Heliotrope wrote:True.
It is going to take a lot of data for the effect to show up, if indeed it does.
I'm kind of hoping it doesn't
That would be interesting, but it probably isn't going to happen because Frame Dragging has already been detected, but in an "uncontrolled" experiment:
http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast06nov97_1.htm
The link above wrote:And speaking of different approaches, what of the second method for measuring frame dragging?
Zhang said that it remains as important as ever. NASA is developing it as Gravity Probe-B, a satellite containing precision gyroscopes inside a liquid helium bath. GP-B will point at a selected star, and sensitive instruments will measure how much the gyros precess after conventional effects are nullified. The leftover effects should provide a precise measure of frame dragging.
Zhang pointed out that the Rossi satellite observations are not a controlled experiment. The exact mass of the star and other effects around it are not known with great detail. Gravity Probe-B, though, will be the controlled experiment which gives physicists the precision they need for filling it blank spots in our understanding of how the universe works.
It seems likely that Gravity probe B will only confirm previous observations. And then LIGO is going to confirm gravity waves and GR will stand unscathed... leaving us with the terrible schism between GR and QED. How can they both be right?
QED and GR remind me of the two shadow example where there are shadows on the wall and on the floor. One shadow shows a triangle, so you might deduce that the object casting the shadow is a triangle. But the shadow on the floor shows a circle, so you might deduce that the object is a sphere. But only be seeing both shadows and combining deductions from both can you deduce that the object is a cone.
When we look at QED and GR, I fear that we are looking at two shadows which are both correct, but neither of which are the actual thing we're looking for. And to make matters worse, there could be many more shadows which we don't yet see.
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