[extropy-chat] more Woodward, an unfinished story?

[Damien Broderick]

This strikes me as rather odd:

Tests of Mach's Principle with a Mechanical Oscillator*
John G. Cramer†, Damon P. Cassissi, and Curran W. Fey
Department of Physics, Box 351560, University of Washington,, Seattle, WA 
98195-1560, USA
Abstract
James F. Woodward has made a prediction, based on Sciama's formulation of 
Mach's Principle in
the framework of general relativity, that in the presence of energy flow 
the inertial mass of an
object may undergo sizable variations, changing as the 2nd time derivative 
of the energy. We
describe an attempt to observe the predicted effect for a charging 
capacitor, using a technique that
does not require a reactionless force or any local violation of Newton's 
3rd law of motion. We
attempt to observe the effect of the mass variation on a driven harmonic 
oscillator with the
charging capacitor as the oscillating mass. Positive and negative phase 
shifts in the oscillator
motion with respect to the driving force are predicted to result from 
appropriately programmed
inertial mass variations. The phase shift is constant, so that data may be 
accumulated over a very
large number of oscillation cycles to insure high precision in the phase 
shift determination. We
report on the predicted effect and the design and implementation of the 
measurement apparatus.
At this time, however, we will not report on observations of the presence 
or absence of the
Woodward effect.

...
Copyright ©2001 by John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. Published by the 
American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics with permission.
* Supported in part by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Oh. Too bad.

Anyone know of more recent reports from Cramer, et al?

Damien Broderick