A Proposal of New Gravitational Experiments

Abstract

Since "evidently the construction of a laboratory generator of gravitational radiation is an unattractive enterprise in the absence of new engineering or a new idea or both" [C. W. Misner, K. S. Thorne and J. A. Wheeler, Gravitation (Freeman, 1973), p. 979], we propose in this letter some new experiments on the physics of gravitation. These experiments refer to: simulation of accelerations produced by a gravity wave, a source of high-frequency gravitational waves, a direct current gravitational machine, materials with high gravitomagnetic permeability, and finally the possibility of an attenuation of the gravitational attraction. The new ideas involve essentially first the concept of a detector or a source of gravitational radiation in the form of a body in which the motions of particles are precisely the same as those induced by a real gravitational wave in that body, and second, to design a detector having two principal components placed at a distance of λ/2 along the direction of propagation of a gravity wave. We define a new type of gravitomagnetic field generated directly by the time-dependent tidal accelerations of the gravitational wave, and we also define a new concept: the gravitational superconductor. * This essay received "honorable mention" from the Gravity Research Foundation, 1997 -Ed. †