Related papers: Revisiting Riccioli's free fall calculations
Voyages of exploration often included astronomers among their crew to aid with maritime navigation. William Dawes, a British Marine who had been trained in practical astronomy, was assigned to the "First Fleet", a convoy of eleven ships…
We introduce a novel way of measuring $H_0$ from a combination of independent geometrical datasets, with no need of calibration nor of the choice of a cosmological model. We build on the {\it distance duality relation} which sets the ratio…
Correction due to finite speed of light is among the most inconsistent ones in absolute gravimetry. Formulas reported by different authors yield corrections scattered up to 8 $\mu$Gal with no obvious reasons. The problem, though noted…
General Relativity (GR) is shown to be a complete theory with respect to the isochrony of the pendulum. This guarantees that time can be measured with a mechanical clock within the theory itself as a matter of principle. The proper and…
In his encyclopedic work on astronomy, the 1651 Almagestum Novum, the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671) argued against the movement of the Earth on the grounds that (among other things), if the Earth rotated, that…
When identifying instruments that have had great influence on the history of physics, none comes to mind more quickly than the pendulum. Though 'birthed' by Galileo in the 16th century, and in some respects nearly 'dead' by the middle of…
The article (Niebauer et al. 2011 Metrologia 48 154-163) reports on the important innovations enhancing the ability of absolute gravimeter to measure vertical gravity gradient along with the gravity acceleration. This comment suggests…
The moon is receding from earth at an average rate of 3.8 cm/yr [6][7][9][12].This anomaly cannot be attributed to the well-known tidal exchange of angular momentum between earth and moon [8]. A secular change in the astronomical unit AU is…
We evaluate the accuracy to be expected for the measurement of free fall acceleration of antihydrogen in the GBAR experiment, accounting for the recoil transferred in the photodetachment process. We show that the uncertainty on the…
In 1651 the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli published within his Almagestum Novum, a massive 1500 page treatise on astronomy, a discussion of 126 arguments for and against the Copernican hypothesis (49 for, 77 against). A…
A partially alternative derivation of the expression for the time dilation effect in a uniform static gravitational field is obtained by means of a thought experiment in which rates of clocks at rest at different heights are compared using…
In 1651 the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671) published in his encyclopedic work on astronomy, the Almagestum Novum, 77 arguments against the Copernican movement of the Earth. These arguments are often mentioned in…
The recent passage of Jupiter by the quasar QSO J0842+1835 at a separation of 3.7 arcminutes on September 8, 2002, combined with recent advances in interferometric radio timing, has allowed for the first measurement of higher-order…
A physical pendulum with variable point of suspension (and, as an outcome, variable inertia moment) is experimentally analysed. In particular, the period of the small oscillations as a function of position of the suspension point is…
The great meridian line in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome was built in 1701/1702 with the scope of measuring the obliquity of the Earth's orbit in the following eight centuries, upon the will of Pope Clement XI. During the…
In the famous thought experiment studied in this article, Galileo attempted to refute the Aristotelian hypothesis that heavier bodies should fall more quickly than lighter ones. After pointing out some inconsistencies in Galileo's approach,…
In the context of physics didactics, alternative instructional approaches have often been employed to facilitate conceptual understanding of various topics. In this article, an alternative formulation for analyzing the motion of bodies on…
Between 1905 and 1907, Einstein first tried to extend the special theory of relativity in such a way so as to explain gravitational phenomena. This was the most natural and simplest path to be taken. These investigations did not fit in with…
The Italian Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Riccioli constructed a powerful, thoroughly scientific argument in favor of geocentrism - an argument based on telescopic observations of stars. This paper contains a rendition…
We focus on the fact that light-pulse atom interferometers measure the atoms' acceleration with only three data points per drop. As a result, the measured effect of the gravity gradient is systematically larger than the true one, an error…