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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?"
I'm voting for warp drive on this one!
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because mission control couldn't verify the correct software had been loaded.
Man, I must have missed a career as NASA flight controller, because I feel exactly the same way each time XP goes to windowsupdate.microsoft.com...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
by British scientists!
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
Whenever I try to run games at too high resolution on this computer, the frames just start dragging along...
you dumbass .. that's like saying Newton was wasting his time coming up with his theories .. I mean who knew there'd be any practical applications of figuring out the laws of physics?
They had built the pyramids and horse & buggy just fine without Newton.
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.
In this case its called "foot dragging", not "frame dragging".
Table-ized A.I.
The question remains is what happens if Frame Dragging isn't observed
You can listen to John Turneaure, co principle investigator for Gravity Probe B. He was interviewed by Ira Flatow on NPR's Science Friday.
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.
If they really wanted to do this neat, they would stream the data live to a website, rather than can up the data until they are ready to release it.
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.
As an aside, frame dragging is like when you take a single electric mixer and use it in a bowl of pudding. Or when you use an electric stirrer in a can of paint. That is frame dragging.
This happens because gravity is a field (according to Einstein). Newton treated gravity like a force.
Physicists reading may improve upon this anology.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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The question remains is what happens if Frame Dragging isn't observed.
Then they'd better figure out if their experiment was badly designed, because frame dragging has already been observed by other research platforms.
NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer observed frame dragging in a distant system consisting of a binary pair of black holes. This was back in 1997.
Analysis of the motion of two earth-orbiting satellites, LAGEOS I and LAGEOS II, also reveals frame dragging going on. This was also over 4 years ago, and it's the result that this Einstein probe is supposed to refine.
If this test showed that frame dragging did not exist, we would be have to figure out a new way of making those two consistant, and (on the surface at least) one (unlikely) possibility would be that some things can travel faster than light.
Why do you humans always misquote Einstein. General relativity states that nothing can *accelerate* to the speed of light. It says nothing about things already going the speed of light. Experiments in Photon / Quantium Tunneling have indicated that photons can apear to tunnel through barriers faster then light.
Unfortunately, black holes are sparse in this neck of the woods
_UN_fortunately?
> > Unfortunately, black holes are sparse in this neck of the woods
:)
> _UN_fortunately?
Well, in most necks of the woods they're actually rather dense.
HOO-ha!
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Why do you humans always misquote Einstein.
:-)
Because schools nail silly ideas into people heads, and Einsteins book "Relativity: An Explaination That Anyone Can Understand" wasn't so easy to understand?
General relativity states that nothing can *accelerate* to the speed of light.
Err... I thought that was Special Relativity. General Relativity deals with the way that gravity works. i.e. Gravity is acceleration. Therefore, matter and energy must curve space-time to make a "downward" slope.
That being said, you have the "halfway" problem of accelerating to light speed. As you accelerate, time dilation increases. As time dilation increases, your engines are less effective to an external observer. Therefore it becomes a lot like drawing a line halfway to the destination, then drawing another line halfway of the remainder, ad infinitum. You'll never reach the end. And because your mass increases, you could only use a rocket (converts your near infinite mass -> energy) to make the transition. An external force like a particle accelerator doesn't have enough energy (infinite) to push you to light speed.
It says nothing about things already going the speed of light.
Correct. When a collegue of Einstein's suggested that it was impossible for an object with mass to reach light speed, Einstein felt compelled to point out that a photon has mass and it travels at light speed.
Experiments in Photon / Quantium Tunneling have indicated that photons can apear to tunnel through barriers faster then light.
That really has more to do with Quantum Mechanics than relativity. Overall, the photon is incapable of exceeding light speed. However, it can temporarily "steal" a bit of energy from nearby particles to tunnel out of existance and into existance elsewhere. The amount stolen is then payed back, resulting in a zero sum gain in velocity.
There are many things in this universe that appear to defy light speed. Unfortunately, not one of them is capable of transmitting useful information faster than light. Considering that this holds true at all levels of physics, one would almost conclude that the universe is out to "get" us.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Disclaimer - I worked on the Gravity Probe B (GPB) team back in 1994-1995 while I was an undergraduate at Stanford. Due to personal interest, I watched the launch attempt on NASA TV.
While technically correct, the post's claim that the lauch was delayed "because mission control couldn't verify the correct software had been loaded" doesn't convey the whole picture of what happened.
Well prior to T minus 4 minutes, three weather balloons had reported excessive (out of limits) high altitude wind shear. This wind shear would have caused the launch to be delayed for 24 hours.
However, shortly after T minus 4 minutes, a fourth weather balloon reported that windshear had dropped to within acceptable limits. At this time, the flight profile of the delta II rocket needed to be updated to successfully guide the rocket through the high altitude wind shear and in to GPB's desired orbit.
The launch window for GPB is very narrow - about one second. This is because GPB needs to be in a polar orbit in the plane of a particular guide star.
A launch director from Boeing (Boeing made the delta II rocket) could not confirm that the flight profile had been successfully updated. So, with the clock counting down, he made the decision to "hold" the launch. Upon review, all the launch directors agreed that this was the correct decision.
So, you have a situation where, under time pressure, about 300 seconds before launch, due to changing launch conditions and unverifyable equipment status, a conservative and correct decision was made to delay the lanch 24 hours - until the next one second long launch window.
The other thing to consider is that the closer you get to launch, the more costly and complicated it is to abort the launch. So even though confirmation of a successful profile upload may have come later, if it hadn't, the costs of scrubbing the launch would be higher.
While it may be fun to bash NASA, just remember that it really is rocket science, at least in this case.
He still cannot accelerate to or past the speed of light. If he were enclosed in a box traveling at a constant velocity => lightspeed, then yes everything would appear normal to him, and it's only the stationary observer who would notice anything odd. However, assume that same box is ACCELERATING to lightspeed, and suddenly the man in the box is exposed to all of the effects that entails. Namely, mass going to infinity, and energy required to continue acceleration going to infinity.
.... But the more massive an object is, the harder it is to increase its speed. .... Since a the mass of a muon increases without limit as its speed approaches that of light, it would require a push with an infinite amount of energy to reach or to cross the light barrier. This, of course, is impossible and hence absolutely nothing can travel faster than the speed of light."
Let me dig up a reference...
The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene, PhD (from Oxford)
Page 52
"You may have wondered, for instance, why6 we can't take some object, a muon say, that an accelerator has boosted up to 667 million miles per hour -- 99.5 percent of light speed -- and "push it a bit harder," getting it to 99.9 percent of light speed, and then "really push it harder" impelling it to cross the light speed barrier. Einstein's formula explains why such efforts will never succeed. The faster something moves the more energy it has and from Einstein's formula we see that the more energy something has the more massive it becomes. Muons traveling at 99.9 percent of light speed, for example, weigh a lot more than their stationary cousins. In fact, they are about 22 times as heavy -- literally.
Where to Publish Your Paper
- If you understand it and can prove it, then send it to a journal of mathematics.
- If you understand it, but can't prove it, then send it to a physics journal.
- If you can't understand it, but can prove it, then send it to an economics journal.
- If you can neither understand it nor prove it, then send it to a psychology journal.
- If it attempts to make something important out of something trivial, then send it to a journal of education.
- If it attempts to make something trivial out of some-thing important, send it to a journal of metaphysics.
I'm sure folks can add a few items suitable to this conversation and Slashdot."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Not really. The main motivation for the general theory was simply that Newtonian gravity (or more specifically, the Newtonian gravitational potential) failed to make predictions which agreed with observation. The most well-known example of this is the precession of perihelion of Mercury. If you're referring to the fact that Newtonian gravity imposes no upper bound on velocities, then you're correct, but this was more an illustration of the fact that Newtonian gravity was largely irreconcilable with special relativity.
Nope. I am afraid that the parent was correct and that you may have misunderstood him.
Einstein's motivation for GR (General Relativity) was that SR (Special Relativity) is inconsistant with NG (Newtonian Gravity). NG does indeed predict faster than light effects. If you wiggle a particle on one side of the galaxy, then a particle on the other side would feel that immediately.
This is a theoretical motivation, and not a physical motivation. Once you have SR, you immediately have to fiddle with gravity. He would have had to do this even if we had no conflicting evidence against NG.
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They can't afford to launch a satellite only to discover there was a bug in the software and have it be worthless
If you look at Gravity Probe B's Site you will find that the software that they are referring to has nothing to do with the probe itself but rather there was insufficient time to confirm that the Delta II rocket had the correct wind profile loaded for the data from the final weather balloon.
They wanted to make sure that the rocket had the data from the last weather balloon and there wasn't enough time to make sure.
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