NASA Gravity B Vacuum Tornado Experiment

From: Jack Sarfatti (sarfatti_at_pacbell.net)
Date: 03/28/05 

Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 21:49:02 GMT

"Gee, I guess we are not in Kansas anymore."

On Mar 28, 2005, at 10:00 AM, <daviddossier@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi! I thought you'd be interested in this story from Science@NASA: By
measuring the shape of spacetime with exquisite precision, NASA's
Gravity Probe B spacecraft aims to confirm Einstein's theory of
relativity ... or provide the first evidence against it.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/28mar_gamma.htm?friend

OK Wheeler & Ciufolini "Gravitation & Inertia" have what we need in Ch 6

First for a neutral point non-spinning test particle on a free float
timelike geodesic in the middle of the swirling gravimagnetic vacuum
tornado, in the slow speed weak field post-Newtonian limit of the Kerr
space-time

The geodesic equation for the test particle (not yet a gyroscope, or
just look at the center of mass of the gyro)

d^2x^u/ds^2 + (LC)^uvw(dx^v/ds)(dx^w/dt) = 0

limits to the "Lorentz force"

md^2r/dt^2 ~ m[G + (dr/dt)xH] 6.1.25 p. 320 etc.

*Note m the mass of the test particle cancels out, so Galileo's EP is
obeyed!

Where G ~ Mr/|r|^3

(g0i) ~ -2Jxr/|r|^3

H = Curlh ~ 2[J - 3(J.r)r/|r|^2]/|r|^3

If we now make the test particle an extended gyroscope with spin S, then
in addition to the above CM motion we have the torqued precession

Torque ~ (1/2)SxH = dS/dt = (dW/dt)xS

dW/dt = - (1/2)H = -[J - 3(J.r)r/|r|^2]/|r|^3

This ROTATIONAL TORQUE PRECESSION relative to a distant frame is the
actual LOCAL INERTIAL FRAME (LIF) DRAG that NASA is going to measure and
that some say has already been measured.

There is also an additional TRANSLATIONAL SPIN-ORBIT coupling force not
seen on the point test particle above.

F(spin-orbit) = m(1/2)(S.Grad)H 6.1.29 p. 321

"Finally, a central object with angular momentum J via dr/dtxH drags the
orbital plane and the orbital angular momentum of the test particle in
the sense of rotation of the central body M. This dragging of the whole
orbital plane is described by a formula for the rate of change of the
longitude of the nodes, discovered by Lense & Thirring in 1918." See p.
321 ... for details.