Researchers Make Waves on Gravity Study Effort : Caltech: A feud between two key scientists rattles the $250-million project. National Science Foundation officials say it is still ‘on track.’

A $250-million project to detect gravity waves has been rattled by two California Institute of Technology scientists who have been making waves of a different kind by feuding over how to manage the National Science Foundation program.

Researchers familiar with the project said program manager Rochus Vogt at one point locked gravity-wave expert Ronald Drever out of his Pasadena office and denied him access to computers after an exchange over the need to keep the project on schedule versus a desire to do more research.

David Berley, the NSF official in charge of the program, said it is now “on track and functioning well.”

Vogt was out of the country, and Drever declined to comment. University administrators said policy forbids discussion of personnel matters, but they emphasized that “all concerned parties are working hard toward the goals of the . . . project.”

But Lew Allen, chairman of a faculty oversight committee established in December to keep the project on track, indicated this week that the professional disagreement that dates back at least to last summer has not yet been fully resolved.

“It has certainly been a distraction . . . (and) we are concerned that these distractions be cleared up as soon as possible,” Allen, the retired director of the Caltech-operated Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Tuesday.

Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working together on the project, which is based in Pasadena.

The project--the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or simply LIGO--has arcane but potentially useful goals in cosmology: finding “waves” of gravity created by such cataclysmic events as the collision of superdense neutron stars.

In 1916, Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicted such gravitational ripples, but like much else about his theory, these waves have been devilishly hard to actually find.

“Unlike radio waves, which make quite an impression on a radio antenna every time one hits it, gravity waves are incredibly feeble,” said UC Santa Barbara professor Douglas Eardley. “They only couple to matter in a very weak way, which makes them very hard to detect.”

LIGO proposes to detect the waves with two very large detectors 2,000 miles apart. Each detector would consist of two tubes 48 inches in diameter and 2 1/2 miles long, joined at one end in an L shape. Mirrors will be hung at each end of these tubes and isolated from vibrations.

Laser beams shot down the length of these tubes are expected to detect the slightest change in distance between mirrors, down to one-millionth the diameter of a single atom. True gravity waves should cause the mirrors in one arm to move closer while causing those in the adjoining arm to move apart. Measurements from the two detectors will let scientists calculate a wave’s velocity.

Recording such subtle fluctuations in gravity may have practical applications--from affirming fundamental theories on which research is based, to permitting the construction of a “gravity-wave telescope” that could open new avenues for exploring the universe, Allen said.

For scientists, the discovery of gravity waves would in a sense put them in the company of Einstein’s genius. But such lofty aspirations often bring conflict.

“Scientists are real people too,” Eardley said. “Sometimes they may disagree on the means (to achieve a goal), even when they agree on the ends.”