Thought this might be of interest.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/
A small experiment with gigantic implications. Basically opens the door to time travel.
I second this. Particularly since the experiment was demonstrating what everyone believed anyway - the results were exactly what was predicted well before World War I !How exactly does this open the door for time travel?
It's fascinating stuff and is proof that time is a force which can be acted upon by other forces, so in theory you could manipulate factors to have an object move faster through time than the rest of the observers, however the effect seen is very, very small.
Does it open the door to time travel?
Time dilation due to relative velocities of different observers was known before and the evidence suggested that the distance from a gravity effect could also affect it. The GPB is fantastic piece of engineering that proves the frame dragging effect which was only theoretical before. It's fascinating stuff and is proof that time is a force which can be acted upon by other forces, so in theory you could manipulate factors to have an object move faster through time than the rest of the observers, however the effect seen is very, very small.
Does it open the door to time travel? It gives a theoretical path to follow but it's such a helluva long road to go from observing this effect to being able to time travel, with so many possible barriers or effects that could nullify it that I don't think I'm going to get excited about it just yet
OK that was all poorly phrased as shown by Maxx's correction. My understanding of physics is also probably hindered that during most of discussion with physicists, theorectical, astro, quantum or otherwise, it tends to be about 4am and we are all very drunk.
Time is a force, was also poorly chosen, not a force in the scientific terminology, I'm not sure what it would be, dimension? Effect? That time can be altered is interesting, in order for it to be affected by physical forces such as gravity or spacial distortion there has to be something for that force to act upon. Is time a dimension, a force, an energy, a particle resulting from laws of entropy? I chose the word force as a generic and I apologise for the confusion.
So yes GPB supports general relativity much as expected but the I think that the space/time distortion that is frame dragging, as well as confirmation of the gravity strength/dilation effect, does suggest a greater level of interaction between space/time and fundamental forces.
I think however that trying to establish the nature of time or all of the possibilities related to that is a bit beyond the scope of this thread. And my cognitive function.
Um, I'm going to go and hide now.
So yes GPB supports general relativity much as expected but the I think that the space/time distortion that is frame dragging, as well as confirmation of the gravity strength/dilation effect, does suggest a greater level of interaction between space/time and fundamental forces.
These are standard predictions of plain old vanilla GR. No extra levels of interaction are required for those observed effects -- indeed "gravity" is precisely the effect of the geometry of spacetime itself as in fact these experiments measured. You can't get much more fundamental that that without coming up with a few Higgs bosons and some higher symmetries. However it is really neat to observe the shifting geometry of spacetime directly.
No need to run and hide -- just break out some GR texts.
Noted.
Time dilation due to relative velocity was accepted and is a function of perception not an actual effect on time (in a similar vein to the doppler effect)
Frame dragging however would provide evidence that physical forces can actually effect a function of time.
The GPB results are good evidence of frame dragging.
Hopefully that's more coherent.
Thank you, that it bears out GR, absolutely, but perhaps I'm running away with perceived possibilities of what the evidence says rather than just what the evidence does actually say. To me the results suggested a some further possibilities. Overexcitement is the cause of many embarassing moments....