So I Was Wrong. Want to Fight About It?

OK, I'm going to try to fire off a quick post on Mother's Day before calling my mom and enjoying the rest of the afternoon with my lovely wife. I ran across an interesting post on Wired Science about an experiment involving gyroscopes in space. The experiment, named Gravity Probe B, used small gyroscopic devices placed in Earth orbit to study the effects of our planet on the space around it. The idea, it turns out, is to experimentally prove Einstein's basic principle of space-time. The existence of space-time, a sort of fabric woven from both space and time into which all of the cosmos exist and travel, would validate many subsequent Einsteinian theories. The basic idea here is that a massive object such as the Earth would warp and bend space-time due gravitational effects, and these effects would also bring about a swirling motion of space-time as the Earth spins within this strange fabric. To very briefly sum up the results of the experiment: if the gravitational effects of the Earth on the space-time around it was non-existent and space was static, the gyroscopes would create a directional electromagnetic pointer that would remain pointing in the same direction. If, on the other hand, space-time is indeed affected by the mass and gravity of the Earth, then the pointer would shift due to the movement of space-time as the Earth spins. And this latter effect is what was observed.

This is considered the very first experiment to determine whether Einstein was correct in his prediction of the existence of space-time, as he concluded that it was impossible to study with the technology available during his time. It is certainly important that the results were in his favor.

I should also mention here that I was a bit of a space-time skeptic. Einstein, a great mathematician, did a fine job of using mathematical proofs to illustrate the existence and effects of space-time. But just because you can model a phenomenon with math doesn't make it reality. And the results of this study have essentially reversed my skepticism. Consider me a believer. And this is the way of science. Our knowledge is constantly evolving based on the information available to us at the time. So I'm sort of a case study in how advancements in science should ideally bring about changes in society and the way we look at the world around us. Too bad that's not really how it works in practice.