Letters to Nature
Nature 431, 958-960 (21 October 2004) | doi:10.1038/nature03007; Received 2 June 2004; Accepted 10 September 2004
A confirmation of the general relativistic prediction of the Lense–Thirring effect
- Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Innovazione, Università di Lecce and INFN Sezione di Lecce, Via Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
- Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET/UMBC), University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, Maryland 21250, USA
Correspondence to: I. Ciufolini1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to I.C. (Email: ignazio.ciufolini@unile.it).
An important early prediction of Einstein's general relativity1, 2, 3 was the advance of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, whose measurement provided one of the classical tests of Einstein's theory4. The advance of the orbital point-of-closest-approach also applies to a binary pulsar system5, 6 and to an Earth-orbiting satellite3. General relativity also predicts that the rotation of a body like Earth will drag the local inertial frames of reference around it3, 7, which will affect the orbit of a satellite8. This Lense–Thirring effect has hitherto not been detected with high accuracy9, but its detection with an error of about 1 per cent is the main goal of Gravity Probe B—an ongoing space mission using orbiting gyroscopes10. Here we report a measurement of the Lense–Thirring effect on two Earth satellites: it is 99 5 per cent of the value predicted by general relativity; the uncertainty of this measurement includes all known random and systematic errors, but we allow for a total
10 per cent uncertainty to include underestimated and unknown sources of error.
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS
These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.
NEWS AND VIEWS
Timing timeNature News and Views (24 May 1979)
Superfluid gyroscopeNature News and Views (17 Sep 1992)
See all 4 matches for News And ViewsRESEARCH
Secular variation of Earth's gravitational harmonic J 2 coefficient from Lageos and nontidal acceleration of Earth rotationNature Article (30 Jun 1983)
Gravitation TheoryScientific American Article (01 Nov 1974)
See all 12 matches for Research