Conceptual and Critical Analysis of Bill Stubb's Paper - An Assessment of the Gravity Data during the March 9, 1997 Total Solar Eclipse

Scientific Paper
Title	Conceptual and Critical Analysis of Bill Stubb's Paper - An Assessment of the Gravity Data during the March 9, 1997 Total Solar Eclipse
Read in full	Link to paper
Author(s)	Robert L Kemp
Keywords	Gravity, vortex, Eclipse, Speed of Gravity, Speed of Light, General Relativity, Newtonian, Instantaneous Speed
Published	2013
No. of pages	14

Read the full paper here

Abstract

This paper gives a theoretical and conceptual critical analysis of a paper published by William Stubbs (February 2013), An Assessment of the Gravity Data Collected at the Mohe Observation Center in China during the March 9, 1997 Total Solar Eclipse. This paper is written to bring discussion, and a top level critical evaluation of Stubb's analysis and conclusion for the value of the "Speed of Gravity" based on his obtained experimental data of the gravitational interaction during a solar eclipse, as clearly described with graphs and tabular data, in his paper. My analysis of Stubb's conclusions, places Newton and Einstein in a toe to toe stand off debate, over who has the more accurate description of the way that nature behaves. Newton makes the claims that there is an "Instantaneous Gravitational Interaction Speed" when there is the interaction between any two or more mass bodies. And Einstein makes the prediction that there is "Finite Speed of Light Gravitational Interaction" when there is the interaction between any two or more mass bodies. Stubbs concludes that Newton is correct! I maintain that Einstein is correct!

Overview

This is not a research paper in the usual sense but an open, point-by-point reply — Kemp addresses Bill Stubbs directly by name throughout — to Stubbs' February 2013 reanalysis of gravimeter data recorded at the Mohe Observation Center in China during the total solar eclipse of 9 March 1997. Stubbs' paper, An Assessment of the Gravity Data Collected at the Mohe Observation Center in China during the March 9, 1997 Total Solar Eclipse, concluded that the gravimeter registered the onset and end of the eclipse roughly eight minutes before those events became visible, and inferred from that offset that gravitational influence propagates instantaneously, or nearly so, rather than at the Speed of Light.

Kemp's structure is to quote a passage from Stubbs, then respond under his own name. The tone is deliberately collegial — he praises Stubbs for following the scientific method "rigorously", something he says most dissidents avoid because it "puts their head on the chopping block of public opinion" — but the verdict is a rejection. Unusually for a paper on this wiki, Kemp comes down on the side of the mainstream: he holds that Einstein's finite, light-speed gravitational interaction is correct and Stubbs' Newtonian instantaneous interaction is not. He does so, however, from within his own dissident framework, the "Unified Gravitational Vortex" model of his Super Principia Mathematica project, which is itself an Aether theory.

The exchange

What the data show

Kemp first restates Stubbs' numbers so that the disputed inference is visible. Before the eclipse the measured-gravity deviation from the theoretical gravitational tide flickers within ±3×10⁻⁸ m s⁻², the stated precision of the gravimeter. From about 8:00 AM it rises to a peak near 8×10⁻⁸ m s⁻² around 9:00 AM, then declines back into the noise band shortly after 10:00 AM. Stubbs' point is the timing: catalogued first contact was 8:03 AM but the gravimeter trace departs from noise at 7:55 AM, and catalogued fourth contact was 10:19 AM but the trace drops back at 10:11 AM. Both offsets are about eight minutes, which is the light travel time from Sun to Earth.

Kemp accepts the data and even accepts Stubbs' methodological move of superimposing a no-eclipse tidal-gravity model on an eclipse-condition one. He agrees with Stubbs that the gravitational tide model performed well — "their 'Tidal Gravity' model makes accurate predictions" — and remarks that had he done the analysis he would have cross-checked against two further independent tidal models, recounting a story about making an engineering team he once led build the same orbital-mechanics system three different ways.

The two-apparatus objection

Kemp's first substantive criticism is definitional. Stubbs' argument compares two quantities of different kinds: a gravimeter reading and a "visual" contact time. Kemp presses repeatedly for a specification of the second instrument — "I get that your measuring apparatus is your 'eyeball', is that correct?" — and states that in his own judgement "the 'Gravimeter' is the only true measuring apparatus that can be used in this scenario." Until the visualising apparatus is defined, he declines to criticise further on that point. The objection is a fair one: the catalogued contact times are ephemeris predictions, not readings from an instrument co-located with the gravimeter, and the eight-minute offset is only meaningful if both timestamps refer to the same clock and the same physical event.

The Unified Gravitational Vortex model

Kemp then sets out his own framework. Around every net inertial mass — "Suns, Planets, Moons, Atoms, Electrons, Protons" — he posits a spherically symmetric arrangement of two interacting fields. The electromagnetic field originates in a "Gaseous Aether", isotropic, omni-directional and homogeneous, whose constituents collide with an average speed equal to c; this gives a mode of attraction he calls "Aether Gravitation", in which aether is drawn toward mass. The gravitational field is a condensation of the same aether gas, inhomogeneous, in which matter constituents orbit with the tangential speed v_gravity = √(Gm_Net/r); this is "Inertial Mass Gravitation", mass attracted to mass. The two together constitute the gravitational vortex.

Within that model Kemp concedes a partial sympathy for Stubbs: he has a further quantity, a "Vacuum Energy Velocity", which he admits "calculates values that are exceeding the speed of light; but is not infinite." He offers this to Stubbs as a possible compromise — what if the gravitational interaction is superluminal but finite rather than instantaneous? — while adding candidly that he has no idea how such a speed could be measured, only that its effects on matter might be inferred, "similar to what they claim as Dark Matter".

The isotropy argument

Kemp's central refutation is geometrical. He characterises Stubbs' reasoning as implicitly a "gravity beams" picture, in which influence travels from Sun to Earth along a ray, and he objects that solar radiation does not reach the Earth that way. Radiation leaves the Sun as an expanding spherical pulse, isotropic and omni-directional, so light arrives at any point on Earth from many directions and along many path lengths at once. He then pushes the consequence: if Stubbs' analysis were applied consistently, "I could conclude that I should only be able to see any object on the earth, with a frame rate of every eight (~8 minutes). This does not happen in nature."

What Kemp thinks the eclipse actually shows

Responding to Stubbs' list of findings, Kemp offers his own reading of the gravity increase. He suggests the gravimeter senses gravity continuously, and that when the Moon interposes itself the "Gravitational Interaction Distance" decreases, producing the observed rise in g during — and only during — the eclipse. He explicitly rates this the more interesting result: "The fact that we can measure a gravitational acceleration increase during a solar eclipse is not something that I thought was measurable!" On the inaccessibility of the raw data, his explanation is sociological rather than physical — data owners fear public reanalysis before their own conclusions are published, and funding is at stake — and he suggests the whole question could be marketed as "the true 'Newton' vs. 'Einstein' challenge".

Assessment

The strongest thing in this paper is the two-apparatus objection, and it is strong because it is the kind of criticism that could actually be settled. Stubbs' entire inference rests on an eight-minute offset between an instrument trace and a set of catalogued contact times, and Kemp is right that nothing in the analysis establishes that those two timestamps are commensurable, or that the second one is a measurement at all. The isotropy argument is also well aimed at the picture Kemp thinks Stubbs is using, and the reductio — that consistent application would give the world an eight-minute refresh rate — is memorable. Equally to Kemp's credit, he does not overreach: he says several times that he likes the work independent of its conclusions, he declines to criticise where he lacks information, and he volunteers a weakness in his own model (a superluminal vacuum-energy velocity he cannot measure) rather than hiding it.

The weaknesses are of argument rather than of data. Kemp's refutation is entirely conceptual; he offers no reanalysis of the Mohe trace, no alternative fit, and no quantitative account of the size of the anomaly he says he can explain. His own explanation of the gravity rise — that the eclipse shortens the "Gravitational Interaction Distance" — is asserted without a formula or a number, and it is not obvious what it means, since neither the Earth–Moon nor the Earth–Sun separation changes appreciably because of an alignment. Newtonian tidal theory already predicts a gravity change at syzygy of roughly the observed order, which is precisely why Stubbs' own second finding was that the tide model "apparently also models the eclipse"; Kemp endorses that finding without noticing that it removes the need for his mechanism.

The gravitational vortex framework is introduced but not used. Nothing in the refutation depends on the aether gas, on the two modes of gravitation, or on the tangential orbital speed; the isotropy argument would go through unchanged in ordinary electrodynamics. The model therefore functions as background commitment rather than as analytical machinery, which is a missed opportunity given that an aether theory with two distinct propagation speeds is exactly the sort of thing an eclipse-timing measurement might in principle discriminate.

There is also a plain conflict with established measurement that neither party engages. The propagation speed of gravitational influence is no longer only a matter of inference from eclipse gravimetry: the arrival-time coincidence between GW170817 and the gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A constrains the speed of Gravitational Waves to agree with c to within a few parts in 10¹⁵. That measurement postdates this 2013 exchange and so cannot be held against either author, but it does mean the debate as framed here — instantaneous versus light-speed — has since been decided empirically, and decided in the direction Kemp argued for. Separately, and against Kemp, the standard general-relativistic account of why orbits do not show the aberration a naive light-speed force law would produce is not that gravity is fast but that the gravitational interaction depends on velocity and acceleration terms that very nearly cancel the aberration; neither Kemp nor Stubbs raises this, and it is the point on which the whole "Newton versus Einstein" framing turns.

Finally, a small textual matter: Kemp quotes Stubbs as reporting "five findings" and then reproduces and answers only four. Whichever finding was dropped, it is missing from this paper, and a reader relying on Kemp alone will not know what it was.

See also

• Robert L Kemp
• Bill Stubbs
• An Assessment of the Gravity Data Collected at the Mohe Observation Center in China during the March 9, 1997 Total Solar Eclipse
• Gravity
• Aether
• Speed of Light
• Gravitational Waves
• General Relativity
• Steven Rado