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From: hertz778@gmail.com (rhertz)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity
Subject: The Shapiro's experiment HOAX. A 1968 TIME article.
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2024 00:43:11 +0000
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I think that Time Magazine is a die hard Einstein's theories and figure
promoter since 1945 (3 times Man of the Year covers, plus Man of the
Century). It's not hard to trace Time Magazine roots with the Jew
community and with Princeton.

This article, from 1968, narrates very lightly the Shapiro's experiment,
and hail it as "almost a proof" of General Relativity. With articles
like this one, Shapiro was extraordinarily hyped and granted him a
global name and public funding for his next "experiments".

I want to remark that this was published 46 years ago, and FAIL TO
EXPLAIN that the prime subject of the experiment (gov. sponsored) was to
measure the location of THE CENTER OF THE SUN, as it was vital for
newtonian celestial mechanics to be applied to interplanetary travels.
It was a secret experiment (1965), which competed with Russian efforts
in the same sense. Part of the HOAX was narrated in the book "The Farce
of Physics".

The exact orbits of planets (and distances to them) was known very
grossly, FAR BEYOND the error margins of the 1965 experiments. Shapiro's
experiment WAS A BYPRODUCT of the main experiment. What was ALLEGEDLY
MEASURED in 1965 was A DELAY OF 5 msec on a round trip of 23 minutes
between Mercury and Earth (both at opposite sides of the Sun). They
considered an error of +/- 20%, being that the PRECISION was to be about
3.6E-06 (3.6 ppm), a value HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE for such epoch, being
that THE NOISE involved in the measurement of a powerful radar signal
(at the reception) WAS EQUAL OR HIGHER than the received signal itself.

I post the entire article, so you can have a laugh.

https://time.com/archive/6834981/physics-probing-einstein-with-radar/


*************************************************************
Physics: Probing Einstein with Radar
TIME  March 8, 1968

In the 53 years since Albert Einstein published his general theory of
relativity, it has withstood determined attacks and ingenious
experiments by other scientists anxious to test its validity. Although
no experimental results have contradicted the theory, they have not been
precise enough to rule out opposing theories that differ in small but
significant details. Now a new technique has been used to check out
Einstein: interplanetary radar. Preliminary radar tests also have failed
to find a flaw in general relativity, a scientist from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory announced last week, and
radar soon should provide results accurate enough to help confirm the
theory—or to seriously undermine it.

Last year, during two intervals when Mercury and Earth were on opposite
sides of the sun, a team led by Physicist Irwin Shapiro bounced
high-frequency signals from M.I.T.’s exceptionally precise Haystack
radar antenna off the planet Mercury. On their way to and from Mercury,
the signals, which travel at the speed of light, had to pass close to
the sun. During these passages, according to the Einstein equations,
solar gravity should have actually slowed them down, lengthening their
23-minute round-trip time to Mercury by one five-thousandth of a second.

Detecting so minute a change was no easy task. Using data gathered by
the Haystack antenna and by other observatories, the researchers plotted
both Earth’s and Mercury’s orbits to a degree of accuracy never before
obtained; it was essential to know Mercury’s exact distance at the time
of the test to calculate the difference in round-trip time caused by
solar gravity.

Eight Gigahertz. The M.I.T. team also had to design a new radar
transmitter that would operate at eight gigahertz (pronounced with hard
gs), which is 8 billion cycles per second. Radar beams of lower
frequency would be significantly slowed down by electrons in the solar
corona, making it difficult to separate out the delay actually caused by
the sun’s gravity. Corrections for Mercury’s surface irregularity had to
be calculated; round-trip time to a Mercurial valley would be longer
than to a mountaintop. It was also essential for the researchers to
screen out any extraneous radio noise that might interfere with the
attenuated, incredibly weak return signals, which, Shapiro says, had
“less than a thousandth of the power that is expended by a housefly
walking up a wall at a speed of one millimeter a century.”

Painstaking preparations paid off. As Mercury began to move behind the
sun, M.I.T. computers detected increasing delays in the return of radar
signals slowed by the sun’s gravitational field. Plotted against the
theoretical delays predicted by the Einstein equations, the actual delay
time formed a remarkably similar curve, increasing to approximately one
five-thousandth of a second just before Mercury passed behind the sun.

Test results, which Shapiro regards as only preliminary, could be
inaccurate by as much as 20%, and still leave some room for doubt about
relativity. But refinements in the radar technique could soon reduce the
uncertainty to less than 1%, he says, and further confirm or definitely
overthrow Einstein’s general relativity.

*****************************************************************

Maybe I'll post more crap about this Shapiro character and experiments.