Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, December 6, 1999 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Jim Faller

ABSTRACT -- Work continues on: the refinement of a small and portable apparatus to measure "g," the acceleration of gravity; the development of low-frequency isolation systems to extend to lower frequencies the possibility of ground-based gravitational spring systems to be used both as the primary instrument and as the spring element in active feedback isolation systems. Finally, we are working on a new measurement of G, the Newtonian constant of gravitation.

SPEAKER -- James E. Faller (NIST) is a Fellow of JILA and a Professor Adjoint, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado.  He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University, 1963.  His awards include the National Bureau of Standards Precision Measurement Award, 1970; Arnold O. Beckman Award of the Instrument Society of America, 1970; Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, 1972-73; NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, 1973; NASA Group Achievement Award, given to members of LURE Team, 1973. 

Professor Faller's research interests include geophysics, experimental relativity, precision measurement, and null experiments (experiments designed to look for possible invalidations of accepted physical laws at some extreme of magnitude).  A new generation of absolute gravimeters has been developed with an accuracy of 46 parts in 10^9.  These instruments utilize the so called "superspring" which was developed in JILA in which one electronically synthesizes a very long spring.  A new type of fluid support and electrostatic array surrogate fiber has also been developed.  This is being used for a gravity gradiometer development, a new Eotvos experiment, and an experiment designed to test the recent suggestion of a material dependence of the rate of free fall.  A study is being undertaken regarding the possibility of a very long baseline (e.g. 10^6 km) gravity wave antenna in space.