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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's not good enough for Dick Cheney.
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)
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.