NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment

[Wyverex]

May 4, 2011: Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.

Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).

"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.

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I think it's great that there's still pure science research going on. Applied science & technology is great, but they usually evolve faster after breakthroughs in fundamental knowledge

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I dunno, there's a lot of variables they couldn't eliminate like space debris/meteorites. Not saying general relativity is wrong; just saying I have little faith in this experiment.

 

[AsRock]

They will need a good shield generator too .

I have little faith in any thing they do tbh, in fact how America is at the moment the money could be better spent else were and we should start looking after what we have and stop this crap about other planets as we will just do the same to that one.

 

[digibucc]

They will need a good shield generator too .

I have little faith in any thing they do tbh, in fact how America is at the moment the money could be better spent else were and we should start looking after what we have and stop this crap about other planets as we will just do the same to that one.

i entirely disagree. the pie below shows spending:

we need to STOP trying to police the world, and find ourselves a way to space. our planet will NOT last forever, and every generation we sit here brings us closer to extinction.

the most important thing the human race could EVER do for itself, is come together well enough to make our way into space.

 

[AsRock]

i entirely disagree. the pie below shows spending:
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?...=p3&chl=2010 NASA budget|2010 Military budget

we need to STOP trying to police the world, and find ourselves a way to space. our planet will NOT last forever, and every generation we sit here brings us closer to extinction.

the most important thing the human race could EVER do for itself, is come together well enough to make our way into space.

Silly chart has no numbers lol.. And so what if the human race goes like hell it be more of a good thing than bad as hell we cannot look after the one we have already.

Cannot tell me that this planet would not be so much better of without us lol.

And still regardless how low it may seem tot he military budget was last years nasa crap some thing around 20 billion ?.. Which could of gone to help New Orleans and please that place is not right even today.

 

[digibucc]

Silly chart has no numbers lol.. And so what if the human race goes like hell it be more of a good thing than bad as hell we cannot look after the one we have already.

Cannot tell me that this planet would not be so much better of without us lol.

And still regardless how low it may seem tot he military budget was last years nasa crap some thing around 20 billion ?.. Which could of gone to help New Orleans and please that place is not right even today.

so it'd be a good thing if we were extinct, but we should do more to help new orleans?

i care about the planet and all, but mostly to the extent that my life depends on it. sure
the planet would be better off, but we would not exist so how is that even a considerable option?

 

[NinkobEi]

Nasa's budget is .45% of 1 penny for each $100 payed in taxes..or something like that. As far as I'm concerned, their budget is the only worthwhile money spent ;P

 

[digibucc]

Nasa's budget is .45% of 1 penny for each $100 payed in taxes..or something like that. As far as I'm concerned, their budget is the only worthwhile money spent ;P

++++++

how could science and exploring space NOT be considered the most important thing humans could ever do.

i just don't get it.

 

[plugugly]

how could science and exploring space NOT be considered the most important thing humans could ever do.

i just don't get it.

Because the cost of exploring space is prohibitive and until we find a way to make some money off of it there will be no incentive to explore. For the most part I think the only way we can continue exploring into space is by removing it from being a government sponsored undertaking and push the cost into the private sector. Surely if there is money to made in a galaxy far far away, it will be done.

 

[digibucc]

Because the cost of exploring space is prohibitive and until we find a way to make some money off of it there will be no incentive to explore. For the most part I think the only way we can continue exploring into space is by removing it from being a government sponsored undertaking and push the cost into the private sector. Surely if there is money to made in a galaxy far far away, it will be done.

so we don't have to be physically exploring if it's not worth it, but researching the technology.

i'm not saying we are currently going about it the best way, but i am saying less money
and opportunity is not the answer. the goal is of the utmost importance, so we need to
continue to advance in every way possible towards that goal.

 

[HTC]

Because the cost of exploring space is prohibitive and until we find a way to make some money off of it there will be no incentive to explore. For the most part I think the only way we can continue exploring into space is by removing it from being a government sponsored undertaking and push the cost into the private sector. Surely if there is money to made in a galaxy far far away, it will be done.

No: US's defense budget is prohibitive.

 

[plugugly]

The defense budget is extremely high, but with that budget there is a lot of money being made. Contracts to design and build the weapons which we use to make war, the United States Defense budget creates jobs and helps maintain an entire industry, more so than the exploration of space does.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Because the cost of exploring space is prohibitive and until we find a way to make some money off of it there will be no incentive to explore. For the most part I think the only way we can continue exploring into space is by removing it from being a government sponsored undertaking and push the cost into the private sector. Surely if there is money to made in a galaxy far far away, it will be done.

So I guess the government figured out a way to rape us on health care then? Or are you just for privatizing things the corporate/goverment masters say is good for you? We need NASA. We need everything they can bring and have brought to our lives. Turn off the Ed Schultz and open your mind. NASA can give us results. A lot more then any bomb ever could.

 

[digibucc]

so i guess the government figured out a way to rape us on health care then? Or are you just for privatizing things the corporate/goverment masters say is good for you? We need nasa. We need everything they can bring and have brought to our lives. Turn off the ed schultz and open your mind. Nasa can give us results. A lot more then any bomb ever could.

qftmft

 

[plugugly]

So I guess the government figured out a way to rape us on health care then? Or are you just for privatizing things the corporate/goverment masters say is good for you? We need NASA. We need everything they can bring and have brought to our lives. Turn off the Ed Schultz and open your mind. NASA can give us results. A lot more then any bomb ever could.

Government raping us on health care? What the hell are you talking about. The only reason the government is attempting to making any changes to health care is to lower the cost of it, and the reason they want to lower the cost of it is because of the massive impact the cost of Health Care is having on our budget ( See Medicare/MediCaid budget for a real shocking contrast).

I wasn't suggesting that the massive disparity of spending between NASA and Defense was a great idea, I was just giving some insight to why it is.

 

[Sasqui]

Getting off the topic of military vs. Nasa budget, the whole GPS system is designed around the thoery of relativity (it really IS true):

" To achieve this level of precision, the clock ticks from the GPS satellites must be known to an accuracy of 20-30 nanoseconds. However, because the satellites are constantly moving relative to observers on the Earth, effects predicted by the Special and General theories of Relativity must be taken into account to achieve the desired 20-30 nanosecond accuracy.

Because an observer on the ground sees the satellites in motion relative to them, Special Relativity predicts that we should see their clocks ticking more slowly (see the Special Relativity lecture). Special Relativity predicts that the on-board atomic clocks on the satellites should fall behind clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per day because of the slower ticking rate due to the time dilation effect of their relative motion.

Further, the satellites are in orbits high above the Earth, where the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth's mass is less than it is at the Earth's surface. A prediction of General Relativity is that clocks closer to a massive object will seem to tick more slowly than those located further away (see the Black Holes lecture). As such, when viewed from the surface of the Earth, the clocks on the satellites appear to be ticking faster than identical clocks on the ground. A calculation using General Relativity predicts that the clocks in each GPS satellite should get ahead of ground-based clocks by 45 microseconds per day.

The combination of these two relativitic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)! This sounds small, but the high-precision required of the GPS system requires nanosecond accuracy, and 38 microseconds is 38,000 nanoseconds. If these effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day! The whole system would be utterly worthless for navigation in a very short time. This kind of accumulated error is akin to measuring my location while standing on my front porch in Columbus, Ohio one day, and then making the same measurement a week later and having my GPS receiver tell me that my porch and I are currently about 5000 meters in the air somewhere over Detroit. ..."

http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

well the way i see it, meteorites contain precious materials are planet lacks, other planets around us could be harnessed for different gases that could be used for a multitude of different purposes, theres also the fact that planets could contain new metals and materials that could reshape how we build things, but im guessing those are not good enough reasons either right? Besides it may be an issue that we are using are planet, but mars had water at somepoint and life, which means deep in mars there could be oil of some kind similar to what we use, now granted yes we are moving towards cleaner energy but if we could actually travel to mars and mine its materials would that not also be a a good reason to explore space.

Fact is Nasa's budget is tiny compared to what we spend blowing up destorying or using of are own planet, id rather pay for nasa to develop new tech and get us closer to exploring and exploiting are galaxy, because the sooner we can exploit the galaxy itself the sooner we can stop exploiting earth to the ridiculous extent that we do.

and for those against space exploitation id rather blow up all the other planets and save earth because earth is the only planet in are solar system that can support life, all other planets to me are just giant resources we cant quite exploit yet.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Government raping us on health care? What the hell are you talking about. The only reason the government is attempting to making any changes to health care is to lower the cost of it, and the reason they want to lower the cost of it is because of the massive impact the cost of Health Care is having on our budget ( See Medicare/MediCaid budget for a real shocking contrast).

Which in turn will skyrocket cost. It already has.

 

[NinkobEi]

Because the cost of exploring space is prohibitive and until we find a way to make some money off of it there will be no incentive to explore. For the most part I think the only way we can continue exploring into space is by removing it from being a government sponsored undertaking and push the cost into the private sector. Surely if there is money to made in a galaxy far far away, it will be done.

You assume NASA has never made money for the Gov't. I dare say NASA is responsible for the creation of satellites, COMPUTERS (Where would computer tech be without a good reason for computing power?), tons of synthetic plastics, biological/pharmaceutical research (cant have our astronauts getting sick, biology in space is very much different from biology on earth).

There are so many things that NASA is indirectly responsible for that I cant even name them all. Hell, I challenge you to find something that NASA ISN'T indirectly responsible for in today's society. The moon landing fiasco furthered human knowledge/technology more than any project in history.

 

[plugugly]

There are so many things that NASA is indirectly responsible for that I cant even name them all. Hell, I challenge you to find something that NASA ISN'T indirectly responsible for in today's society. The moon landing fiasco furthered human knowledge/technology more than any project in history.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that NASA is not good, and exploration is good for humanity. However, the discussion was about removing money from one part of the federal budget to another. Explicitly, taking money out of the Defense budget and adding it to NASA's budget.

And what exactly did the moon landing give us aside for a hollow victory against the Soviet Union. The only reason we were able to go to the moon and make those great leaps into space during the 60's was because NASA's budget at the time was around %4 of the federal budget, currently NASA's budget is around %.6 so we would have to increase NASA's budget by over %600 to get back to where we were in the 60's.

 

[cheesy999]

And what exactly did the moon landing give us aside for a hollow victory against the Soviet Union. The only reason we were able to go to the moon and make those great leaps into space during the 60's was because NASA's budget at the time was around %4 of the federal budget, currently NASA's budget is around %.6 so we would have to increase NASA's budget by over `0 to get back to where we were in the 60's.

moon landing was terrible, takes all the mystery out of it, what's that up in space? nothing just a lump of rock

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

mystery what mystery its not like anyone believed the moon was a giant cookie that could end world hunger or something / end troll post

lol

 

[cheesy999]

mystery what mystery its not like anyone believed the moon was a giant cookie that could end world hunger or something / end troll post

lol

yeah but there's a lot of religous stuff based on themoon etc if you see what i mean

 

[Suhidu]

mystery what mystery its not like anyone believed the moon was a giant cookie that could end world hunger or something / end troll post

lol

You mean you never thought ... not even for a moment, that just maybe....

 

[streetfighter 2]

That's all fine and well, BUT WHERE THE HELL ARE THE GRAVITONS!?!?

Sorry I couldn't resist . That's an actual quote and picture of Clifford Will, one of the people monitoring this experiment.

In case anyone cares, here are a few things NASA did for you.