[extropy-chat] frame dragging confirmed

[Damien Broderick]

By ROBERT ROY BRITT
SPACE.com

After 11 years of watching the movements of two Earth-orbiting satellites, 
researchers found each is dragged by about 6 feet (2 meters) every year 
because the very fabric of space is twisted by our whirling world.

The results, announced today, are much more precise than preliminary 
findings published by the same group in the late 1990s.

The effect is called frame dragging. It is a modification to the simpler 
aspects of gravity set out by Newton. Working from Einstein's relativity 
theory, Austrian physicists Joseph Lense and Hans Thirring predicted frame 
dragging in 1918. (It is also known as the Lense-Thirring effect.)....

The researchers say their result is 99 percent of the predicted drag, with 
an error of up to 10 percent. The details are reported in the Oct. 21 issue 
of the journal Nature.