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NASA GRACE Launched

Posted by timothy on from the looking-for-those-gravity-leaks dept.

James Evans writes: "NASA has successfully launched GRACE (http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/). The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment uses 2 satellites, which communicate via a microwave ranging system, in an effort to map the Earth's gravity fields with amazing accuracy." Update: 03/18 02:37 GMT by T : secondsun points to this CNN story on the project as well.

9 comments

  1. More about the story by jeneag · · Score: 1, Informative

    Article on Space.com
    Image of the rocket

    1. Re:More about the story by King+of+the+World · · Score: 0

      I prefer this link.

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      --Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
  2. Finally by spike+hay · · Score: 1

    Often I lay awake in bed into the wee hours of the morning wondering about the location, size, and strengh of Earth's gravitaional anomalies.

    Finally, I will know!

    Also, fun fact: Gravity is negative energy. The negative gravity energy of an object exactly balances out the positive mass. This way the total energy of the universe is 0. That means the big bang did not violate conservation of energy. It was just a vacuum fluctuation.
    Since the total energy of the big bang vacuum flucuation was zero, it can last forever. This is in contrast to most microscopic vacuum fluctuations that only exist for short periods of time.

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    If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
    1. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Negative energy? I've never heard it described like that but hey, the more analogies the better when describing the hideously complex .

      Gravity seems lie a thing which may have some further surprising aspects to it.

      And keep in mind that there is no law outside of our universe.

      The vacuum fluctuation is an aspect of our universe, so it did not exist prior to the big bang.

    2. Re:Finally by sconeu · · Score: 2

      No, Pascual Jordan and Einstein both thought that the concept of the Universe as a vacuum fluctuation was valid.

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      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  3. Drastic financial implications... by raytoler · · Score: 1

    This could have drastic financial implications for the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, CA and other tourist attractions relying on a gravity vortex! We must quash this research now!

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    "Words are relative. They're only symbols. If we don't use ugly symbols, we won't have any ugliness."