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New Satellite Experiment Helps Confirm Einstein's Equivalence Principle (presse.cnes.fr)
Part of Einstein's theory of general relativity posits that gravity equals inertial mass -- and for the first time in 10 years, there's new evidence that he's right. Slashdot reader orsayman reports:
Most stories around space today seem to revolve around SpaceX, but let's not forget that space is also a place for cool physics experiments. One such experiment currently running into low orbit is the MICROSCOPE satellite launched in 2016 to test the (weak) Equivalence Principle (also knows as the universality of free fall) a central hypothesis in General Relativity.
The first results confirm the principle with a precision ten times better than previous experiments. And it's just the beginning since they hope to increase the precision by another factor of 10. If the Equivalence Principle is still verified at this precision, this could constrain or invalidate some quantum gravity theories. For those of you who are more satellite-science oriented, the satellite also features an innovative "self destruct" mechanism (meant to limit orbit pollution) based on inflatable structures described in this paper.
"The science phase of the mission began in December 2016," reports France's space agency, "and has already collected data from 1,900 orbits, the equivalent of a free fall of 85 million kilometres or half the Earth-Sun distance."
The first results confirm the principle with a precision ten times better than previous experiments. And it's just the beginning since they hope to increase the precision by another factor of 10. If the Equivalence Principle is still verified at this precision, this could constrain or invalidate some quantum gravity theories. For those of you who are more satellite-science oriented, the satellite also features an innovative "self destruct" mechanism (meant to limit orbit pollution) based on inflatable structures described in this paper.
"The science phase of the mission began in December 2016," reports France's space agency, "and has already collected data from 1,900 orbits, the equivalent of a free fall of 85 million kilometres or half the Earth-Sun distance."
No, rotation and orbits don't affect the fact that the Earth has mass.
If the Earth were to slow its rotation, the portion of your weight that is offset by centripital acceleration would be less and you would immediately notice your weight increasing. If it were to stop rotating, the immense increase in gravity would collapse your body to a volume smaller than a grape and of course you would not survive this unique experience (along with everyone else). The energy of the collapse would of course have to go somewhere, and it would be mostly heat along with some sonic energy if the collapse happened quickly enough.
So do cows, which you all are. MOOOOO! MOOOOO! Mooooo cows MOOOOO! Moo say the cows! YOU ORBITAL COWS!!
...inertial mass equals GRAVITY! Oh, wait...
And this explains why humans have never, and can never, go anywhere near the north and south poles.
north and south poles
Pure inventions on the part of the round-earthers to hide the locations of the edges.
Have gnu, will travel.
You explained her highness, Hillary, and the votes she got. She laughed about screwing the working class. The real impact is not that trump was elected, but that the working class has rejected the DNC.
Is there any lay text around that explains how the experiment works? The article doesn't have and talks more about space pollution than relativity & gravity.
For those of you who don't pay attention to space matters, de-orbiting satellites is important because of something called the Kessler Syndrome. In effect, too much traffic up there would make it very difficult to get into space for thousands of years. This is also part of why the Chinese anti-satellite weapon test a while back was a big deal.
We try to track everything, especially everything above a certain size, so we can prevent collissions.
There's slightly more than a stub on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Real lawyers write in C++
It'd be nice if there could be some public discourse with this R vs D shit intruding constantly. I miss the good old days when once the election was over a few months later everyone had moved on. I blame 24 hour news that constantly strives to create division so they can sell more and more advertising.
What's heavier? 375 pounds of shit, or creimer?
Believe that and you will believe anything.
What a load of crap.
Newton came up with his laws of motion and gravity stuff three hundred years ago. It's still valid. There was a time when anyone leaving school knew such simple things.
What on Earth happened?
If you really want to experiment with gravity, look up the Allais Effect, and then design an experiment for the next solar eclipse. In the meantime, you can try to get a gyroscope to show rotation of the Earth.
Space is fake. Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.
This Flat Earth stuff is getting totally ridiculous. What does it mean space is fake? Let's not even dwell on the Earth is flat part. Let's just focus on the "space is fake" one. Are we living in a bi-dimensional world? Are Mars and the other planets fake? Even the Flat Earth Society recently replied to Elon Musk saying "Mars has been observed to be round." So where is Mars, if not in space?
I know you're just a troll, but come on, troll properly. The rest of your comment is equally dumb. "Sun and Moon same size and near"? "Moon has no rotation"? Can you even grasp basic concepts at all? Are you using speech to text because you never learned how to type?
Learn how to read, dumbass.
It's more than the 24-hour news cycle. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media also help perpetuate the adrenaline of electoral strife and factionalism. Unsurprisingly, they are also advertising-supported media. The owners of the media, both the news cycle and the social chatter continuum, also seem personally invested in factionalism and demand "change" and "disruption" and regardless of the topic and entirely despite the disruptive change of ruling faction from one party's near supermajority eight years ago to the other party's majority now - it's not even "change back to the old change" but simply "change for the sake of change." Plato warned of this in the Republic: there is an inherent tendency in generations to change, not always for the better, that a good polity's sustainability and stability temporarily, but not permanently, resists. We have reached the end of our polity's ability to resist destructive change, so we begin the slide from oligarchy through democracy and mob rule into tyranny.
That they may be identical suggests they are the exact same phenomenon, which is cooler than everything else put together.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is what we pay taxes for.
It'd be lovely, but the problem is in that lovely Gobbels quote, "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."
When the Trumpers start spewing their lies (and they're almost always lies, something like 5x per day minimum from Trump himself, with frequent repeats of previous falsified statements... that's not a partisan bias speaking), you simply have to challenge them. Every time.
Because when you don't, they win; people believe the unchallenged lie. You worry about being polite, but they see their brash rudeness as a positive thing. So yeah, until they're expunged from polite society, there's no polite society possible when they're around. You have to sink to their level because your level simply doesn't work with them.
Ah, yes, the unfounded "RUSSIANS!" lie. Keep repeating "RUSSIANS" and it sticks. Let's see here.
Would someone PLEASE reveal the ORIGIN of this "RUSSIANS" witchhunt? What evidence was there to begin with to base any investigation? When was the first occurrence of blaming "THE RUSSIANS" for mind controlling Americans?
It's been a year. The Soros plant Hillary LOST. The Democrats could have put ANYONE ELSE up, and Trump would have lost in a landslide. Your sour grapes GRIPING for a year after the election is unprecedented.
Or you could just go flush a toilet on the opposite side of the planet...
Not sure if you are serious, but Coriolis Effect is no longer claimed to cause swirl in draining water. Because whatever it is caused by (or isn't), it isn't the rotation of the Earth.
If the Earth makes my toilet spin, it could certainly make my gyroscope move. Or my hard drive.
Nothing about Trump is made OK by anything about Clinton.
Attempt to distract from the Orange Buffon: failed.
But you'll try again and again, right?
Pure inventions on the part of the round-earthers to hide the locations of the edges.
But the truth of the flat Earth will still win in the end; the Flat Earth Society has now members from all around the globe!
Let's use actual numbers, eh?
g = 9.81 m/s^2 /s
\Omega = 7.3e-5
R = 6380 km
R \Omega^2 is much less than g
Looks like you'll be fine.
I was missing these AC cow posts. Much more amusing than our recent flat earther coward.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Please mod this up "funny"!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
As our recent flat earth coward knows that all gyroscopes are rigidly fixed in space (he says so!). This is why no one with a laptop with a harddrive (or an iPod) has ever been able to tilt it in operation! Mystery solved!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
A gyroscope is rigidly fixed in space unless forced to change orientation. The purpose of the gymbals is to provide it the ability to rotate the gymbals instead of the rotor. The effect is that a gyroscope should appear to 'move' relative to the floor, desk, or the Earth, if the Earth is moving.
A hard drive will resist rotation as well, if you have ever held one while it is spinning. Like a gyroscope, a hard drive that isn't fixed in place by surface friction or bolts should tend to 'crawl' or move about as it resists the rotation of the Earth. This would be separate from the potential movements caused by head seeking.
A Leibert flywheel UPS would do the same thing, but should be especially forceful, considering the spinning rotor is storing enough electricity to power data center equipment until generators start up.
And as I said below, if the spinning Earth used to be powerful enough to spin my toilet water, why not anything else. (They no longer claim Coriolis effect turns toilet water)
Well you are partly coreect, ot is a theory, which means it makes predictions, those predictions can be tested, and so far those predictions have been proved right every tine. So I would have to dissagree with the second part of your statement. But if you cane produce a repetable experement that dissproves it thrtr is a rather famous comitie in Sweden that would like to hear from you.
”Most stories around space today seem to revolve around SpaceX, but let's not forget that space is also a place for cool physics experiments.”
Well, if the sum total of your science reading amounts to scanning Slashdot headlines, perhaps this is true. But then you probably also believe that the vast majority of financial news stories involve Bitcoin.
Otherwise... no. There’s a lot of very cool real space science going on right now! Meanwhile Musk is essentially running an innovative delivery service.
#DeleteChrome
Why is this modded funny? It should be insightful. Plus some extra points for creative sarcasm.
I can see it in a political discussion. You'd just think nerds could talk about Nerd stuff without bring up political bullshit. Maybe when it gets to GW I could see it but here it's got nothing to do with any of that.
Let's use actual numbers, eh?
g = 9.81 m/s^2 /s
\Omega = 7.3e-5
R = 6380 km
R \Omega^2 is much less than g
Looks like you'll be fine.
To be more precise, R * omega^2 = 0.0337 m/s^2, or about 0.34% of gravitational acceleration.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Shouldn't that read, "...every corner of the world?"
How many anti Trump news stories were retracted as fake news this week? How many new jobs were created last month? Are you using your critical thinking skills?
I can't seem to find anything explaining how the test works. Is it just measuring forces on balls with different densities or something?
You are part of a mass hallucination created by propaganda in the media. You wonder how the German people were taken in by Nazi propaganda that millions of their fellow citizens were evil? You and millions of your fellow leftists are living proof of how easy it is.
I'm a sidenote which political Party in the US has divided people against each other in every possible way encouraging them to think of themselves as victims and encouraging their anger all for political power? Just look at your anger. It feels good to hate doesn't it? Those chemicals in your brain that hate and anger produce give you a high that becomes addictive doesn't it? That's the whole point of the leftist propaganda in the US and it's working very well on you and millions like you. It's why so many of you put on masks and beat up people you see as evil. It feels good to hurt people doesn't it? I just wonder if you'll ever have a moment where you wake up from your hate-induxed hallucination and realize you are the Nazi.
No, it means your brain would pop out of your ass when you jumped.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Exactly right. It's an oblate spheroid.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
May I fork your version of the theory? I'd just like to take a stab at it, if I may. Pretty sure I can handle it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I know you're just a troll, but come on, troll properly.
This has been the MO of various trolls on Slashdot science topics for ages. They just copy past the exact same post over and over again, with maybe one sentence that gets tweaked each time. Doesn't matter that every other time they get a bunch of replies showing how wrong stuff is. They just keep saying, "But no one has ever answered this question," or, "No one ever talks about foo or bar," regardless of how many people have answered those questions or talked about such things.
It amounts to very lazy trolling, but it works almost every time. Some trolls do it for pride and sense of power over others, others just do it for a quick fix like some disheveled drug addict. At least APK put more effort into things by rewriting. Even most pseudoscientists have better things to do than copy paste the same thing over and over again on a message board without reading replies.
well?
Consider a spherical cow in a vacuum