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'Einstein Probe' Delayed
isorox writes "The BBC is reporting that a NASA satellite designed to test frame dragging, predicted by the theory of relativity, has been delayed for 24 hours because mission control couldn't verify the correct software had been loaded. The probe was proposed 35 years ago, but has never had the funding until now. The question remains is what happens if Frame Dragging isn't observed - will the experiment be wrong (in other words there's no point to it), or will we get faster-than-light ships for Christmas?"
As a classically trained scientist, I'd be loathe not to point out a misconception here.
Experiments themselves are never 'wrong' experiments are merely poorly designed or interpreted. If they are niether of these then the experiment simply gives you data which you must explain. If it doesnt give you the expected results, it may not be the design that is in error, but instead our understanding of the world.
Data never lies, except when viewed through a human bias.
Surely you mean:
1) Bad result, but result appears to confirm the prediction - this is not a successful experiment
2) Bad result, but result appears to invalidate the prediction - this is not a successful experiment. Possibility of an insufficiently sensitive instrument, or just a badly designed experiment.
3) Good result, but result appears to contradict the prediction - this is a successful experiment - a negative result is as valid as a positive one.
4) Good result, and result appears to confirm the prediction - this is a successful experiment
I am artificially intelligent.
When Ira Flatow asked him what would happen if the probe did not find anything and that Einstein might be wrong, he "hemmed and hawwed" a lot and said that wouldn't be the case - that Einstein was right. He also mentioned that the data would go to a physicist and then be released to the public.
It's not that I'm wearing a tin-foil hat (well maybe), but science is based on conducting experiments in the open and openly sharing data with an unbiased view and procedure, even if it means that Einstein might be wrong.
While I completely agree that the data should be made public eventually, the scientific community has had many bad experiences when incomplete and poorly analyzed data has made it into the public and caused sensationalist headlines. Take for example preliminary asteroid observations. Not only does this cause unnecessary worry but it also makes the involved astronomers look bad, as journalists and the public in general does not understand the difference between "modified based on additional data" and "the first data was wrong".
There are critics of Einstein that are academically serious and not off their rocker like some zero point/tesla fanatics. There have been critics of Einstein ever since he released his theories. You don't hear much about them as they are all heaped into one group and astrocized.
I am not saying that Einstein was wrong (not in the sense that Newton was wrong either), but that true science is keeping an open mind, rather than cower to the politically favorable theory of the moment.
Well, I guess there are two issues here.
1. Those who claim that the theory of relativity is wrong in general. Those people ARE off their rockers and academically unsound, considering that all experiments to date have validated the theory. And for sure, they have never suggested any new interesting experiements and predicted outcomes that Einstein's equations didn't.
2. Many if not most serious modern physicists suspect that there may be scales of time, mass and distance where the theory or relativity breaks down (e.g., at the center of black holes), just as with your analogy of Newton's theory. It is possible but unlikely that this probe will measure such deviations. However, this does not really constitute "criticism" in our everyday sense of the world. Indeed, most scientists probably view Einstein as the greatest physicist of all time.
Tor
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"they are trying to measure not only what has been completely PROVEN but also in the most inane manner. Just about everything else that affects the gyroscopes are larger effects, what they are trying to detect is so small."
Huh? I think that is what makes these experiments interesting: measuring the small effects hidden behind the larger, ordinary ones. Otherwise, we would still believe F = Gm1m2/r**2 says it all about gravity.
"but we're beyond that (can you say strings)"
String theory is not the only possible contender, see Scientific American, Jan 2004 for Loop Quantum Gravity as an alternative. It is still open which of these hard-to-prove theories is a better model, and every piece of evidence about GR and QM is useful. If frame dragging is found not to occur, it makes it much easier to drop GR in developing a theory of quantum gravity, whereas if it is found to occur, then that result has to be taken into account in coming up with a more comprehensive theory.
No experiment, well done, is useless.