Rotating Bodies

Abstract

The Schwarzschild metric gives us some of the classic tests of relativity: the bending of light, Mercury’s perihelion precession, and other predictions from the analysis of geodesic motion. It also allows us to make some dramatic predictions about the end states of the gravitational collapse of stars to black holes. To find deeper tests, we have to look for more subtle effects of general relativity, which cannot be seen in the Schwarzschild space—time. One is the ‘dragging of inertial frames’ by a rotating body. The predictions here allow the testing of Einstein’s equations as well as of the geometric model of space—time. They can be observed in the effect of the earth’s rotation on an orbiting gyroscope.