NASA GRACE Launched

James Evans writes: "NASA has successfully launched GRACE (http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/). The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment uses 2 satellites, which communicate via a microwave ranging system, in an effort to map the Earth's gravity fields with amazing accuracy." Update: 03/18 02:37 GMT by T : secondsun points to this CNN story on the project as well.

More about the story

[jeneag]

Article on Space.com [space.com]
Image of the rocket [space.com]

Finally

[spike hay]

Often I lay awake in bed into the wee hours of the morning wondering about the location, size, and strengh of Earth's gravitaional anomalies.

Finally, I will know!

Also, fun fact: Gravity is negative energy. The negative gravity energy of an object exactly balances out the positive mass. This way the total energy of the universe is 0. That means the big bang did not violate conservation of energy. It was just a vacuum fluctuation.
Since the total energy of the big bang vacuum flucuation was zero, it can last forever. This is in contrast to most microscopic vacuum fluctuations that only exist for short periods of time.

Re:Finally

[sconeu]

No, Pascual Jordan and Einstein both thought that the concept of the Universe as a vacuum fluctuation was valid.

Drastic financial implications...

[raytoler]

This could have drastic financial implications for the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, CA and other tourist attractions relying on a gravity vortex! We must quash this research now!