MEASUREMENT OF PREDICTED PHOTON AND GRAVIPHOTON REST MASSES

The discovery and bounding of small deviations from the inverse-square law of force are traced from the fifteenth century to date. Their int erpretation as a measure of the rest mass of the original Newtonian '' light corpuscles'' as used by Michell and Laplace (1784, 1798) in thei r seminal ''black hole'' analyses and later of the photon and gravipho ton is reviewed. A review of theories leads to the most reliable estim ate of the reduced Compton wavelength: <(lambda)over bar>(gamma) = 7.8 82 452 x 10(10) cm (m(gamma) = 4.462 667 x 10(-49) g), consistent with Schrodinger's unitary field theory. The graviphoton rest mass m(gamma g) = m(gamma)(2)/m(e), where m(e) is the electron rest mass. Measurem ents have been carried out in both the frequency and time domains, usi ng the little-studied Maxwell-Wagner effect of inhomogeneous dielectri cs, applicable to the polarizable vacuum of quantum electrodynamics. E xcellent agreement with the predicted value of <(lambda)over bar>(gamm a) and with the SU(5) grand unified theory sin(2) theta(w) is obtained .