Previous reports on detected
influences of solar eclipses on atomic clocks and the movement of pendulums
have brought up speculations that some yet undetected gravitational shielding
effect exists. We have compared the relative pace of three types of atomic
clocks, based on the ground state hyperfine transitions of hydrogen, rubidium
and cesium during the total solar eclipse on 11th of August 1999 over central
Europe. In our experiment, no anomalous changes in the relative clock rates
correlated with the eclipse were found, at a level much smaller than previously
reported.
Thomas
Udem, Jörg
Reichert, Ronald
Holzwarth, and Theodor
Hänsch
Max-Planck-Institut
für Quantenoptik (MPQ) , Laser
Spectroscopy Division
Rainer
Krämer, Jörg Hahn,
and Jens Hammesfahr
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft
und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institut für Hochfrequenztechnik
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