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Gravity detection through bifurcation
1Department of Chemistry, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA.
Advances in Space Research : the Official Journal of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR)
|January 1, 1992
Abstract:
Bifurcation is a phenomenon in which a physical system is forced to make a choice between one of the several possible states to which it can evolve. In this process the system can become extremely sensitive to very small influences--smaller than the size of the fluctuations--that favor one of the states. A general theory of this sensitivity and a simple model for gravity detection is presented. The difference between systems in thermodynamic equilibrium and those that are far from equilibrium is also discussed.