Can gravitation anisotropy be detected by pendulum experiments?

Abstract

After some 170 years of Foucault pendulum experiments, the linear theory fails to quantitatively explain the results of any honest meticulous experiment. The pendulum motion usually degenerates into elliptical orbits after a few minutes. Moreover, unexplained discrepancies up to ± 20% in precession velocity are not uncommon. They are mostly regarded as a consequence of the elliptic motion of the bob associated with suspension anisotropy or as a lack of care in starting the pendulum motion. Over some 130 years, an impressive amount of talented physicists, engineers and mathematicians have contributed to a better partial understanding of the pendulum behaviour. In this work, the concept of biresonance is introduced to represent the motion of the spherical pendulum. It is shown that biresonance can be represented graphically by the isomorphism of the Poincaré sphere. This new representation of the pendulum motion greatly clarifies its natural response to various anisotropic situations, including Airy precession. Anomalous observations in pendulum experiments by Allais are analyzed. These findings suggest that a pendulum placed within a mass distribution such as the earth, the moon and the sun should be treated as an interior problem, which can better be addressed by Santilli's new theory of gravitation than by those of Newton and Einstein.