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Space, Time, and Spacetime pp 25–59Cite as

The Experimental Verdict on Spacetime from Gravity Probe B

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Part of the book series: Fundamental Theories of Physics ((FTPH,volume 167))

Abstract

Concepts of space and time have been closely connected with matter since the time of the ancient Greeks. The history of these ideas is briefly reviewed, focusing on the debate between “absolute” and “relational” views of space and time and their influence on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, as formulated in the language of four-dimensional spacetime by Minkowski in 1908. After a brief detour through Minkowski’s modern-day legacy in higher dimensions, an overview is given of the current experimental status of general relativity. Gravity Probe B is the first test of this theory to focus on spin, and the first to produce direct and unambiguous detections of the geodetic effect (warped spacetime tugs on a spinning gyroscope) and the frame-dragging effect (the spinning earth pulls spacetime around with it). These effects have important implications for astrophysics, cosmology and the origin of inertia. Philosophically, they might also be viewed as tests of the propositions that spacetime acts on matter (geodetic effect) and that matter acts back on spacetime (frame-dragging effect).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Much scholarly ink has been spilt on this passage by Wagner; see for instance Hans Melderis’ Space-Time-Myth: Richard Wagner and modern science (14). The composer’s debt to Kant and Schopenhauer is suggested by a letter he wrote while working on Parsifal in 1860: “Since time and space are merely our way of perceiving things, but otherwise have no reality, even the greatest tragic pain must be explicable to those who are truly clear-sighted as no more than the error of the individual” (13).

  2. 2.

    Einstein was apparently familiar with Poe’s Eureka, referring to it in 1934 as “a beautiful achievement of an unusually independent mind” (15).

  3. 3.

    Hubert Goenner (20) makes the interesting observation that Minkowski could have read Wells’ Time Machine, as it appeared in German translation in 1904.

  4. 4.

    After learning of Minkowski’s speech in 1908, Palágyi attempted unsuccessfully to claim priority for the discovery of spacetime.

  5. 5.

    The superscript “4” is generally reserved for an imaginary version of Minkowski’s fourth coordinate x 0, written as x 4 = ict, which allows the metric of flat Minkowski space to be written in Euclidean form.

  6. 6.

    The idea that x 5 might be related to mass has also been independently attributed to M.A. Neacsu in 1981 (32).

  7. 7.

    For more details, see the Gravity Probe B website at http://einstein.stanford.edu.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Ron Adler, Francis Everitt, Hans-Jörg Fahr, Bob Kahn, Holger Mueller, Alex Silbergleit, Martin Tajmar and Paul Wesson for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gravity Probe B Theory Group, Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    James Overduin

  2. Department of Physics, Astronomy and Geosciences, Towson University, Towson, MD, 21252, USA

    James Overduin

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  1. Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, de Maisonneuve Blvd. West 1455, Montreal, H3G 1M8, Québec, Canada

    Vesselin Petkov

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Overduin, J. (2010). The Experimental Verdict on Spacetime from Gravity Probe B. In: Petkov, V. (eds) Space, Time, and Spacetime. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 167. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13538-5_2

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