Subject: ASGRG Newsletter #10 ****************************************************************************** AUSTRALASIAN SOCIETY FOR GENERAL RELATIVITY AND GRAVITATION Electronic Newsletter -- #10, Spring 2002 ****************************************************************************** Items for this newsletter should be emailed to the editor: asgrg *AT* hotmail *DOT* com The deadline for the next issue is 31 March, 2003. ****************************************************************************** CONTENTS: * REPORT ON 2002 AIP CONGRESS, Sydney, 8-11 July, 2002 * ICIAM 2003, Sydney, 7-11 July, 2003 * MATT VISSER RETURNS TO NEW ZEALAND * MEMBERSHIP DETAILS ONLINE at http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/ASGRG/members.html * SUBSCRIPTIONS * FORTHCOMING MEETINGS * MEMBERS' ABSTRACTS at gr-qc, May 2002 - November 2002 * BOOK NOTICE: "THE MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF COSMIC STRINGS" ****************************************************************************** REPORT ON 2002 CONGRESS OF THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS The 15th Biennial Congress of the Australian Institute of Physics was held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour, Sydney on 8-11 July 2002. The ASGRG Interest Group was allocated a total of four sessions, two on general relativity theory and two on gravitational wave detection. In addition, Prof Barry Barish from CalTech, Director of LIGO, gave a plenary talk on the status and prospects for LIGO. The two theory sessions were held on the afternoon of Monday 8th July, and included talks on isotropic singularities, the abstract boundary construction, geodesics in the Reissner-Nordstrom metric, gravitational collapse of higher-dimensional dust, and self-similar evaporation of cosmic string loops. The sessions on gravitational wave detection, held on Thursday afternoon (11th July) featured talks on LIGO from Barry Barish, ACIGA from David McClelland, and AIGO from Sue Scott, plus a host of more technical presentations on inteferometry and signal processing. Overall, AIP 2002 was a very enjoyable experience. The weather in Sydney was superb, and the food was terrific. ****************************************************************************** ICIAM 2003, Sydney, 7-11 July, 2003 John Steele is organising a relativity mini-symposium as part of the 6th Australia-New Zealand Mathematics Convention being held in conjunction with ICIAM 2003 in Sydney on 7-11 July 2003. The mini-symposium will consist of 4 talks of roughly 25-30 minutes each. The formal closing date for abstracts is 31st January 2003, but John would be very grateful if anyone interested in giving a talk could send him a working title and draft abstract before Christmas. His email address is: j.steele@unsw.edu.au ****************************************************************************** MATT VISSER RETURNS TO NEW ZEALAND After a long stint at the University of Washington in Saint Louis, Matt Visser has returned to New Zealand to take up a position as Reader/Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department at Victoria University in Wellington. His new email address is: matt.visser@mcs.vuw.ac.nz and his new postal address is: School of Mathematical Sciences Victoria University PO Box 600 Wellington New Zealand ****************************************************************************** MEMBERSHIP DETAILS ONLINE: Due to requests from members, David Wiltshire has written some HTML scripts which generate membership details online from our records. If you click on http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/ASGRG/members.html you will find a members' list. Clicking on individual members gives their current contact details. By following a further link private details of the subscription status of any member will be sent to their registered email. This feature should enable us to update our records more frequently in response to members' input, and to allow members to keep track of their subscriptions. ****************************************************************************** SUBSCRIPTIONS: The membership script programs are intended to be run automatically once a year, at the end of July, to give members other than life members details of their current subscription status. The new version of the subscription form, at http://www2.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/ASGRG/subsform.html has been simplified so that it does not need to be updated each year. Given that our annual fee is modest, members are encouraged to pay for multiple years, and to fill in the years they are paying for. E.g., when the July 2003 - June 2004 subscriptions are requested, if you wish to pay for July 2004 - June 2005 at the same time, it may simplify matters. ****************************************************************************** FORTHCOMING MEETINGS December 9-13, 2002: XXIst Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics Florence, Italy http://www.arcetri.astro.it/%7Etexaflor/ December 11-14, 2002: 22nd Meeting of the Indian Association for General Relativity and Gravitation, (IAGRG 2002) Pune, India http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/%7Eiagrg02/ January 6 - May 14, 2003: Caltech Visitors Program in the Numerical Simulation of Gravitational Wave Sources: Initial Data Problem Caltech, USA http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/GWSourceSimulation/ February 2-8, 2003: Gravitational Wave Advanced Detector Workshop Aspen Centre for Physics, Aspen, USA http://andy.bu.edu/aspen/ February 17-19, 2003: Black-Hole Astronomy Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto, Japan http://amalthea.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/tokuteiBH/ March 24-28, 2003: Mathematical Theory of Hyperbolic Systems of Conservation Laws Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/programmes/NPA/npaw01.html March 29-30, 2003: 6th East Coast Gravity Meeting (ECGM6) University of Maryland, USA March 31 - April 4, 2003: Multi-Phase Fluid Flows and Multi-Dimensional Hyperbolic Problems Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/programmes/NPA/npaw01.html May 12 - July 11, 2003: Gravitational Interaction of Compact Objects Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB, USA http://www.itp.ucsb.edu/activities/grav03/ May 28-31, 2003: 10th Conference on General Relativity and Astrophysics University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/poisson/ccgrra/ June 23-27, 2003: Hyperbolic Models in Astrophysics and Cosmology Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/programmes/NPA/npaw01.html June 26 - July 3, 2003: Recent Problems in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics (15th Petrov Summer School-Seminar) Tatarstan, Russia http://www.kcn.ru/petrov_school July 6-11, 2003: 5th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves Pisa Italy July 7-11, 2003: 5th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM 2003) Sydney, Australia http://www.iciam.org/iciamHome/iciamHome_tf.html July 20-26, 2003: 10th Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity Rio de Janeiro, Brazil http://www.cbpf.br/mg10/WelcomeNew.html September 1-10, 2003: Problems of Theoretical and Observational Cosmology (3rd Ulyanovsk International School -Seminar) Ulyanovsk, Russia http://www.rgs.da.ru/ October 17-18, 2003: 13th Midwest Relativity Meeting University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada http://venus.uwindsor.ca/courses/physics/mwr13/index.html Dec 2003/Jan 2004: 4th Conference of the ASGRG (ACGRG4) Monash University, Melbourne, Australia July 18-25, 2004: 17th International Conference of the ISGRG (GR 17) Dublin, Ireland ****************************************************************************** MEMBERS' ABSTRACTS at gr-qc, May 2002 - November 2002 We list here all new abstracts that we are aware of that have been submitted by our members to gr-qc, or which are cross-linked at gr-qc. (We have not searched for abstracts on other Los Alamos archives which are not crosslinked to gr-qc.) If you do not send your papers to gr-qc but would like to have them noted in the newsletters, please send them to the Editor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0209098 From: Mike Ashley Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 01:44:55 GMT (101kb) The stability of abstract boundary essential singularities Authors: Michael J. S. L. Ashley Journal-ref: Gen.Rel.Grav. 34 (2002) 1625-1635 The abstract boundary has, in recent years, proved a general and flexible way to define the singularities of space-time. In this approach an essential singularity is a non-regular boundary point of an embedding which is accessible by a chosen family of curves within finite parameter distance. Ashley and Scott proved the first theorem relating essential singularities in strongly causal space-times to causal geodesic incompleteness. Linking this with the work of Beem on the $C^{r}$- stability of geodesic incompleteness allows proof of the stability of these singularities. Here I present this result stating the conditions under which essential singularities are $C^{1}$-stable against perturbations of the metric. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0205010 From: Brandon CARTER Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 10:28:53 GMT (7kb) Energy dominance and the Hawking Ellis vacuum conservation theorem Authors: Brandon Carter Comments: 7 pages Latex, contributed to Stephen Hawking's 60th birthday workshop on the Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology, Cambridge, January 2002 At a time when uninhibited speculation about negative tension -- and by implication negative mass density -- world branes has become commonplace, it seems worthwhile to call attention to the risk involved in sacrificing traditional energy positivity postulates such as are required for the classical vacuum stability theorem of Hawking and Ellis. As well as recapitulating the technical content of this reassuring (when applicable) theorem, the present article provides a new, rather more economical proof. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0206017 From: Neil J. Cornish Date (v1): Thu, 6 Jun 2002 19:00:44 GMT (205kb) Date (revised v2): Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:14:57 GMT (257kb) LISA data analysis I: Doppler demodulation Authors: Neil Cornish, Shane Larson Comments: 5 pages, 7 figures. References and new comments added The orbital motion of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) producesamplitude, phase and frequency modulation of a gravitational wave signal. The modulations have the effect of spreading a monochromatic gravitational wave signal across a range of frequencies. The modulations encode useful information about the source location and orientation, but they also have the deleterious affect of spreading a signal across a wide bandwidth, thereby reducing the strength of the signal relative to the instrument noise. We describe a simple method for removing the dominant, Doppler, component of the signal modulation. The demodulation reassembles the power from a monochromatic source into a narrow spike, and provides a quick way to determine the sky locations and frequencies of the brightest gravitational wave sources. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0207016 From: Janna Levin Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 12:34:57 GMT (291kb) Gravitational Waves from Spinning Compact Binaries Authors: Neil J. Cornish, Janna Levin Comments: 5 pages Binary systems of rapidly spinning compact objects, such as black holes or neutron stars, are prime targets for gravitational wave astronomers. The dynamics of these systems can be very complicated due to spin-orbit and spin-spin couplings. Contradictory results have been presented as to the nature of the dynamics. Here we confirm that the dynamics - as described by the second post-Newtonian approximation to general relativity - is chaotic, despite claims to the contrary. When dissipation due to higher order radiation reaction terms are included, the chaos is dampened. However, the inspiral-to-plunge transition that occurs toward the end of the orbital evolution does retain an imprint of the chaotic behaviour. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0207020 From: Janna Levin Date (v1): Wed, 3 Jul 2002 17:08:27 GMT (11kb) Date (revised v2): Thu, 17 Oct 2002 23:57:43 GMT (11kb) Comment on "Ruling out chaos in compact binary systems" Authors: Neil J. Cornish, Janna Levin Comments: 1 page. Published Version Journal-ref: Phys.Rev.Lett. 89 (2002) 179001 In a recent Letter, Schnittman and Rasio argue that they have ruled out chaos in compact binary systems since they find no positive Lyapunov exponents. In stark constrast, we find that the chaos discovered in the original paper under discussion, J.Levin, PRL, 84 3515 (2000), is confirmed by the presence of positive Lyapunov exponents. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0209011 From: Neil J. Cornish Date (v1): Tue, 3 Sep 2002 20:04:07 GMT (10kb) Date (revised v2): Thu, 5 Sep 2002 23:55:02 GMT (10kb) Date (revised v3): Tue, 8 Oct 2002 21:53:24 GMT (10kb) The LISA Response Function Authors: Neil J. Cornish, Louis J. Rubbo Comments: 6 pages, no figures. Minor corrections The orbital motion of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) introduces modulations into the observed gravitational wave signal. These modulations can be used to determine the location and orientation of a gravitational wave source. The complete LISA response to an arbitary gravitational wave is derived using a coordinate free approach in the transverse-traceless gauge. The general response function reduces to that found by Cutler (PRD 57, 7089 1998) for low frequency, monochromatic plane waves. Estimates of the noise in the detector are found to be complicated by the time variation of the interferometer arm lengths. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0207075 From: Michael Edmund Tobar Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 12:33:52 GMT (376kb) Properties of a monolithic sapphire parametric transducer: prospects of measuring the standard quantum limit Authors: C. R. Locke, M. E. Tobar, E. N. Ivanov Comments: One PDF Journal-ref: Class.Quant.Grav. 19 (2002) 1877-1888 To measure the standard quantum limit (SQL) a high quality transducer must be coupled to a high quality mechanical system. Due to its monolithic nature, the monolithic sapphire transducer (MST) has high quality factors for both types of resonances. Single loop suspension is shown to yield a mechanical quality factor of 6.10^8 at 4 K. From standard analysis we show the MST has the potential to measure noise fluctuations of the mechanical oscillator at the SQL. Also, we point out a new way to determine if the transducer back action is quantum limited. We show that if the fluctuations are at the quantum limit, then the amplitude of the oscillation will be amplified by the ratio of the ringdown time to the measurement time, which is an inherently easier measurement. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: quant-ph/0205043 From: Ben C. Buchler Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 05:57:33 GMT (490kb) Experimental demonstration of a squeezing enhanced power recycled Michelson interferometer for gravitational wave detection Authors: Kirk McKenzie, Ben C. Buchler, Daniel A. Shaddock, Ping Koy Lam, David E. McClelland Comments: 4 pages 4 figures Subj-class: Quantum Physics; Optics Journal-ref: Phys.Rev.Lett. 88 (2002) 231102 Interferometric gravitational wave detectors are expected to be limited by shot noise at some frequencies. We experimentally demonstrate that a power recycled Michelson with squeezed light injected into the dark port can overcome this limit. An improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio of 2.3dB is measured and locked stably for long periods of time. The configuration, control and signal readout of our experiment are compatible with current gravitational wave detector designs. We consider the application of our system to long baseline interferometer designs such as LIGO. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0205066 From: visser@tui.wustl.edu (Matt Visser) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 03:05:41 GMT (11kb) Twilight for the energy conditions? Authors: Carlos Barcelo (Portsmouth, UK), Matt Visser (Washington University in Saint Louis) Comments: Honourable mention in the 2002 Gravity Research Foundation essay contest. 12 pages. Plain LaTeX 2e The tension, if not outright inconsistency, between quantum physics and general relativity is one of the great problems facing physics at the turn of the millennium. Most often, the problems arising in merging Einstein gravity and quantum physics are viewed as Planck scale issues (10^{19} GeV, 10^{-34} m, 10^{-45} s), and so safely beyond the reach of experiment. However, over the last few years it has become increasingly obvious that the difficulties are more widespread: There are already serious problems of deep and fundamental principle at the semi-classical level, and worse, certain classical systems (inspired by quantum physics, but in no sense quantum themselves) exhibit seriously pathological behaviour. One manifestation of these pathologies is in the so-called ``energy conditions'' of general relativity. Patching things up in the gravity sector opens gaping holes elsewhere; and some ``fixes'' are more radical than the problems they are supposed to cure. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0205067 From: Simon Judes Date (v1): Thu, 16 May 2002 09:52:04 GMT (6kb) Date (revised v2): Fri, 7 Jun 2002 08:06:37 GMT (8kb) Conservation Laws in Doubly Special Relativity Authors: Simon Judes, Matt Visser Comments: Extensive revisions: merged with gr-qc/0205093, new author added, references added, discussion amplified. 4 pages, revtex4 Motivated by various theoretical arguments that the Planck energy (Ep - 10^19 GeV) - should herald departures from Lorentz invariance, and the possibility of testing these expectations in the not too distant future, two so-called "Doubly Special Relativity" theories have been suggested -- the first by Amelino-Camelia (DSR1) and the second by Smolin and Magueijo (DSR2). These theories contain two fundamental scales -- the speed of light and an energy usually taken to be Ep. The symmetry group is still the Lorentz group, but in both cases acting nonlinearly on the energy-momentum sector. Accordingly, since energy and momentum are no longer additive quantities, finding their values for composite systems (and hence finding the correct conservation laws) is a nontrivial matter. Ultimately it is these possible deviations from simple linearly realized relativistic kinematics that provide the most promising observational signal for empirically testing these models. Various investigations have narrowed the conservation laws down to two possibilities per DSR theory. We derive unique exact results for the energy-momentum of composite systems in both DSR1 and DSR2, and indicate the general strategy for arbitrary nonlinear realizations of the Lorentz group. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: cond-mat/0205139 From: Uwe R. Fischer Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 00:09:30 GMT (45kb) On the space-time curvature experienced by quasiparticle excitations in the Painleve-Gullstrand effective geometry Authors: Uwe R. Fischer, Matt Visser Comments: 9 RevTex4 pages, 1 figure We consider quasiparticle propagation in constant-speed-of-sound (iso-tachic) and almost incompressible (iso-pycnal) hydrodynamic flows, using the technical machinery of general relativity to investigate the ``effective space-time geometry'' that is probed by the quasiparticles. This effective geometry, described for the quasiparticles of condensed matter systems by the Painleve-Gullstrand metric, generally exhibits curvature (in the sense of Riemann), and many features of quasiparticle propagation can be re-phrased in terms of null geodesics, Killing vectors, and Jacobi fields. As particular examples of hydrodynamic flow we consider shear flow, a constant-circulation vortex, flow past an impenetrable cylinder, and rigid rotation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0211001 From: Matt Visser Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 23:18:35 GMT (35kb) Power laws, scale invariance, and generalized Frobenius series: Applications to Newtonian and TOV stars near criticality Authors: Nicolas Yunes (Washington University in Saint Louis), Matt Visser (Victoria University of Wellington) Comments: 35 pages; IJMPA style file We present a self-contained formalism for analyzing scale invariant differential equations. We first cast the scale invariant model into its equidimensional and autonomous forms, find its fixed points, and then obtain power-law background solutions. After linearizing about these fixed points, we find a second linearized solution, which provides a distinct collection of power laws characterizing the deviations from the fixed point. We prove that generically there will be a region surrounding the fixed point in which the complete general solution can be represented as a generalized Frobenius-like power series with exponents that are integer multiples of the exponents arising in the linearized problem. This Frobenius-like series can be viewed as a variant of Liapunov's expansion theorem. As specific examples we apply these ideas to Newtonian and relativistic isothermal stars and demonstrate (both numerically and analytically) that the solution exhibits oscillatory power-law behaviour as the star approaches the point of collapse. These series solutions extend classical results. (Lane, Emden, and Chandrasekhar in the Newtonian case; Harrison, Thorne, Wakano, and Wheeler in the relativistic case.) We also indicate how to extend these ideas to situations where fixed points may not exist -- either due to ``monotone'' flow or due to the presence of limit cycles. Monotone flow generically leads to logarithmic deviations from scaling, while limit cycles generally lead to discrete self-similar solutions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0211029 From: Uwe R. Fischer Date (v1): Fri, 8 Nov 2002 14:17:53 GMT (30kb) Date (revised v2): Fri, 22 Nov 2002 12:20:57 GMT (31kb) Warped space-time for phonons moving in a perfect nonrelativistic fluid Authors: Uwe R. Fischer, Matt Visser Comments: 7 pages, 1 figure. Added clarifying comments about the interplay between compressibility and large Mach numbers; no significant changes in physics conclusions We construct a kinematical analogue of superluminal travel in the ``warped'' space-times curved by gravitation, in the form of ``super- phononic'' travel in the effective space-times of perfect nonrelativistic fluids. These warp-field space-times are most easily generated by considering a solid object that is placed as an obstruction in an otherwise uniform flow. No violation of any condition on the positivity of energy is necessary, because the effective curved space-times for the phonons are ruled by the Euler and continuity equations, and not by the Einstein field equations. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0205079 From: Steven Detweiler Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 19:50:02 GMT (39kb) Self-force of a scalar field for circular orbits about a Schwarzschild black hole Authors: Steven Detweiler, Eirini Messaritaki, Bernard F. Whiting Comments: RevTex, 31 pages, 1 figure The self force is computed for a scalar particle in circular (geodesic) orbit about a Schwarzschild black hole. We use a particular Green's function decomposition, which can be exactly specified; however, in a practical computation it can only be given to some finite level of approximation. A special set of coordinates is chosen which is locally inertial in the neighborhood of the orbit and allows direct control over the level of approximation being used in the Green's function decomposition, especially in relation to its singular behavior. A mode sum expansion is used to regularize behavior near the singularity. In conjunction with specific properties which we demonstrate for the mode sum representation and with control we have over the level of approximation, knowledge of the Green's function decomposition is used to improve dramatically the rate of numerical convergence obtained in the computation of the finite self force.Comparison is made between our numerical analysis and that used in previous calculations, which have required a much higher range in mode summation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: gr-qc/0205030 From: Zhang Chengmin Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 05:26:34 GMT (1kb) ADDENDUM on the mass neutrino oscillation in a gravitational field Authors: J. G. Pereira, C. M. Zhang Comments: 2 pages Journal-ref: Gen.Rel.Grav. 33 (2001) 2801-2802 In the article {\it Gen. Rel. Grav.} {\bf 32}, 1633 (2000), by J. G. Pereira and C. M. Zhang, the special relativity energy-momentum tensor was used to discuss the neutrino phase-splitting in a weak gravitational field. However, it would be more appropriate to use the general relativity energy-momentum tensor. When we do that, as we are going to see, some results change, but the basic conclusion remains the same. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: physics/0205070 Michelson-Morley Experiments Revisited and the Cosmic Background Radiation Preferred Frame Authors: Reginald T. Cahill, Kirsty Kitto We report a simple re-analysis of the old results (1887) from the Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment that was designed to detect absolute motion. We build upon a recent (1998) re-analysis of the original data byMunera, which revealed a small but significant effect after allowing for several systematic errors in the original analysis. The further re-analysis here reveals that a genuine effect of absolute motion is expected, in what is essentially a quantum interference experiment, but only if the photons travel in the interferometer at speeds V< c. This is the case if the interferometer operates in a dielectric, such as air, as was the case, incidently, of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The re-analysis here of the Michelson-Morley experimental data, correcting for the refractive index effect of the air, reveals an absolute speed of the Earth of v=359+/-54 km/s, which is in excellent agreement with the speed of v=365+/-18 km/s determined from the dipole fit, in 1991, to the NASA COBE satellite Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) observations. Other experiments where the interferometers operated in air (Miller 1925,1933) or helium (Illingworth 1927) give similar results when re-analysed. These experimental results refute Einstein's assertion that absolute motion through space has no meaning. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper: physics/0209013 Absolute Motion and Quantum Gravity Authors: Reginald T. Cahill A new information-theoretic modelling of reality has given rise to a quantum-foam description of space, relative to which absolute motion is meaningful. In a previous paper (Cahill and Kitto) it was shown that in this new physics Michelson interferometers show absolute motion effects when operated in dielectric mode, as indeed such experiments had indicated, and analysis of the experimental data showed that the measured speeds were all consistent with the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) dipole-fit speed of 369km/s. Here the new physics is applied to the Michelson-Morley 1887 interferometer rotation curve data to demonstrate that the interferometer data is in excellent agreement with the CMB direction (RA, Dec)= (11.20h,-7.22deg) as well. This data also reveals a velocity component caused by the in-flow of the quantum foam past the Earth towards the Sun at 40+/-15km/s, while analysis of the Miller interferometer data of 1933 gives 49km/s, compared to the theoretical value of 42km/s. This observed in-flow is a signature of quantum gravity effects in the new physics ****************************************************************************** BOOK NOTICE: "THE MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF COSMIC STRINGS" The Institute of Physics has recently published a book by Malcolm Anderson entitled "The Mathematical Theory of Cosmic Strings: Cosmic strings in the wire approximation". 380 pages long, it offers a detailed survey of the current understanding of the dynamics and gravitational properties of zero-thickness cosmic strings. For more details, see: http://bookmarkphysics.iop.org/bookpge.htm?ID=209zzTC6W9BbmM-mJPh2jv_g&book=222h or http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750301600/202-6438902-5129418 ******************************************************************************