Just heard about this, more experimental evidence of General Relativity.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 345
November 7, 1997 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
GRAVITATIONAL FRAME-DRAGGING IS OBSERVED. Just as an electric charge emits
an electric field and (if the charge is in motion) a magnetic field,
so a massive body should, according to general relativity, emit a static
gravitational field and (if the body is moving or rotating) an extra
"gravitomagnetic" field (see Update 295 and the accompanying figure).
Two groups of astronomers, one based in Rome (Luigi Stella,
stella@coma.mporzio.astro.it) and one at MIT (Wei Cui, cui@space.mit.edu),
now claim to have detected experimental evidence for this force in the form
of subtle modulations in the x-ray signals coming from neutron stars and
monitored by the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite.
The phenomenon is sometimes called "frame dragging" since its source is the
distortions of space-time caused by the rotating mass. The results were
reported yesterday at the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting of the
American Astronomical Society in Colorado.
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