Gravity Probe 2 Success: Lens Thirring Effect Explained

[narasimha640]

Hello,

Can someone update me about the success of gravity probe 2 please?

Narasimha!

 

[Hdeasy]

It seems to have demonstrated the classical Lens Thirring Effect alright. But anomalies in the superconducting gyroscope measurements may be part of the proof of a much bigger force - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger than the classical Lens Thirring Effect of General Relativity - http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0707/0707.3806.pdf http://www.earthtech.org/experiments/tajmar/GM_field/index.html and maybe even a new TOE - http://www.hpcc-space.de/

 

[Vanadium 50]

Are any of these published in peer-reviewed journals?

 

[Hdeasy]

Sure - the Tajmar results have been mentioned in several of his journal papers. EHT is to get an AIP paper out soon - passed 2 levels of peeer review and is at the final stage.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Can you give me a reference? I see conference proceedings, but no refereed journals that discuss this.

 

[Hdeasy]

e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1797 .

 

[narasimha640]

Vanadium 50, I searched the net I cannot see if NASA's final report is published in any peer-reviewed article, so I am not sure if this is a worthwhile test for telling frame-dragging due to Earth's rotation.

What I did manage to lay my hands on is a document at stanford university website:http://einstein.stanford.edu/content...020509-web.pdf

I quote the below from the pdf doc page 6. "The gyroscope is a spinning spherical body. Conceptually, therefore, Gravity Probe B is simple. All it needs is a star, a telescope, and a spinning sphere. The difficulty lies in the numbers. To reach the 0.5 marc-s/yr experiment goal calls for:
1) One or more exceedingly accurate gyroscopes with drift rates < 10-11 deg/hr, i.e. 6 to 7 orders of magnitude better than the best modeled inertial navigation gyroscopes
2) A reference telescope ~3 orders of magnitude better than the best previous star trackers
3) A sufficiently bright suitably located guide star (IM Pegasi was chosen) whose proper motion with respect to remote inertial space is known to <0.5 marc-s/yr
4) Sufficiently accurate orbit information to calibrate the science signal and calculate the two predicted effects"

Going by its method I am not sure what is it really trying to prove and accomplish?