Saturday, September 19, 2009

Meaning of Thorough Literature Search

The reason we recommend our PhD graduate students to perform thorough literature search has many meanings. First of all, you don't want them to waste their time on something that others have already done enough research. The second is to verify if someone already has found the solution for the same problem you are supposed to work on.

Relevancy is the key point here. I was lucky to spend some fortune to hire a third party professional literature search to see if others have done similar research in the field of dipole gravity before the publication of the paper "Non Newtonian...". I wanted to make sure this paper is truly original and a result of a complete journal research. Phipps's journal article on the matter of the relativistic rigidity was very helpful. And then I also found other researchers have done many relevant research on the Lense-Thirring force in other journals.

After the appearance of the last publication of the paper contemplating the quadrupole nature of the Lense-Thirring force in the rotating spherical mass shell by Cohen et al, the literature search didn't find any more critical publication relevant to this subject. Basically, according to Cohen's point of view, since the cylindrical mass shell doesn't have the Lense-Thirring force when in rotation according to the weak field approximation of general relativity, he suggested that the centrifugal force interpretation of the Lense-Thirring force has fundamental problems. This was already enough of a bombshell statement at the time. But there was no follow up on this subject matter to be found in the later literature search.

The subject of the mysterious longitudinal component of the Lense-Thirring force dates as far back as Einstein's original publication of general relativity. When the two axial (x and y) components are identified as Mach's centrifugal force, there was absolutely no room for the physical interpretation of the longitudinal (z)component.

When I was debating as late as last year in 2008 with Dr. Pfister of University of Tubingen, he was still insisting on imposing a boundary condition to remove the longitudinal component of the Lense-Thirring force all together. But then according to his admission, he was the one rejected my paper when he was a referee of the European journal I sent the paper to in 1998.

So, not performing the full relevant literature search will cost the researcher's time and energy in the end. There is no one to blame in this business but themselves. The value of their paper would simply disappear as soon as the old paper with the relevant information is found.

My duty here basically has been to inform the researchers in the field of their missed relevant literature study. Anyone who performs research on the planetary motion beyond Newtonian gravity will need the information on dipole gravity because of its strong footing on general relativity. I can't imagine MOND proponents can keep on writing papers without referring to the possibility of the practical existence of the non Newtonian gravity force suggested by my dipole gravity paper.

If the non Newtonian force experienced by dipole gravitational moment in the two mass pole model universe is consistent with general relativity, their papers are all deficient of relevant literature study.

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