Bad news for crackpots

[sjastro]

http://news.discovery.com/space/gravity-probe-b-110506.html

Regards

Steven

[mswhin63]

Yes i remember this story on Catalyst very interesting 40 year venture - http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2594259.htm

[avandonk]

I will say what Einstein said after the the experiment of light being bent by gravity.

I told you so.

I find this absolutely non news.

What insight hey?

I rejoice with these very smart people for this definitive experiment.

At least they had the balls to do the job!

Bert

[mswhin63]

:lol: and very smooth balls at that! :lol:

[CoolhandJo]

How good was Einstein! Genius ahead of his time or what!

[Waxing_Gibbous]

I thought this was said and done a couple of years back.
Or maybe a warp in spacetime made me 'remember' it early. :D

[mswhin63]

Yeah the Catalyst link was in 2009 which at the end of the story announced a conclusion, but there was still some more data to get Frame-Dragging to push a bit more.

[avandonk]

With such a tiny signal it takes a lot of data to get an accurate solution within the bounds of error needed to prove the premise of 'frame dragging' due to a rotating mass.

It was not definitive a few years ago. It is now.

Einstein did all this with his mind and no more than pencil and paper! Gedunken experiments no less.

Bert

[CraigS]

Full credits to these guys for their precision measurements and painstaking analytical efforts. This can now be added to the long list of verifications underpinning Einstein's work.

The (thus far) unrecognised gem in Steven's link was The Crackpot Index. (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html)

This classical piece of exemplary work should be added to our in-house lists of pseudoscience distinctions and logical fallacies.