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NASA Probe Validates Einstein Within 1%
An anonymous reader writes "Gravity Probe B uses four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure two effects of Einstein's general relativity theory — the geodetic effect and frame dragging. According to the mission's principal investigator, the data from Gravity Probe B's gyroscopes confirm the Einstein theory's value for the geodetic effect to better than 1%. In a common analogy, the geodetic effect is similar to the shape of the dip created when the ball is placed on to a rubber sheet. If the ball is then rotated, it will start to drag the rubber sheet around with it. In a similar way, the Earth drags local space and time around with it — ever so slightly — as it rotates. Over time, these effects cause the angle of spin of the satellite's gyroscopes to shift by tiny amounts." The investigators will be doing further data analysis over the coming months and expect to release final results late this year.
That project took way too long. I remember people working on it when I went through Stanford in the mid-1980s. It was something of a boondoggle; it mostly produced students, not flight hardware. I'm glad to hear it finally worked, though.
...that's not good enough for Dick Cheney.
... balls on rubber sheets. Seriously.
True, it did take a while. But I'd like to think it was worth the wait. Also, for those who care, here is a link to the Stanford page http://einstein.stanford.edu/ it has the same info as the article along with more stuff about the project.
I think it mostly produced ego from the project administration.http://www.aero.org/publications/cr osslink/summer2002/profile.html
So the UTexas Online Homework System will accept NASA's answers? Good.
Actually people have been preparing this experiment since the 1960s.
There was a great lecture about this on this year's hungarian skeptics conference, spiced with the real life experience that Hungary was part of the soviet influence sphere at that time, so when one physicist was allowed to go to the USA for a year to do research. When he came back, his colleagues were flocking him, discussing the news and that the americans are setting up this experiment. The lecturer, now an old man, can finally see the result of the experiment they were discussing more than 40 years ago.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
That's brave talk. You realize, of course, you're coming after people with guns, right?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% and perspiration is 99%. It's nice to see scientists proving him right.
I spent a week watching all the Nova PBS episodes, learning about this and string theory. Even though I'm not a mathematician or physicist, it certainly caught my attention.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
um, 5th amendment gaurantees freedom, chump.
see, back in the day when that was written, a rifle was the edge of technology. that amendment gaurantees that the government never has the power to absolutely control the people. that if the gov gets out of line, we can take the power back.
since, the government has gained access to much more powerful weapons while restricting access to citizens. now we have no control. we are free because the government 'lets us' be free. thats not how it should be.
MAYBE instead of blaming guns, you should blame the real problem. lack of parenting, lack of social skills, lack of proper psychological conditioning in the infuential years.
dont blame the tool, blame the user. responsibility for said user falls into the hands of parenting and education. america has failed in both respects, indisputably. the safest cities in the countries are the ones were gun ownership is required.
ALSO, if gun control becomes the platform, dont count on dems winning 2008. besides, its not like both parties arent retarded...
Secondly, I'm also going to guess that QM experts will start to get a little nervous. The properties any future QM model of gravity must have contradict the GR model. They cannot both be right. The more "right" the GR model, the more problematic a QM model. This doesn't mean a QM model does not exist, only that it is most undesirable (from a QM perspective) for the GR model to make highly precise and accurate predictions.
Thirdly, frame-dragging occurs at a non-zero distance from an object. This doesn't matter, for the purpose of these observations, as they're nowhere near accurate to measure the relativistic effects that apply to the information passed that creates the effects in the first place. Nonetheless, such an affect must exist, or you'd end up with infinitely fast rates of change of state, which is expressly forbidden in GR. It's a gross simplification and it's not an "obvious" conclusion to reach by any means, but if the curvature (and restoration) of space/time has nothing analogous to Hooke's Constant, then after a gravitationally massive object has moved, either space/time would not unbend at all (it could only do so if Plato's laws of motion were valid), or every moving object would need to be emitting Hawking Radiation (which - as far as anyone knows - doesn't happen).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If I put three gyroscopes, each spinning in a different axis at right angles to each other, into a box, wouldn't its increased inertia make it just seem more massive? How does the momentum of all those electrons and other subatomic particles spinning around contribute to its apparent mass?
--
make install -not war
This was not a NASA experiment per se, it was a Stanford experiment. The original press release can be found here. The official stanford website also lists preliminary findings here.
And yet, similar tragedies occurs in nations that crack down on guns. As long as we have a brain, there will be weapons. It is the main reason why America is having a nightmare time in Iraq.
Now, as to having blood on my hand, well, let me point out that if only a few ppl who was around the gunman had had a gun, then it would never have been this magnitude. It is because students are not allowed to carry guns that this happened.
This seems like a waste of money and resources. As any creationist will stress to you - gravity is only a THEORY.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. -- Thomas Alva Edison
Of course, he was already dead when the project started...
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
Technobabble
Outlawing guns will stop people from being shot just as effectively as outlawing marijuana has stopped people from getting stoned. Seriously, anybody with decent metalworking tools and a modicum of experience working with them can make modern firearms in his choice of semiautomatic or automatic in his garage. Even if you managed to confiscate every gun currently in civilian hands with the wave of a wand and magically made it impossible to smuggle firearms across the borders of the U.S., cottage industry will replace them.
Second, the Constitution isn't going to get amended. Only 14 states need one house of legislature to say "no", and the Second Amendment stays in. There's no fucking way that people in favor of gun control are going to win a majority in both houses of the state legislatures in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho in 2008. You're a moron if you think so.
Third, there is a damn thing they can do about it; refuse to comply. You think the army has a hard time enforcing order in Iraq? And that's assuming the soldiers don't mutiny against their orders; since soldiers are disproportionately Southern white males, that's not something you can take for granted.
Guns are here to stay. And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
sciency details:
d _einstein_iv_showdown_in.php (April 4)
http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/04/15/dragging-on/ (4:33 p.m.)
Also of interest if you're into this sort of thing, what Beyond Einstein programs will be cut?
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2007/04/beyon
sad if you compare sticker prices to the $10 billion per month on the Iraq adventure.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
with regard to this. This isn't someone claiming ID causes the universe to act as it does, this is FSCKING Einstein. That he is proved correct is more about man understanding the universe, and relying less on the theory that it is too complicated to understand and must have been created by an imaginary being. This *IS* news, and should be heralded appropriately.
While some might think me a troll, think about it, Einstein was right. That means that we are that much closer to understanding how the universe works. Even 100 years ago such progression could only be imagined, not proven. In the time that we live in, science books have to be revised every year not because of a need to spend government money, but to actually keep them up to date!
So much change and investigation. People have become numb to the actual changes.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I assume this is the project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B
g ravity_probe_b.jpg
And the probe itself is just astounding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Einstein_gyro_
"Now, as to having blood on my hand, well, let me point out that if only a few ppl who was around the gunman had had a gun, then it would never have been this magnitude. It is because students are not allowed to carry guns that this happened."
That doesn't account for other effects of having more guns. If more students were allowed to carry guns, it is very likely that there would be more gun accidents, especially if not all the gun-toting students were properly trained. And in a high-density alcohol party environment like a dormitory, where this tragedy started, there is a real possibility that the number of fatalities from gun accidents or intentional murders would over time exceed the number of deaths from today's tragedy, making a no-gun policy actually safer.
If everybody has a gun, then the strategy of a criminal is simply to use theirs first. Especially if they think they might die anyway, as today. Increasing the number of guns doesn't help in that case.
Gravity is such a Drag.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Gotta love xkcd : )
http://www.xkcd.com/c54.html
The thing is that this effect has been tested at strong gravity. There is no dispute that GR is not correct in the strong gravity limit. The strength of GR is only disputed at weak gravity, or near Planck's length. It is a good verification of GR, but I don't think anybody thought that it will not be vindicated.
We need a probe to test GR at L1 point if the gravity there is significantly weaker than a0 to distinguish between MOND and DM. This IMHO is the most important test. If it is not possible to test MOND at L1 point, because the MONDian bubble is too small then there is no hope for a test within the next decade. Because that is how much time a very modern satellite will take to reach beyond the solar system where the gravity is significantly weaker than a0.
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2007_04_15_arc hive.html#7549578930590179871
I knew the "blame guns" crown would be out en masse today. Those things don't fire themselves, you know. And our entire legal system is built upon the foundation of holding people accountable for their actions. VA Tech already had a policy in place banning handguns on campus. It sure was effective, wasn't it asshole? Lawbreakers will be lawbreakers. Take your micromanaging worldview and shove it up your ass.
See, Einstein was a genius. Yet, He struggled with Math. He is my hero.
\
I don't think it really took TOO long. That above link is a good read, many kudos
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
The 16th amendment was NOT passed and if it was it doesn't grant the power of general fund income taxes. We have both today and its forced upon us without any logic or law to back it up.
They can kill the 2nd if they want and if people just keep smoking their pot and smoking each other (with guns) without changing the government it will become the norm in 1 generation. At which point you can expect a "war on guns" type effort to remove the guns since they would then be against the law. Perhaps in 1 more generation people would believe the 2nd was actually repealed or only applies to new guns (in which case it would take forever to remove the old ones.)
If you resist- they can use all that homeland security toys they bought many of which were more about crowd control/torture than about real security. National Guard can be taken over by Bush over. State rights are almost dead and the EU to some extent shows you what a weak federal system would work like (which I'm in favor of; despite the EU being somewhat corrupt and lacking in ways for citizens to directly affect it)
What we need most is the death penalty for exiting politicians who vote for war and the requirement that all "police actions" must be declared war after 90 days! The USA hasn't had a "war" in decades!! Politicians who really are patriotic would give their lives for our protection... not for oil. Why should they not be directly affected? Doing these 2 things would greatly reduce our problems worldwide and domestic. Other nations should consider it as well.
College-Age "Kids" are dying in Iraq every day on every side because of equally crazy people! VT is no big deal (and making it a big deal only encourages the next nut to go out in fame.) These college students died for nothing.
The US troops in Iraq are also dying for nothing. (Iraqis on the other hand are dying for something.)
Wake up!
If more people are armed then you get lower death counts in tragedies like these - since the shooter is more likely to be killed before the death count gets too high. However, you get more deaths in the smaller things - domestic disputes, drunken morons, etc.
Since large scale shootings are reasonably rare, I would suspect on balance reducing the smaller ones results in fewer deaths overall - but I'm guessing I have no numbers...
So, did Einstein turn out to be an NP-complete problem?
I thought I recognized your incoherent and meandering thoughts. Shouldn't you be waxing your 'stache and that mess you call a bush?
Glad it worked? I'm horrified it worked. /. geek wouldn't know the term) than we thought we were before.
Every time someone (re)validates Einstein relativity theories, we actually know we're one step further from FTL (Faster than light - though I'd be surprised if any
Damm gravity.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout [Robert Heinlein]
It's not like guns are that hard to acquire in countries with gun control. They may be different kind of gun (a hunting rifle, fgzample), but you could kill people with it just as well even if you're not a criminal. And criminals will have any kind of gun they want.
One thing you can't do in such a country is defend yourself against someone with a gun. That someone can kick in your front door, shoot your entire family before your eyes and you'll just sit there and watch and there won't be a damn thing you'll be able to do. In the US the guy with a gun always considers a possibility there's another guy with a gun in there. And that's good. Also, public figures have to consider a possibility that there's a guy with a sniper rifle sitting on the roof. So you don't want to piss off your constituents too much around here.
Quite frankly, if dems oppose the second amendment, I'll vote against dems. I don't think republicans could put out anything worse than GWB even if they wanted to, so by definition they won't be much worse than Billary.
FTL? WTF? Everybody knows that FTL drives are a work of fiction.
No, my friend, what you need is a warp drive.
For some reason the article and summary only mention that Gravity Probe B was trying to measure was "minuscule" however, I at least find the actual quantity to be FAR more impressive than some journalist calling it small. Anyway want to know the precession?
Frame Dragging Effect (has NEVER before been measured): 1.1x10^-5 degrees per YEAR
Geodetic Effect: 1.8x10^-3 degrees per YEAR
Clearly then, these were not merely "minuscule" shifts...the potential for error is great.
More information can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/gpb/index.html
This may almost sound Trollish, but I am by no mean a Physics major, and it shows in this.
Could anyone who actually is familiar with this overall project (Not a stats person, I'm sure they'll say it's insignificant) tell us if the margin of error is truly acceptable?
I understand that there is always a margin of error due to minimum measurable differences, but can physicists now go "Phew, we are now FULLY sure this is right, and not that there has been a measuring fluke" or is there still some doubt? I mean, it seems close, but one can never be sure in physics as to how closely it *has* to line up.
Could a physicist elaborate as to whether or not this affects the alternative theories of gravity, such as MOND?
totally owned the gp.. i think..
This means that there are no differences between GR and MOND in the gravitational limit that this test has been conducted. This means that MOND will have the same problem that GR has, if the tests don't come out as predicted. I guess in this case the tests will be considered to be faulty, as there are literally no theories (that are not considered crackpot) that give different results different from GR in the strong field regime. So the tests by Gravity Probe B will not make any difference, though it probably will give GR theorists something more to brag about.
There is a big misconception about MOND, that it is a theory. It is not, it is a law that works very well at the Galactic Level and somewhat at the cluster level. MOND fits all galactic level data to the limit of their expected accuracy. This it does so with a single universal constant. But nobody knows why it works so well.
As such it is very obvious there is something behind MOND. GR cannot explain MOND without fine tuning DM in such a way to give rise to MOND. But since MOND uses only Baryonic matter, it leaves DM with no degrees of freedom, which is not possible, so DM must not exist at the Galactic level.
At Cluster level situation is different MOND does not match up with the missing mass. Which means either there is Dark Matter at the Cluster level or MOND itself is a reasonable approximation of the correct theory of gravity only in the galactic limit. Beyond the galactic level it ceases to be a good approximation.
If there is dark matter at the cluster level then there must be a reason why it does not exhibit itself at galactic levels. This would meant that the dark matter is hot and moving at a high velocity, which allows it to form stable structure only at the cluster scales.
The interesting thing about the universal constant (a0) of MOND, is that if a particle is accelerated by a0 for the whole life of universe then we will get the speed of light. This would seem to provide a hint that a0 is due to the curvature of the universe.
This actually solves a problem in GR. If GR is absolutely correct then the curvature of the universe cannot be determined, which is also called the flatness problem. This problem is currently avoided by assuming that there was an inflationary era when the universe expanded so much that we only see a very small part of the universe which is flat. So that GR equations are correct. But if that is not true and the universe is not really that big then GR will break down because of no fault of itself, but simply because of the curvature of the universe.
So in my opinion GR is correct but the curvature modifies GR in such a way that we observe MOND.
> In a similar way, the Earth drags local space and time around with it -- ever so slightly
> -- as it rotates. Over time, these effects cause the angle of spin of the satellite's
> gyroscopes to shift by tiny amounts."
Sweet, so that whole superman flying around the Earth so fast to make it spin backwards so that time will reverse itself is real. That's awesome.
No, no, no. I don't need a scientific affirmation that this is how it works. It's simply awesome. Awesome.
because nobody was waiting for the result? Any doubt concerning the theory will focus on other areas.
Actually, considering that Edison is famous for:
- taking credit for his employees' inventions as if he personally and singlehandedly came up with them. (There are at least 28 inventors that Edison ripped off this way, including for example taking credit for inventing the motion picture camera. Actually, it was invented by W.K. Dickson.)
- patented stuff he didn't actually have yet, and/or wasn't even original
E.g., he applied for a lightbulb patent a full year before actually having a filament that was commercially viable: and Edison's, or shall we say, his teams, _only_ contribution there was a commercially viable filament. The light bulb as such had already been discovered, it just didn't last long enough to be worth buying. But wait, even the carbon filament wasn't new: Edison't patent application itself had come a whole 1 year after Joseph Swan had patented a working model in England (and was working at it since 1850, 28 years earlier). So basically it took Edison and his team two years to copycat someone else's invention and claim credit.
- bogus patents, e.g., a number of patents on ornamental designs
- using PR and bad science to win public support: see the "war of the currents", where Edison (who wanted to sell direct current) paid people to roam the country and conduct demonstrations of killing cats, dogs, and once even an elephant with alternating current. Just, you know, to show people that alternating current kills. (While supposedly his direct current at the same 110V doesn't. Yeah, right.) He's also the author of the electric chair, as part of the same campaign to prove that AC kills. The first execution had the guy pretty much fried alive over a time of more than a minute (he certainly was still alive and struggling after the first 17 second jolt), in a show that sickened spectators and was described by the New York Times as, "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." That's the kind of PR that served Edison's purposes.
- shafting the employees. E.g., Tesla was promised a (huge for that time) bonus of $50,000 if he succeeds in making an improvement to the DC generators. When he actually succeeded, Edison didn't pay him, and in fact told him, "When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke." In fact, he even refused to at least give Tesla a raise.
- mis-treating his employees. They actually spread word of Edison's current mood, so they'd know to duck for cover if he's in a bad mood.
- speaking of Tesla, here's one thing he said about Edison's dumb trial-and-error methods, a.k.a., 99% perspiration: "His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense." (Would explain why most "Edison" inventions were actually from employees who actually understood what they're doing.)
- various attempts at monopoly, including the infamous "Motion Picture Patents Company", a.k.a., the Edison Trust. You know, if you thought that MPAA is bad, the MPPC meant you couldn't even make independent films without Edison's blessing.
- showing more contempt to the artists than the RIAA today, and in fact, enough to make the RIAA look like the good guys. Edison refused to even print the artist's name on the label. You're buying Edison music, you peon, not some artist's music. On one occasion he stated, "I would rather quit the business than be a party to the boasting up of undeserved reputations." Yeah, who do you think you _are_ to be getting any reputation for your talent and popularity. Only the great Edison should get a reputation out of it.
- letting his personal moods and preferences be the only criterio
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't think anyone's concerned about proving Einstein absolutely right or absolutely wrong—if you look at it in those terms, any theory is bound to be proved "wrong," eventually, in that it'll fail for some ever-increasing standard of precision. What's news here is that we can now trust Einstein's equations to predict our measured reality within that cited "1%," confirming that general relativity is a pretty damn useful model. But that doesn't mean it won't be supplanted next year by something even more useful.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
They changed the marking system from best to worst to worst to best and journalists from later years never realised that his seeming failures to pass at maths were in fact distinguished passes.
Einstein struggled with people rather than maths, he just never did people well, which I suppose is why his son died impoverished, insane and in Switzerland (hard to know which is the worst option).
Somebody please mod this up funny
dumbass
Basically, the mission hasn't yet succeeded, and it doesn't seem to be completely certain that it will.
/ ExperimentError.pdf) has a one-sigma error of 100 milli-arcseconds per year, significantly larger than the relativistic effect and significantly larger than the effect from the motion of the target star through space. The initial expectation was for an error budget of less than 0.5 mas per year, so there was a lot of work done on measuring the proper motion of the star to that precision.
The goal was to measure the frame-dragging effect of the Earth, which is of the order of 40 milli-arcseconds per year; the current calibration (http://einstein.stanford.edu/content/aps_posters
The problems turn out to be really crazily subtle issues in solid-state physics -- the deposited metal films on the gyroscope and on its housing retain charge in patches large enough that they have to be modelled rather than averaged out -- plus an annoying issue from classical mechanics where the motion of a rigid body around three axes XYZ depends on the ratio of the differences of the moments of inertia X-Z and Y-Z. Whilst the gyroscopes are absurdly precisely made, so the moments of inertia are very close, the ratio of the differences of the moments of inertia is a macroscopic number; this is the same effect, and even a similar cause, to some of the oddities with low-precision floating-point arithmetic.
They'll probably be sorted out, sigma might be reduced by a factor ten after another year's modelling effort, but it seems unlikely that they'll get it down by the factor 200 they were hoping for.
The frame-dragging has already been measured indirectly by looking at the flickers of X-ray sources caused by frame-dragging-induced precession of the accretion discs around black holes, and most of the theories that suggest relativity is wrong would suggest that any oddities would be more pronounced in the huge gravitomagnetic fields near black holes than in the tiny fields near a mass as small, as non-dense and as slowly rotating as Earth.
It's the 2nd amendment, dumbass. Are we a little dyslexic.
Wormholes count for something don't they? ...now all we need to do is harness the power of the sun...
Validated to 1% isn't validated at all.
If my solution is only 99% correct and it's used by billions of people, well, that's not very good. It's mostly good, but that's hardly validation.
Sorry to feed the troll...
indisputably. the safest cities in the countries are the ones were gun ownership is required.
Because Compton and Detroit are bastions of safety...
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
This is funny, and not just because the only person I know with a tattoo on her lower back is an ex of mine.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
WTF?
We are a little dyslexic.
Are we a little dyslexic?
You're a lot of a dumbass, hippy.
Boss, I was late to work this morning because of frame dragging. I would have been here earlier if spacetime hadn't been warped and then twisted by my car.
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
how long would this have taken without grid computing??? my pc has been working on this project for a long time. i hope you all have world community grid and boinc. if you don't then don't complain about time because you didn't contribute. and everyone with a decent pc should contribute.
Can someone explain to us layman, how being within 1% of a prediction is impressive for this particular area? (For example, if newtonian physics only provided 99% accuracy for localalized physics on earth, it would be a joke.) I'm sure this "within 1%" is impressive, if the experts in the field are saying so; but explain to us layman, why?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
It's an approximation, like most mathematical equations in physics. The fact that it measures something so esoteric within 1% is monumental. First, it proves that Einstein's theories were "correct" in their premise that this effect exists at all, and second, his theories approximate the effect within 1%.
Looking at it with hindsight, it's not too difficult to see that this probably is the way it should be, but for Einstein to have come up with it in an effectively hostile environment is truly a measure of his greatness that should not be understated. It was a leap of insight in a direction everyone else wouldn't even consider.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Warp drives are so 1960's you need either slipstream or even better.
An oscillation overdrive. That would be exactly what you need.
Now to find that rock and roll physicist that has the prototype.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
An experiment only validates or invalidates a single hypothesis. The results will only create more hypotheses to test. The second you begin to believe you know exactly how and why something happens you begin to err and surely nature will find a way to make an ass out of you.
I guess my answer to your question is nothing is ever sure nor can it ever be.
You're nothing; like me.
What, the Stargates aren't good enough for you?
Bingo !
I was going to post this myself. The goal was to measure frame dragging. The geodetic effect has been measured before (LLR and binary pulsars),
and is not nearly as interesting (i.e., its hard
to see why you wouldn't have it). It's the frame dragging that motivated the decades of effort and expenditure.
If they can't do frame dragging, the experiment will be deemed a failure.
naw, a Bergenholm is what you need
Ptolemy said the planets circled the Earth in epicycles, and mathematically "proved" it to the accuracy of available instruments. This was good enough for about a 1000 years. Together, Newton and Galileo proved heliocentricity, but calculated ellipitical orbits, also wrong, and also within the accuracy of available instruments. Brahe and others eventually measured things so precisely that they were able to find that Newton had an error, but they didn't understand it. Later, someone (I forget who) was able to measure the orbit of Jupiter's (known) moons and show that the speed of light caused an apparent lag in their orbital motions. But planetary orbits still didn't obey Newton precisely.
The world had to wait for Einstein to get an explanation - space/time curvature, etc, predicted the variance from Newton's calculations.
Somewhere in all of this, British scientists predicted the existence of Australia by the wobble it causes in Earth's spin.
Failure of real world measurements to match theoretical predictions can lead to greater discoveries. Sometimes the failure is more significant than success would be.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradox
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
One of the very best game producing company a long time ago... These guys created Sundog (best game ever to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunDog_Frozen_Legacy ), Dungeon Master and Oids. That is a lot of very very good games for a single small company to produce. These guys paved the way for many of the games you're playing today (Blizzard games, for example, all use UI elements invented by FTL).
;)
My theory is simple: that company really invented FTL... And they somehow managed to use it to go into the future and come back with ideas they stole there
When are they going to validate Newton's laws of physics? Einstein Einstein Einstein is all we ever hear about these days, isn't it?
Consider yourself spoken to.
Life is not Star Trek, get over it and move out of your parents basement.
FTL? That what the waist band on my underwear says.
In a similar way, the Earth drags local space and time around with it -- ever so slightly -- as it rotates. Over time, these effects cause the angle of spin of the satellite's gyroscopes to shift by tiny amounts.
Wasn't this one of the results of global warming from Al Gore's movie?
1) your sig has a very lame typo 2) take comfort in the 1%.
First we had the deistic theory of physics - things fall because they fall, big guys hit harder because they're big, and so on.
Then we moved up to Newtonian physics.
Then Einsteinian.
Who's next? Bohr? Someone I've never heard of? Who knows, but it's an interesting question.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
During the 40 years it took to implement this experiment several other observations of interplanetary probes already proved it.
Jargon/Bogon Filter output to console:
"Even though this test is not being done on Earth, it is still being done pretty far down a deep gravity well. It might be interesting to repeat this test at the Lagrange point between the Earth and sun (L1). The only other choice to find flat space is to shoot the sucker out of the solar system, which would take too long."
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I am more and more impressed with Einstein every time something like this happens. To be able to sit in your house, thinking about the way the universe works, without a single real "test" to validate what you think, not even considering how science fiction off the way things like General Relativity is, bending space time fabric etc... That is just amazing to have it all proven "correct" a hundred years later.
Now the question will be, can we prove if String Theory is in fact correct. Tiny strings, massive membranes, 11 dimensions... it's even more "crazy sci-fi", but the math is good and that'll be really amazing if we can test it.
There is a new particle accelerator being built (largest in the world), which will help us detect the escaping of gravitrons if they do really exist, which wont prove string theory, but get us one step closer.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
(Not a physisist either -- for that matter, I didn't even get A's in physics) but weren't a majority of the advances in physics made by refining prior equations -- adding factors or constants -- so that it isn't really proving something wrong so much as it is clarifing something that has been (at the layman level, not the physics level) true enough.
Layne
I think the award for longest project ever should go to this project.
The Pitch Drop Experiment
I can't wait for the tenth drop! WooHoo!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Please, nobody tell the autodynamics people about this -- they'll get really depressed.
You're close, but you've got your dates all mixed up (it isn't really a big deal, it is a very easy mistake to make, in fact you'll see it is actually kind of funny). I'll try to clarify things. Also I am not sure who you refer to when you say "Brahe" I thought you meant Tycho Brahe but he died (1601) before Newton.
First of all, planets don't strictly follow elliptical orbits; for example it has been shown that Mercury's orbit varies chaotically. On the other hand elliptical models are quite accurate.
1676 Ole Rømer makes a quantitative measurement of the speed of light by observing the moons of Jupiter, he concludes that the speed of light is finite. The story behind this is quite amusing, apparently it was possible for Ole to get the data he needed form the great Paris observatory because he was invited there by a man who found him quite attractive. Good ol' Ole published his findings in 1676 in the journal "Journal des sçavans"
1687 Isaac Newton publishes "Principa," his work on mechanics and gravitation. Ironically Rømer essentially killed Newtonian mechanics before Newton even published them. Clearly then, it was long known (at least by some) that Newtons laws of gravitation were wrong to begin with, however despite this they are still incredibly useful to this day and shockingly accurate.
1727 James Bradley measures stellar aberration, providing conclusive evidence supporting Rømer's idea that light propagates at a finite speed.
1846 Urbain Le Verrier's calculations contribute to the discovery of Neptune. I am not exactly sure when, but by around this time it is known, and has been shown, (in part by Verrier) that the perihelion precession of Mercury is not fully explained by Newton.
1916 Einstein publishes another paper on gravitation, he calls his new theory the general theory of relativity. One of the earliest tests of this new theory Einstein did himself. The test was to see if the theory could explain the perihelion precession of Mercury; it did, perfectly. Many more astonishing predictions arose out of GR. Among them gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, and black holes.
If we ever do circumvent the speed-of-light limit, it will only happen because we took the time to understand relativity inside and out. So no, this isn't a disappointing result.
Good explanation; thanks for the post.
Forgive me for being a college student, but the geodetic effect reminds me more of what happens to your forearm when you use it to open a beer bottle.
Miren al Pepino! Los vegetales invidian a su amigo, como él quieren bailar. Pepino Bailarín!
I was sure I'd get a lotta the details wrong. I didn't take time to look it up - I figgered wikipedia, etc is too easy, so the parent poster could look it up him/herself if interested. But thanx for the correction!
I was just showing how nitpicking the numbers can sometimes lead to new discoveries as well as confirming old theories.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
This experiment for gravity wells could have been done in the comfort of your own home for musch less cost. Merely have the average person sit on one end of a 2 seat sofa. Next have a person weighing say.... 300lbs. sit on the other end of the sofa. The result is obvious, the the lower mass body will fall into the gravity well created by the larger mass body. Happens every time I go to my best friends house, I tend to fall into the gravity well he creates.
-Eric
Oh, agreed completely. If I seemed to be minimizing the importance of these results, or of Einstein's contributions to physics for that matter, I apologize—I probably could have written more clearly. These results are important because they confirm Einstein's model is a better description of our perceptions of reality. Should these perceptions grow more exact or change otherwise in the future, which doubtless they will, we'll need an updated model to account for the discrepancies.
In that light, Einstein didn't prove Newton wrong. Classical mechanics remains the most useful way for us to model many everyday phenomena. General relativity gives us a much more broadly applicable description of the universe, but if that fact alone makes Newton wrong, Einstein's going to be proven wrong too.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.