As a participant in the 1999 Nasa global eclipse test using a
stationary pendulum in Marigliano (Italy),


(see: http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast12oct99_1.htm )


in the past years I've been following up some posts here which had
questions on the findings of that test.
I reported my results as they were known to me at that time, but in
fact I had not on hand any evidence-supported decryption key for the
Allais effect.
Meantime I sporadicly continued the analysis of my original records,
while making other tests with a new pendulum.
More recently, trying to correlate some observations made with the two
pendulums, I noticed, in the 1999 records, some spontaneous torsions of

the stationary bob during the eclipse.
Early current July, I happened to review a picture of the Pr. Allais'
pendulum, and focused my attention on the fact that he used a vertical
disk as a bob


(see the picture in www.allais.info ).


I correlated the two things and came to the the conclusion that very
probably the Allais effect is a secondary effect due to aerodynamic
problems, the primary effect being a torsion of the bob.
My 1999 pendulum was provided with a torsion indicator. I observed some

slow alternating rotations (torsions) of the stationary bob around its
vertical axis. The periodicity was of minutes. The fact that the
torsion was alternating was probably due to the recovery action of the
wire following the action of a force.(This recovery action would not be

present in the Allais-style paraconical pendulum, suspended on a steel
ball).
I tought that, if such a torsion is detected by a swinging vertical
disk, it could cause a dragging of the plane of swinging due to
undesired aerodynamic effects.


I've made available a movie on the 1999 eclipse test, showing the
torsional motion of the stationary bob, in


http://xoomer.virgilio.it/antiovan


(select the link dated July 12 2005)


The file is quite large (2.8 Mbytes), and covers about 12 minutes,
starting 1h 15m before mid eclipse. The video frames are spaced 4.7
seconds (the period of that pendulum, in order to obtain a more stable
image).
The file opens with Internet Explorer, but I suggest you saving it to
disk and opening it with another suitable program (es. Quick time)
having full screen and frame-by-frame capabilities.


The timer shows local daylight saving time, that is UT+2.
You will notice that the effect is more pronounced around 11:37.


Here is a description of what you will see, along with some dimensional

references (note: it is not the pendulum pictured in my home page).
The circles and the radial line are drawn on the bottom face of the
cylindric bob. The radial line is the torsion indicator. The central
dot has 1 mm diameter. The reference grid (cross + markers) is drawn on

a transparent template fixed to the earth, and the spacing between
markers is 1 mm.(The video camera of course was facing upwards).
The wire was about 5.5 meter long, stainless steel, 49 (7 x 7
counter-twisted) thin wires, total diameter 0.9mm. The weight of the
brass bob was about 5 Kg.


You could notice some tilts of the vertical too. Don't care of them, as

tilts are not correctly shown here. What you will see is a mix of
actual tilts and an artifact due to the rate at which the original tape

has been sampled to obtain this movie (it doesn't correspond exactly to

the pendulum's period). The pendulum showed alternating periods of more

or less quiet, within tens of microrad. It was not damped.
As David Noever said to Georg Zapletal in the letter of July 5 2000,


(see:
http://home.t01.itscom.net/allais/blackprior/noever/noeverpaper.doc )


"......a second one from Marigliano, Italy, using a stationary
pendulum, which shows some elliptical (spontaneous) oscillations that
seem to occur more frequently during the eclipse compared to extensive

control data)". Noever, at Nasa, analysed several 8h control tapes of
mine.
The elliptical spontaneous oscillations (tens of microrad) might be
correlated to the spontaneous torsions of the bob.


In conclusion, since a couple of weeks, I believe that my 1999
stationary pendulum test gave us the key to decrypt the Allais effect,
and that the effect to explore now is the torsion of a stationary
suspended mass during eclipses.


Antonio Iovane