Finally, results from Gravity Probe B
There has been a bit of discussion on theses results already, but I note this one because I liked the summary about why the experiment was done:
Even though it is popular lore that Einstein was right (I even wrote a book on the subject), no such book is ever completely closed in science. As we have seen with the 1998 discovery that the universe is accelerating, measuring an effect contrary to established dogma can open the door to a whole new world of understanding, as well as of mystery. The precession of a gyroscope in the gravitation field of a rotating body had never been measured before GP-B. While the results support Einstein, this didn’t have to be the case. Physicists will never cease testing their basic theories, out of curiosity that new physics could exist beyond the “accepted” picture.
My only nit is that if we are testing the models, they are not dogma. There’s a subspecies of crackpot that rails against science as a religion who appear to miss the whole “experimental confirmation” aspect to science. They paint a picture of scientists who blindly, unquestioningly accept Einstein and it just isn’t the case.
Euclid, Newton, and GR contain no internal errors. Founding postulates cannot be defended. Euclid fails on Earth’s surface. Newton fails for lightspeed and Planck’s constant. GR fails if two bodies vacuum free fall non-identically (rates or trajectories), empirically falsifying the Equivalence Principle EP).
Teleparallel gravitation contains EP violation tied to angular momentum. Gyroballs are obviously insufficient, as are millisecond pulsars binary with solar stars (including superconductivity, magnetic field, superfluidiity, isospin, orbit, spin-orbit coupling, gravitational binding energy, etc.) A bench top extreme observable arises from moments of inertia: discontinuous symmetry parity. Parity is outside Noether’s theorems, thus a terrific footnote: Opposite shoes may vacuum free fall non-identically – a geometric test of spacetime geometry (the tactic that dinged Euclid).
Every atom in such “shoes” must self-similarly in-phase sum to maximal overall inverse geometric parity emergent at atomic bond dimensions. Enantiomorphic space groups in crystallography offer trivial reductions to practice,
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/erotor1.jpg
Two parity Eotvos experiments.
Only GR failings external to founding postulates are allowed without contradiction. Someboy should look. The worst it can do is succeed.
Of course, you can consider science a sort of converse to religion. In religion, man talks to god. In science, man listens to god. Gravity Probe B just let us hear a few more words.