Gravity-Bent Starlight Reveals a New Planet

dfab writes "The first experimental proof of Einstein's general theory has been revamped to discover planets around distant stars. Yesterday astronomers announced that a new technique called gravitational microlensing has found a star that hosts a roughly Jupiter-sized planet in a roughly Jupiter-sized orbit by observing its effect on the light from a bright star beyond that planetary system. See the NASA report or the gory details."

Comments

What happened to the original experiment?

[Jtheletter]

We built the most perfect spheres ever made, constructed the quietest chamber ever made to put them in, sent them into orbit and started them spinning to test the frame dragging of earth's gravitational field. So, maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but after creating all these technological wonders and spending an ass-load of money and four decades to get this shit into space to test this theory, what happened to the results??

It's been in orbit for what, two weeks or less and already we've reconfigured it for something else? Either we very efficiently proved/disproved frame dragging and moved on and I missed it or else someone screwed up royally and had to go to plan B: hey look, it can detect gravity lenses!