Edward Fomalont (born May 14, 1940) is an American scientist working at the

National Radio Astronomy Observatory The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a federally funded research and development center of the United States National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. for the purpose of radi ...

. He specializes in

radio galaxies A radio galaxy is a galaxy with giant regions of radio emission extending well beyond its visible structure. These energetic radio lobes are powered by jets from its active galactic nucleus. They have luminosities up to 1039 watt, W at radio ...

X-ray binary X-ray binaries are a class of binary stars that are luminous in X-rays. The X-rays are produced by matter falling from one component, called the ''donor'' (usually a relatively common main sequence star), to the other component, called the ''acc ...

systems,

astrometry Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other Astronomical object, celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, th ...

, and

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...

. He has published more than 330 papers in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings of scientific conferences. In 1975, Fomalont and Richard Sramek made a first radio-interferometric occultation experiment to test the theory of general relativity by measuring the bending of

microwave radiation Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than other radio waves but longer than infrared waves. Its wavelength ranges from about one meter to one millimeter, corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz an ...

in the

gravitational field In physics, a gravitational field or gravitational acceleration field is a vector field used to explain the influences that a body extends into the space around itself. A gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenomena, such as ...

of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

. Fomalont and colleagues made the most precise VLBI test of general relativity in 2005 that had reached precision of few parts in 10,000. In 2002, Fomalont and

Sergei Kopeikin Sergei Kopeikin (born April 10, 1956) is a USSR-born theoretical physicist and astronomer presently living and working in the United States, where he holds the position of Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. ...

claimed to have measured the

speed of gravity In classical theories of gravitation, the changes in a gravitational field propagate. A change in the distribution of energy and momentum of matter results in subsequent alteration, at a distance, of the gravitational field which it produces. In ...

in the dedicated experiment by observing the tangential component in the gravitational bending of light of a

quasar A quasar ( ) is an extremely Luminosity, luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole with a mass rangi ...

caused by the orbital motion of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

with respect to the barycenter of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

. This claim was disputed but vigorously defended by Kopeikin and Fomalont in a number of subsequent publications. Fomalont is an active participant in many international radio

interferometric Interferometry is a technique which uses the '' interference'' of superimposed waves to extract information. Interferometry typically uses electromagnetic waves and is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fiber opt ...

projects including the VLBI Space Observatory Programme and

Square Kilometre Array The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental organisation, intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square ...

Bibliometric information

As of March 2024, the

NASA ADS The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a digital library portal for researchers on astronomy and physics, operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. ADS maintains three bibliographic collections containing over 15 m ...

database yields a h index of 77, with more than 22737 non-self citations. The tori index and riq index are 99.8 and 163, respectively.

References

External links

Fomalont's NRAO homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fomalont, Edward 20th-century American astronomers Living people 1940 births