Freiburg 2008 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 12: Experimente zur Gravitation II

GR 12.5: Talk

Thursday, March 6, 2008, 15:20–15:40, KGI-HS 1010

Dynamics of a rigid body in an inhomogenous force field — •Andreas Resch, Claus Lämmerzahl, Dennis Lorek, Isabell Schaffer, and Hansjörg Dittus — ZARM, University of Bremen, Germany

Extended rigid bodies do not move on geodesics but couple to the space-time curvature. We discuss this effect at the Newtonian level where the deviation from the ordinary Keplerian orbits occurs in two ways: we obtain an additional force in the equation of motion for the center-of-mass and a torque acting on the rotational degrees of freedom. We give a survey of the dynamics for various initial conditions. We discuss whether these modifications of the equations of motion can explain the so-called flyby anomaly. In particular, the behavior of satellites during a flyby is studied and a comparison with the flyby anomaly of Galileo, NEAR, Cassini and Rosetta is made.