Anomalous gravity data during the 1997 total solar eclipse do not support the hypothesis of gravitational shielding

Abstract

We present arguments that rule out the recent suggestion by Wang et al. that their observations of anomalous gravity data during the 1997 total solar eclipse in China could be evidence for shielding of gravity of the Sun by the Moon, or could be pointing to some new property of gravitation. In fact, we are able to use their stretch of data obtained before and after the eclipse to constrain the characteristic shielding parameter to the lowest bound ever from a terrestrial experiment.