52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
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Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#2it's not necessarily a tl;dr i'm requestion, so much as a physic geek deciphering.
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#3[deleted]
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#4Is there an arXiv paper on that?
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#5it's not necessarily a tl;dr i'm requestion, so much as a physic geek deciphering.
RobotRollCall gave an explanation of the thing in the relevant /r/science thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/h45c8/nasa_announced_...
(side note: RRC is one of the best commenters to ever happen to /r/science, or more generally Reddit)
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#6Here's the wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B
One point about it is that the probe had a lot of noise, so much noise that it swamped the signal. It was only by developing computer models of the source of the noise, and then subtracting it from the signal that the result was found.
But I find such "adjustments" distasteful. I mean everyone expects a certain answer, and voilà you get that answer. Is there a bug in your code? Or course not - you got the expected answer didn't you?
(See the section called "NASA review" in the wikipedia article.)
Anyway, now that they learned so much about such probes they should launch another one and get much cleaner data.
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#7Here's the wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B One point about it is that the probe had a lot of noise, so much noise that it swamped the signal. It was only by developing computer models of the source of the noise, and then subtracting it from the signal that the result was found. But I find such "adjustments" distasteful. I mean everyone expects a certain answer, and voilà you get tha…
But I find such "adjustments" distasteful.
Well, you have to deal with it somehow. If you know the source of the noise, there's no excuse for not modelling it.
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#8Here's the wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B One point about it is that the probe had a lot of noise, so much noise that it swamped the signal. It was only by developing computer models of the source of the noise, and then subtracting it from the signal that the result was found. But I find such "adjustments" distasteful. I mean everyone expects a certain answer, and voilà you get tha…
But I find such "adjustments" distasteful. Well, you have to deal with it somehow. If you know the source of the noise, there's no excuse for not modelling it.
Sure, but the point is that if there's something wrong with your model of the noise, the result could be completely invalid.
Look at the history of Milliken's oil-drop experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan.27...
He got the wrong answer, but subsequent researchers who got different results kind of smoothed their own results to match the "correct" (actually wrong) expected result.
I'm not saying that happened here, but it's always a possibility.
Essentially, how do you know when you've modelled the noise accurately enough? When you get the expected right answer? Why not continue to refine the noise model, or consider other ones?
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#9For Dr. Everitt, who joined the Gravity Probe experiment in 1962 as a young postdoctoral fellow and has worked on nothing else since, the announcement on Wednesday capped a career-long journey.
There's something so profound about that.
To think of how many jobs I've held in my comparatively short life, how many minor career changes I've had here and there, how many massive shifts in interest and passion I've had over the years, and to hold these up beside someone who has been wholly dedicated to the same singular goal since before I was even born--that's just mind-boggling.
And it was selfless! This one singular goal to which he's dedicated himself, every one of the fifty years of work that went into it, ultimately ended up becoming--at least when boiled down to a headline--a footnote to someone else's greatness.
Five decades. I can't even begin to fathom what sort of drive and passion and commitment that must require.
Bravo.
Re: 52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right
#10Here's the wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B One point about it is that the probe had a lot of noise, so much noise that it swamped the signal. It was only by developing computer models of the source of the noise, and then subtracting it from the signal that the result was found. But I find such "adjustments" distasteful. I mean everyone expects a certain answer, and voilà you get tha…
For those with 65 minutes of time, here's an excellent presentation about it by Dr. Everitt himself:
http://einstein.stanford.edu/Media/Everitt_Brainstorm-flash....