2010/01/31 by M. Kuassivi, Kuassivi, M.
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Physics (physics.gen-ph) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #physics.gen-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1002.0116
3 pages, 1 figure
arxiv created 2010/01/31 · openalex publication_date 2010/01/31 · arxiv updated 2010/04/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Although the methods and techniques have been greatly improved since the late nineteenth century, the precision on the measurement of the gravitational constant G does not exceed 1 part in 1000. Intrinsic variations of G caused by the geomagnetic field may explain the observed dispersion of the laboratory measurements. This involves a coupling between gravitation and electromagnetism (hereafter GE coupling) and a dependance of the effective G constant with latitude and longitude. In this paper I analyse the effects of this coupling in the framework of classical space mechanics by focusing on heliosynchronous orbits. The predictions are found inconsistent with experimental data from the SPOT mission.