Gravity Probe B

[mmcirvin]

Via Randy McDonald: Centauri Dreams summarizes the results of the Gravity Probe B experimentIt's a bit of an anticlimax, since the results simply confirm the predictions of Einstein's general relativity, which is pretty much what everyone expected. (Also, my understanding is that other experiments have already provided somewhat less direct

Comments

[ikkyu2]

My understanding from Wikipedia had been that unexpected electrostatic patches on the surface of the gyroscopes, as well as eddy currents and interruptions in the data collection, had led to a situation where the frame dragging effect was lost in the noise floor of the experiment, and that the amount of data massaging required to resurrect a signal out of the data was viewed as very questionable by the scientific community.

I do notice, however, that this issue didn't make it into popular coverage of the final press release. Do you know anything about it?

[mmcirvin]

Huh. First I'd heard of it.

I had heard that there was indirect evidence for the frame-dragging effect from other space-based experiments, and that, for that reason, a result implying a violation of GR would probably not have been taken very seriously. Combined with the overall expense of the project, many people had wondered whether the whole thing was long past its sell-by date.