'Einstein Probe' Delayed 409
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?"
NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:2, Informative)
Heck, remember when the Spirit Mars Rover crashed? They updated the software afterwards on both rovers to prevent future crashed from happening.
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at Gravity Probe B's Site [stanford.edu] 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.
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:2)
They didn't follow the rules: (Score:5, Funny)
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.Re:They didn't follow the rules: (Score:4, Funny)
8. If it is old news for geeks or stuff that doesn't matter, send it to Slashdot. Again.
9. ???
10. Profit!!!
Re:They didn't follow the rules: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:3, Funny)
Or so Billy says...
Diego
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think He was cremated
"I want to be cremated, so people don't come to worship at my bones," he once said. [guardian.co.uk]
An interesting story if you don't already know it
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:4, Funny)
From the article (Score:3)
I think it was appropriate:
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:3, Funny)
-BlakeOPS
Re:NASA's near M$ like mistake! (Score:5, Informative)
Variable high-altitude winds just prior to launch required them to update the flight control parameters, but they couldn't verify that the update was successful in the final 4 minutes before launch. Better safe than sorry, so they scrubbed it 'till tomorrow.
Kirk to Enterprise... (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:2)
only if your name is Joao Magueijo
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [comcity.com] have indicated that photons can apear to tunnel [freerepublic.com]through barriers faster then light.
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:3, Interesting)
Poppycock! If you had colonies/armies that always traveled at high percentages of c, then they'd all be within similar enough frames of reference that they'd be able to easily carry out wars. To everyone on a "slow" planet, a war would take anywhere from hundreds to millions of years, but to the factions fighting it's all happening within real-time.
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't the emission of entangled-quanta already violate thee speed of light? I believe this was tested in the Aspect Experiment.
Also, I just took a course in the philosophy of physics but the one thing I never understood was how anything going was than the seepd of light would ruin Einstein's theory? If another THING was found that was faster as light and had the same speed in all inertial frames wouldn't that be sufficient? You could have THING-cones (where volume(THING-cone) > volume(Light-cone)at an
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:4, Informative)
No matter, energy, or information is propagated faster than light in quantum entanglement.
Einstein's theory itself doesn't forbid something from going faster than light. (However, there are problems with FTL objects and causality, such as observers for which effects take place before causes, and tachyons also destablize the vacuum in quantum field theory.) It does forbid objects from crossing the c barrier (which would require infinite energy).
In a theory with Lorentz symmetry (i.e., relativity), there is only one invariant speed: the speed of light. There can't be another speed (faster or slower than c) that is invariant in all inertial frames.
In relativity, massless objects can travel at only one speed (c), neither faster nor slower.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Funny)
_UN_fortunately?
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Funny)
> _UN_fortunately?
Well, in most necks of the woods they're actually rather dense.
HOO-ha!
warp space? (Score:3, Interesting)
When Kepler figured out the planetary orbits, he envisioned invisible brooms sweeping the planets towards the sun. When I read "gravity is just curved spacetime" I think of Kepler's brooms as they both seem to say about as much.
Saying "mass warps spacetime" doesn't explain how it pulls that stunt anymore than answering who was pushing Kepler's brooms.
Just how does mass warp space? How does
Re:warp space? (Score:4, Informative)
Think more like a bowling ball on a trampoline. The bowling ball will "warp" the trampoline, and objects placed on the trampoline will fall toward it.
As for planetary motion, I'm sure you've seen those funnels that you put coins in. The coin spins round and round. Friction eventually slows it down enough to fall toward the center. If your coin was in a vacuum and had sufficient velocity, it could keep going around the center forever. (e.g. The Earth keeps "missing" the Sun)
Just how does mass warp space? How does space know the mass is around?
We don't know the former yet. Space knows mass is around, because at a quantum level matter and energy are inbalances in the vacuum. "Empty" space is really a bunch of wild waves called "quantum foam" that all cancel each other out.
What particle is gravity's carrier?
Gravitons are only theoretical. At this point it looks like they don't exist. In other words, gravity waves are perpetrated in a vacuum instead of by a particle like the strong force's gluon.
If there is a gravity particle, how come planets don't speed up as they plow into them orbiting the sun?
If a planet heads toward the Sun (not a good thing) it *will* speed up. The trick is that a stable orbit implies having *just enough* speed to keep missing the object.
And how come it gets to escape black holes but no other particles can come out and play?
Because there's no particle. It's the nature of space-time.
We can describe gravity's effects but we can't say how it does the trick.
General Relativity says gravity == acceleration. Therefore, the presence of matter and energy "slopes" space-time in such a way as to accelerate all other particles in the Universe.
Re:warp space? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, according to String Theory, they're very real.
ST's use of them is really interesting - there's always been kind of a mystery as to why gravity is so weak compared to the other forces. ST says that the strong/weak forces and electromagnetism have carrier particles whose strings are anchored to our brane in the bulk*. It goes on to say that gravitons' strings are free-floating, so they are not bound to our brane. This would mean that when a source of gravity was present, much of it was leaking out of our brane, leaving behind the relatively weak force we feel instead.
Apparently something that is being looked forward to with the Large Hadron Collider is that they might be able to see evidence of a graviton escaping from our brane.
* For those who aren't familiar with these concepts, ST includes the idea that our 3+1 dimensional universe (3 spatial, plus time) is only one "slice" of an extradimensional body called "the bulk." The "slice" is referred to as a "brane." If String Theory is right, there are other branes millimetres away from us, but in a higher spatial dimension. The only theoretical way to communicate between them is with a graviton-generating device.
Incidentally, Alastair Reynolds makes use of this concept in his latest novel, Absolution Gap. There are some quotes from his books in my journal if anyone is interested.
Re:warp space? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that sums science up: you always have to say "nature behaves AS IF it were this way"; we can see the hands on the watch go round but we cannot open the case (Einstein).
frame dragging is an uninteresting effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is the effect uninteresting? According to the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism [livingreviews.org], which describes most reasonable extensions of Newtonian gravity, frame dragging is a combination of only two effects: the amount of curvature of space caused by matter and lack of spatial isotropy, each given by a parameter. In GR, those parameters are 1 and 0, respectively.
Now, we know the amount of spati
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:2)
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of couse, the only way we know we're travelling "faster than the speed of light" is that we can measure the time between our point of origin and our point of destination. Time dilation makes sure that we're never able to pass light. If there was nothing else in the universe but your ship and light, you'd have no way of knowing that you were moving! How annoying is that?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:3, Informative)
You're off by a factor of 2. Light travels ~300,000 km/sec to all observers.
Light originating from his ship would be travling at normal speed to him, but faster or slower in perspective to anyone (or anything) he was passing.
Nope. Light originating from his ship would travel ~300,000 km/sec to him and anyone else who might be watching.
So, the spee
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/cship.html [fourmilab.ch]
Remember, everything is relative. All frames of reference are equally valid, and there is no "universal speeed limit". There is however, a universal time dilation limit. Once you reach light speed (impossible with a rocket or particle accelerator), you'll be forever frozen in time (just like a photon).
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Faster than light ships? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're missing the frame of reference. Yes, you can't actually *catch* light. Light speed will always be light speed. But from a frame of reference on a rocket ship experiencing time dilation, you can most certainly accelerate to a speed that would *appear* faster than light.
So thanks to time dilation, I can make it to Alpha Centauri in 6 months. But to everyone back home, it took me 4 years. Which one is correct? The answer is that both are. To
I can understand (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Know thy hypotheses.... (Score:5, Informative)
Then you have a Type II error, methinks. It's not that you are wrong outright (like a Type I error. You've just missed the chance to reject the null hypothesis correctly was munged. Refine. Try again.
Re:Know thy hypotheses.... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Frame dragging" already proven (Score:5, Funny)
Mod parent +5 funny (Score:2)
They are spending money on the wrong things. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:They are spending money on the wrong things. (Score:2)
I observe Frame Dragging all the time.... (Score:5, Funny)
verification (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine a warp bubble rendering the contents essentially massless, thus the input energy for kinetic motion is miniscule enabling fantastic speeds.
However if they are right, that might mean that general relativity rules and we are forced to live by it's law (It's still a theory, will this make it a law?). How unfortunate.
Re:verification (Score:2)
Re:verification (Score:4, Funny)
sorry, buddy there's no such thing as a flux capacitor.
Re:verification (Score:2, Informative)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Let me put it this way:
Greetings from next Tuesday!
Is your name... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is your name... (Score:3, Funny)
Yup, that's me.
Oh, by the way, next week isn't going to be too good for you. Think twice before eating that fish you have in the fridge.
Experiment be wrong ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Experiment be wrong ? (Score:2)
RC Ships (Score:2)
Antimatter not included
what happens if Frame Dragging isn't observed (Score:4, Informative)
I've read that frame dragging had already been reported in astronomical observations, and that this is expected to be an important but unsurprising laboratory confirmation of the phenomenon.
Wrong name (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:5, Interesting)
You can listen to John Turneaure [npr.org], 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 [comcast.net] 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.
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:2)
The problem is the data is meaningless, unless you know a lot about the instruments sensors, their tolerances, outputs etc. I am sure a lot of math has to be done in order to come up with usefull data.
So they will have to post blue prints on the site as well as describe each electrical element used. It will be quite a PITA.
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:2)
Actually, it's the satellite which is being "astrocized". You mean "ostracized".*
*From an ancient Greek custom of having everyone secretly vote once a year to throw somebody out of the community. The ballots were written on bits of broken pottery, or 'ostrakai'.
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:3, Insightful)
We kind of have a LOT to thank Tesla for after all. Go read some of his patents if you have any doubts Selected Tesla Patents [pbs.org].
In my opinion if Tesla where alive today he would have been one of the biggest Open Source advocates around. The reason why everybody who turns on a light swich fed by AC current generated by one of Tesla generators doesn't thank him for it is mainy due to his lack of capitalist motivation. He believed in informat
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:3, Insightful)
I think billions in today's money is more like it. It is unfortunate that he did not have the business accumen to negotiate ongoing royalties so he could fund his later experiments.
Instead of negotiating a lower royalty rate, he let Westinghouse off the hook.
Tesla was a great person. But what I am referring to are people who live in the realm
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:3, Insightful)
What you misheard/misunderstood was the standard NASA procedure for data. The Principal Investigator gets the data exclusively for a year, then it's released into the public domain along with the specs/calibration
Re:Don't worry, the "fix is in" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and this is why they embargo the Hubble pictures too.
Just because it is standard procedure doesn't make it right. When I wrote out my check for taxes this last week, some of that money goes to fund NASA. The public funds NASA in its entirety. So, they should have
Of course its delayed, its moving very fast! (Score:2)
Its moving very fast, and actually ahead of schedule acording to atomic clocks on board; however, according to the time that we perceive it is delayed by 24 hours.
how does frame dragging relate to warp speed? (Score:4, Informative)
"...test frame dragging, predicted by the theory of relativity... will we get faster-than-light ships for Christmas?"
What does frame dragging have to do with faster-than-light?? The wikipedia [wikipedia.org] link mentions nothing about how frame dragging has to do with faster-then-light, so I searched google and found this article on msn [msn.com]:
"Spinning black holes may pull in gaseous matter from their sister stars as a rapidly rotating "accretion disk," analogous to water circling down a bathtub drain.
The American scientists built on their previous research into the mass and spin of black holes to look for signs of space-time distortion, or frame-dragging.
In Einsteinian physics, the space-time continuum is often compared to a sheet of rubber. Mass creates a gravitational "dimple" in that space-time sheet. But a rotating object -- like a spinning black hole -- adds an extra twist to the dimple. Matter caught in that twist would appear to wobble in orbit around the object, like a toy top wobbling on its axis.
Cui explained that travelers passing close to a black hole would feel as if "nothing happened." But a distant observer would see the travelers being dragged around the black hole."
Re:how does frame dragging relate to warp speed? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the black hole example, those wobbling bits of matter aren't wobbling in their own "frame", it's the space they're sitting on that's wobbling. It's like a moving sidewalk. You can only run at the speed of light, but if you get on the sidewalk that's already going X, then you can run at your top speed but move in relation to the rest of the universe at the speed of light + X.
The Alcubierre drive is
Re:how does frame dragging relate to warp speed? (Score:4, Funny)
you may not know shit, but you sure know your Alcubierre warp drives.
Is this gravity's magnetism (Score:3, Interesting)
You know how there is an electric force caused by electric charges and a magnetic force caused by the movement of electric charges. Then when you study maxwell they tell you that the electric and magnetic forces are really two aspects of one force.
Is frame dragging the result of a force that is equivalent to magnetism for gravity. In SAT analogy terms, is:
gravity:frame dragging force
They are making it too complicated. (Score:5, Funny)
It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
Put your hands on your hips
And bring your knees in tight
And it's the pelvic thrust that really makes you insane
Let's do the time warp again!
Let's do the time warp again!
Superstition (Score:2)
Which means that the satellite could end up sucking me up into space?
Diego
It's already been observed. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
NASA Budget Cuts (Score:4, Funny)
I bet they're wishing now they'd kept the About box in the spec.
Gravity A (Score:3, Insightful)
Gravity Comparative Programming Languages (Score:3, Funny)
A perfect SuperString implementation has yet to be added to the language, although many incompatable approximations exist.
As we know from recent
The real reason for the launch delay. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
COME ON!!! (Score:3, Funny)
I would say that it's a little late (Score:3, Funny)
Scientists always wanted the project killed (Score:4, Informative)
So why not work on something useful like alternate propulsion systems or batteries that keep my mp3's coming for more than 10 hours....
Re:Scientists always wanted the project killed (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Interesting Interview of Scientists on NPR (Score:3, Informative)
Talk Of The Nation Science Friday [npr.org]
Seek to 27:30 for the start of the audio program on Frame Dragging.
On experimental results (Score:3, Interesting)
The question that interests me more is: doesn't *anyone* know how science works anymore? The only failed experiment is one with *no* results.
If frame dragging is not observed, then lots of scientists will be trying to work out why. Did the experiment measure what we thought it would? If yes, what do we have to do to contemporary physics (which is a pretty darned good fit to observed reality) to account for the result? If no, what did we miss?
(I'm now thinking of the hoary old joke about the cub reporter who came back from a society wedding to tell the editor that there was no story because the groom never showed up.)
Re:A negative result is a good result (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A negative result is a good result (Score:3, Funny)
1) Good result, but result appears to confirm the prediction - this is a successful experiment - a negative result is as valid as a positive one.
1) Good result, and result appears to confirm the prediction - this is a successful experiment
That says the same freaking thing!! Not to mention you started at 1, went to 2, and then did 2 more 1's just trying to get to "four posibilities."
Re:A negative result is a good result (Score:5, Insightful)
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
examples of each? (Score:4, Informative)
The only good result is a dead result. (Score:3, Funny)
1) Bad result, but your graduate advisor yells at you. This is not a successful experiment.
2) Good result, but your graduate advisor takes the credit for it. Your advisor might consider this a successful experiment, but then he also calls you his "lab bitch" at faculty luncheons. Call it a draw.
3) Good result, but you will be unable to reproduce it ever again. Like the fabled WOW! event [bigear.org] in radio astronomy, this tantalizing glimpse of success will haunt you through your waking
Re:If frame dragging isn't observed... (Score:5, Interesting)
They had built the pyramids and horse & buggy just fine without Newton.
Re:If frame dragging isn't observed... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If frame dragging isn't observed... (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as the usefulness of this, it is also usefull to know how the world around you works. Take nuclear physics -- i am sure people would have characterized the early experiments with radium as pointless, but now the long term future of humanity depends on nuclear energy. The ultimate destruction of humanity also depends on nuclear energy. So whether you are pro or anti humans, nuclear energy is your best bet!!!
Re:NASA double checking stuff? (Score:2, Insightful)
The American space program is one of the safest in the world, thats why they're being so cautious with the shuttle fleet.
The Russian space program on the other hand has been known to take huge saftey/performance/cost trade offs in order to get things off the ground ( no pun intended ). Just because the Russians are launching day and night does NOT imply a higher operational saftey. You are mistaking the effect for the cause, sir.
Re:NASA double checking stuff? (Score:2, Informative)
Funny, I sort of remember that Soyuz capsules have a better safety record than space shuttles. Hell, they're even used as emergency reentry vehicles on the ISS...
Re:NASA double checking stuff? (Score:2)
the shuttle is both (kinda).
Re:Obligatory Limerick (Score:3, Funny)
"I have learned something new about matter:
My speed was so great,
Much increased was my weight,
Yet I failed to become any fatter!"
Hehe, this was written by A.H. Reginald Buller, who's building on the University of Manitoba campus i've slaved away many many hours in... The funny thing is this limeric was written by a Biologist who specialized in Fungi
Re:Obligatory Limerick (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously the glow-in-the-dark "special magic" variety.