, the revolution of Sirius B and Sirius A around their common center of gravity over a period of about 49 years proceeds in an almost vertical plane relative to the planetary plane of our solar system. This motion could cause a periodic fluctuation in the curvature of space, similar to an ocean where a calm wind would create long-stretched waves. If a ship were to sail on such waves, its mast will gently swing back and forth. Likewise, during the earth's orbit around the sun the axis of the earth would 'oscillate' due to these periodic fluctuations of the space-curvature between sun and Sirius. Although the speed of earth's rotation remains unchanged (!), a positive or negative time-deviation from mean sidereal time can be measured, depending on the magnitude and direction of the oscillation of the axis, the sidereal point of reference and the latitude on earth from which the measurements are taken. As a matter of fact, the International Earth Rotation Service observes significant daily variations in earth's sidereal rotation period.
    http://binaryresearchinstitute.org/s...Research.shtml

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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    Potentially unrelated to your very well conceived post. My favourite novelhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault's_Pendulum
    “The World is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    Another article, from Forbes, 3 years ago:
    The Strange Story Of The Eclipse And The Pendulum

    19 July, 2017

    Next month a total solar eclipse will be seen across the United States. It is one of the few eclipses to trace a path through several densely populated areas, and that means there's plenty of opportunity to do some experiments, including one that's stirred a bit of controversy for the past 60 years.

    The most famous eclipse experiment is Arthur Eddington's 1919 experiment showing that starlight is deflected by the mass of the Sun. It was the first experiment to confirm that Einstein's theory of relativity was correct. But perhaps the second most famous eclipse experiment was performed in 1954 by Maurice Allais.

    Allais was an economist, and won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1988. But he was also interested in alternative theories of gravity and electromagnetism. He thought that gravity could be an effect of a cosmic aether, and that effects of this aether could be observed during a solar eclipse. So in 1954 Allais conducted a simple experiment with a Foucault pendulum.

    A basic pendulum is simply a mass connected to a cable or rod. When the pendulum is released, it swings back and forth at a regular rate. But given a bit of time time, the orientation of a pendulum will shift. The direction of its back and forth motion will change. This was first noticed by Léon Foucault in the 1850s. As Foucault demonstrated, the gradual shift of a pendulum is due to Earth's rotation.

    Everything on the Earth moves around in a circle once a day. If you are on the equator, you would travel the entire circumference of the Earth in 24 hours. If you are near the north pole, you would travel only a small circle in 24 hours. This means that while everything on Earth moves in a circle once a day, things closer to the equator move faster than things closer to the Earth’s poles. Your speed depends upon your latitude.

    As a pendulum swings, it will be slightly closer to the equator at one part of its swing, and slightly farther away at another part. As a result, the motion of the Earth causes the orientation of the pendulum to shift slightly with each swing, an effect known as precession. The effect is very small, but it builds up.


    Graph showing the precession rate shift during an eclipse. (Allais, 1959)

    Because the precession is due to Earth's rotation, traditional physics says the rate of precession should be the same during an eclipse as any other time. But when Allais did his experiment, he found the rate of precession shifted during the eclipse.

    This came to be known as the Allais anomaly, or Allais effect (not to be confused with the Allais paradox, which deals with his economics work). This was unexpected, and it generated a lot of criticism. One of the main arguments was that Allais was not an experimental scientist.

    Although the experiment seems simple, it could be influenced by things such as atmospheric changes of temperature, pressure and humidity which can occur during a total eclipse. Eliminating these factors is challenging, even for an experienced experimentalist. A second criticism was that there is no clear mechanism for such an anomaly. Even Allais didn't have a claim a mechanism beyond some vague non-traditional effect.

    Of course the real proof of the pudding would be to repeat the experiment. Either the effect is real or it isn't, and further experiments should lead to the truth. But total solar eclipses are not overly common, and they don't often occur over university research labs. So only a handful of experiments have been done, and they've been done with equipment of widely varying precision.

    The results have been mixed. Allais repeated the effect in 1959, and found the effect again. In 1965 an experiment using a more precise gravimeter device found no effect, while a pendulum experiment in 1970 found some effect, though the cause was unclear.

    One of the more precise pendulum experiments was performed in 1990 by Tom Kuusela. Kuusela found no effect to within 1 part in 4 million. Another one by Horacio R. Salva in 2010 also failed to see any effect. So it seems pretty clear that the effect isn't real. But that hasn't stopped the controversy.

    There are a few experiments that claim to observe the effect, though they tend to be published in less mainstream journals. Supporters of the effect have cited it as evidence for everything from dark matter to the electric universe and a flat Earth. If you delve deep enough you find accusations that NASA covered up research from several eclipse experiments.
    • Paper: Maurice Allais. Should the Laws of Gravitation be Reconsidered?, Aero/Space Engineering 9, 46–55 (1959)
    • Paper: Kuusela T. Effect of the solar eclipse on the period of a torsion pendulum, Phys. Rev. D 43, 2041–2043 (1991)
    • Paper: Horacio R. Salva. Searching the Allais effect during the total sun eclipse of 11 July 2010. Phys. Rev. D 83, 067302 (2011)

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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    I am not one to discourage a reading of the Umberto Eco novel, where the key document to be deciphered turns out to be a medieval shopping list. Having apparently mislaid my copy – not apparently at all: I can’t find it! – I am unable to provide any personal input at this time. However for readers unwilling to face the book, here is a review by Anthony Burgess (author of A Clockwork Orange).


    On the science, it is strange much of the data provided here seems to be in the future. The ‘worldwide effort’ of 1999 is upcoming. I remember that eclipse well: we were located at 99% and travelled the shortish distance to witness totality. What we got was an eclipse of an eclipse. My son, a preteen at the time, was in a dreadful mood, and remembers it well. Over twenty years down the line, you would expect some findings from all this research. Instead of which, we read how in 2017, there is going to be a total eclipse ‘next month’! What an interesting dichotomy: the scientists seem starved of new theories, but Eco’s conspiracy buffs have gone into overdrive!

    As I often do, here I have two strands I want to connect together, and see what happens. Maybe the mainstream science is leading nowhere, or, to paraphrase, the paranormal approach is leading somewhere.
    From the document referenced by AriG on Eco’s novel, I note the following: ‘The Plan becomes a theory about the Templars possessing knowledge of ancient energy flows called "telluric currents", and their goal is to reshape the world to their will using the currents and the Foucault pendulum, the focal point of the currents.’

    "Telluric currents" do exist: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluric_current They sound like they have something to do with ley lines, but this is one of so many areas about which I know next to nothing. Where is Carmody when you need him?

    If and when a clear mechanism for the Foucault pendulum anomaly at solar eclipse finally emerges, I believe it would also shed light on that other unexplained phenomenon, astrology. Since a total eclipse is another way of describing a perfect conjunction, the ‘Sun Conjunct Moon’ configuration would be the obvious entry point for validating subtler yet empirically verifiable planetary influences. I am guessing – where is Ulli when you need her? – that these astrological influences on human behaviour are a combination of the equivalents of telluric currents on other bodies in the solar system and their interference patterns. I forget what occasion is marked by the arcane ritual that leads to the hero’s being strung up and colloquially ‘swinging’ on Foucault’s pendulum in Paris, but the resulting pandemonium seems to be very similar to the dénouement of CS Lewis’s Space Trilogy (see here), when several planetary deities join forces on Earth. Quite the opposite of the ‘Sun Conjunct Moon’ effect, which appears to be rather similar to the positive effect on good people in the vicinity of those same planetary deities.

    In Planets in Transit: Life Cycles for Living, Robert Hand describes this conjunction in the following terms:
    Quote This transit brings your personal, domestic and emotional life to prominence. All the symbolic power of the solar energy is infused into your emotions, bringing them to the surface where you can observe and learn to understand them But you needn’t worry; this transit will not be especially turbulent. In fact you will feel more integrated and at one with yourself in many ways now than at any other time. And your relationships with other people, especially women, should be more harmonious as well. This is because you approach everything as a total person, with no loose ends hanging on to signify divided emotions. (…) This can be a time of great discovery. (…) This is a time of new beginnings in your inner life, a sort of personal “new Moon.” All these areas of your life are in a state of flux, so it is easier to make changes now than at any other time of the year. (p.58-9)
    Obviously we are not talking here about personal or even collective horoscopes but, through the simple pendulum, it must be the Earth itself, or at least that specific location that is registering the effect. The accelerated precession sounds like some form of excitement, like when your heart beats faster and you get ahead of yourself. This sounds crazy, unless and until you replace ‘the Earth itself’ in the previous sentence with ‘Gaia herself’. (The link here would be a post that I haven’t finished writing for the above CS Lewis thread: stay tuned! )


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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    What interests me is that the pendulum's illusory non-motion shows that it is:

    absolutely fixed in space without respect to any time derivative motion such as orbit or precession.

    Everything in space will move relative to the pendulum's fixed direction.

    Isn't that the basis of it?

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    Canada Avalon Member Ernie Nemeth's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    But the entire pendulum system is in motion, like the earth - except it is not allowed to spin on its own axis. It is the spin of the earth that is not translated to the pendulum...

    Does that mean something?
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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    Here's a good, easy-to-understand article about how it all works:
    What's Up With That: How a Swinging Pendulum Proves the Earth Rotates

    (Or, Another thing that Flat Earthers can't explain.... my own subtitle )


    Foucault's Pendulum at Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe in Valencia (Spain).

    Once upon a time, you were probably on an elementary school field trip at a science museum or an observatory. Just before lunch, your teacher had the class stand in a circle around an enormous weight suspended on a string, and watch it swing back and forth, back and forth.

    The teacher (or maybe a tour guide) explained that if you watched the pendulum for long enough, it would seem to alter its course, swinging in a slightly different direction. And that this somehow proved the Earth was rotating beneath your feet. You probably nodded and watched the weight swing for a while. And even though you didn’t see anything really change, you thought, “Sure,” and then went to trade your friend an Oreo cookie for half of their Hi-C Ecto Cooler.

    Now that you’re older, you’ll occasionally think back on that pendulum and wonder how it could have proved anything. After all, the demonstration was in a building on the Earth, so if the Earth was rotating, shouldn’t the pendulum be rotating with it?

    This famous experiment, now found in museums around the world, was first demonstrated in 1851. French physicist Leon Foucault suspended a 61-pound weight from a 200-foot-long wire at the Pantheon in Paris and set it swinging. He needed the bob to be so heavy and the wire so long to ensure that the pendulum would be able to swing for a long time, at least an hour. A pin on the bottom of the weight drew a line in a circle of wet sand set underneath the experiment.

    After an hour, the line the pin drew in the sand intersected with the first line at an angle of roughly 11.25 degrees, which is exactly what Foucault had predicted. The demonstration was an international sensation and was quickly repeated to crowds across Europe and North America.

    By this point, everyone knew that the Earth rotated but this was the first experiment to measure the speed at which it did so. Foucault got eternal fame by having a pendulum named after him, which later became the title of a mind-bending book by Umberto Eco you probably tried to read in college before turning to the much easier candy of Dan Brown novels.

    So how does this all work? To explain, we’re going to have to do a little thought experiment.

    Let’s say that one day you and a friend decide to play a game of catch at the North Pole (your friend is an eccentric billionaire in this story). You stand on one side of the pole and toss the ball directly over the pole to your friend, who is standing opposite you. Try to think about things from the ball’s perspective. At the moment it’s released from your hand, its path is set. It will travel in a straight line toward the point that you threw it.

    But in the time it takes the ball to travel, the Earth has rotated just a tiny bit. Your friend has moved ever so slightly to the right. This movement is so minute that it’s hardly going to affect your game of catch. But if you were on a planet with a very fast rotation rate, your friend would have moved much more in the time it takes the ball to travel. The ball could entirely miss your friend, going straight past her left arm.



    As it goes through its swing, the pendulum acts like this ball. Once the pendulum reaches the top of its arc, its path is set. It will head to the opposite end of its swing without deviation. Essentially, it will continue swinging back and forth in the same exact plane. Imagine you’ve suspended the pendulum over the North Pole. You glue a pin to its bottom and send it swinging, drawing a line in the snow.

    But in the time it takes to go from one top of an arc to the next, the Earth underneath the experiment has rotated. And each time the pendulum swings; the Earth rotates a little more. If you kept the pendulum swinging for six hours, one-quarter of a day, the line it now traced in the snow would intersect the first line at 90 degrees. (Note: Some truly awesome and dedicated physicists did this in 2001 at the South Pole.)

    Those of you checking my math will probably now interject something like this: “But you said that Foucault’s pendulum in Paris moved 11.25 degrees in one hour, which means it would have only changed by 67.5 degrees in six hours, not 90 degrees.” Well congratulations, you’ve shown that the thought experiment we did above only works at either the North or South Pole. And also, that you are a nerd.

    Imagine the same setup at the equator. You start the pendulum swinging in a perfect east-west direction. The Earth still rotates each time the weight goes through an arc, but now it’s moving in exactly the same direction as the pendulum. There’s no relative motion. Think about this carefully. I can set the pendulum swinging north-south and the Earth’s rotation still won’t affect the plane it moves in. That’s because the Earth can’t twist underneath the setup; it's always headed in the same direction.

    What about points in between the poles and the equator? Well, it requires a little bit of complicated geometry to fully determine exactly how much the Earth moves under the pendulum. Suffice to say that in one day the plane that the pendulum swings in will appear to change somewhere between zero degrees (like at the equator) and 360 degrees (like at the poles).

    You can derive an equation to tell you exactly how much the Earth moves based on your latitude: n = 360° sin(θ), where θ is your latitude. If your pendulum was drawing lines in sand, like Foucault's, n would be the intersection angle between the first line and a line drawn 24 hours later (actually, it's 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds later – this is a sidereal day, the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once relative to the stars, rather than a 24-hour solar day).

    This means that if you ever find yourself trapped in a room with no way out and happen to have a piece of string and weight handy, you can determine your latitude. Isn’t science useful?


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    Canada Avalon Member Ernie Nemeth's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    The speed of a point on the equator is proportionally faster than a point towards the pole, while a point at the pole has no rotational speed. So at 45degrees it is half the speed as that at the equator.

    The amount of deviation the pendulum proscribes depends upon the relative difference in rotational speed between a point on the equator and the distance of the pendulum from the equator. The greater the difference the larger the deviation.

    When the sun and moon are in conjunction, there seems to be a large discrepancy in the data suggesting some sort of unknown interference.

    Not heard of that before. Very interesting.

    So what is happening? Misunderstanding of basic science? Gravitational lensing? Some sort of quantum field effect? Unknown force? Interference by advanced races?

    Other?
    Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water...Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. Bruce Lee

    Free will can only be as free as the mind that conceives it.

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    Default Re: The Allais effect: Why does a Foucault Pendulum change its action during a solar eclipse?

    Quote Posted by Ernie Nemeth (here)
    When the sun and moon are in conjunction, there seems to be a large discrepancy in the data suggesting some sort of unknown interference.

    Not heard of that before. Very interesting.

    So what is happening? Misunderstanding of basic science? Gravitational lensing? Some sort of quantum field effect? Unknown force? Interference by advanced races?

    Other?
    Paul Babcock did a presentation on aether weirdness at last years Energy Science Tech Conference. He related an experiment he learnt from John Bedini, about replacing iron with air at the core of their electric generators. The results produced defied any kind of rational explanation in the standard physics model. Babcock did mention the book ‘Physics without Einstein - Harold Aspden’.

    Aspden talks about pressure mediation between moving and rotating spheres. When rotating spheres cross each other’s plane of inertia in the same direction, there’s an attractive force that pulls them together. When rotating spheres cross each other’s plane of inertia in opposite directions, there’s a repulsive force. Push/Pull depending on the direction of movement.

    The eclipse points would denote these planes of inertia and are symbolised as the head and tail of the dragon in astrology:

    Quote Astronomically, Rahu and Ketu denote the points of intersection of the paths of the Sun and the Moon as they move on the celestial sphere. Therefore, Rahu and Ketu are respectively called the north and the south lunar nodes. The fact that eclipses occur when the Sun and the Moon are at one of these points gives rise to the understanding of swallowing of the Sun and the Moon by the snake. Rahu is responsible for causing the Eclipse of the Sun.
    Rahu is known as the shadow planet that causes energy to rush into a system.
    Ketu is the shadow planet that causes energy to rush out of a system.

    They have a push/pull effect and their symbology stems from ‘The Churning of the Milk’ Vedic myth.

    The book ‘The Lunar Code - Ken Ring’ also talks about little known moon physics that helps shape our weather systems. He mentions that each time the moon rises and sets over the horizon, the wind changes direction, in a perpetual Push/pull rhythm.

    The Allais effect seems to add some veracity to Harold Aspdens ‘physics without Einstein’ model, and correlates to the patterns the stargazers have noticed and encoded into their astrological systems. Some kind of aetheric push/pull between the sun and earth as the moon crosses the ecliptic.

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