Published April 30, 1981 | Version v1
Journal article

The earth's radius and the G variation

  • 1. City Coll., New York (USA). Dept. of Physics
  • 2. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, New York (USA). Goddard Inst. for Space Studies

Description

It has been assumed that if the gravitational constant G was larger in the past, the Earth's radius had to be smaller. The assertion holds provided the input from microphysics (in particular the equation of state) is independent of G. While this is true for some theories of gravity with variable G it is not so in the scale covariant theory, where the pressure can be affected by a variable G in a way that, for a constant mass of the Earth, a larger G in the past implies a larger Earth's radius. Comparison with recent palaeomagnetic data is presented. (author)

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Nature (London)
Journal Volume
290
Journal Issue
5809
Series
Nature (London).
Journal Page Range
739-744
ISSN
0028-0836

INIS