Has Gravity Probe B been a Big Flop?

Now it's 'official'!

GP-B STATUS UPDATE -- MAY 23, 2008
In March 2008 at NASA's invitation, we submitted a proposal to the Science Mission Directorate, Astrophysics Division Senior Review of Operating Missions (Sr. Review), requesting a final 18-month (October 2008 through March 2010), $3.8M extension of GP-B to complete the data analysis and publish the results. In April, as part of the Sr. Review process, GP-B Principal Investigator, Francis Everitt, and Program Manager, William Bencze, made a presentation to the Sr. Review Committee at NASA Headquarters, where it appeared to have been favorably received.

Thus, we were greatly surprised last week to discover that the Sr. Review had recommended that NASA not grant our final funding extension, particularly since another NASA committee--the GP-B Science Advisory Committee, chaired by relativistic physicist Clifford Will--stated in its report following the November 2007 meeting: "The SAC was impressed with the truly extraordinary progress that has been made in data analysis since SAC-16 [Mar 2007] Å and we now agree that GP-B is on an accelerating path toward reaching good science results."

The Sr. Review evaluation is an unexpected setback, but we are determined to push ahead and drive to the very best possible result within the resources available.

The science team may still prevail, though. If they 'only' need $3.8M to complete the analysis (while $800M has been spent on the mission), it seems silly to pull the plug now. Or is it a case of no good money after bad money?

Burt Jordaan (www.Relativity-4-Engineers.com)

Jin He,

First of all, there is no "Einstein camp." There are people who find his work compelling and interesting and spend a lot of time exploring its implications, but no serious scientist believes any theory to be beyond challenge.

Like David, I'm not an academic scientist, though I spent 20 years of my working life in an academic environment, much of it in liaison work between researchers and other professionals (sponsors, educators, etc.)

I suspect that the deletion you refer to was probably an error that needed to be corrected, but you are so upset about it that you can't see the error.

In any case, I have experience working with editors and publishers. If they own the copyright, there is little you can do. If you have the copyright, you should have been offered the chance to approve or disapprove before publication.

In this case, it sounds like the correction was necessary for the paper to be published.

But in any case, it is an issue between you and your editor. Ranting and spewing insults, as you did here, just makes you look like a jerk with a huge chip on his shoulder.

If that description fits, then you need to change the way you interact with others. If it doesn't fit, then you need to figure out why you acted like a jerk with a huge chip on his shoulder in this one case.

By the way, you might want to look at a recent book I wrote for high school and college libraries, Physics: Decade by Decade in the 20th-century science set from Facts on File (2007).

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

I can't speak for Fred, but I'm no faculty scientist. I'm one of those non-faculty scientists you claim are the saviors of us all.

No, Fred is absolutely right, we, as scientists, are quite open to those theories that pass the test of matching experiments, both past and present, and will continue to consider such theories as potentially viable so long as they do pass said test. (Of course we'll tend to the most simple theory/explanation, all else being equal. Good ol' Occam's razor.)

There are a number of viable alternatives to General Relativity (GR) as contenders for a theory of gravity. All but one, that I know of (that have risen to the point of viability), have "tweak-able" parameters, and their parameters keep getting pushed closer and closer to being identical with General Relativity.

On the Quantum Mechanics (QM) side: I have often lamented that Quantum Mechanics is "too good for its own good", meaning that there are no viable alternatives (no alternatives have been able to be at least as good as Quantum Mechanics at matching experiments). If there exists a viable alternative (one that matches all experiments done so far), I'm more than willing to check it out!

Most serious physicists, I believe, recognize that while we have these two great theories (GR and QM), which are unsurpassed in their respective realms, there's a problem when venturing into realms that, logically, should require both or some combination thereof. GR and QM don't play well together! So there "must" be something missing, or something better.

The search for that "something better" has been going on for at least 50 years (maybe nearly 100 years, now, depending on when you "start the clock"). Unfortunately, I don't consider any of the alternatives I know of, at this time, to be quite there, yet. (Loop Quantum Gravity has some appeal to me, but I don't ascribe to it, yet. I have my own ideas, but they're not quite to the theory stage, yet. The problem would be far easier to solve if we had some viable experiments within this realm where both QM and GR should be used, but we don't have particle accelerators that are nearly powerful enough; and while some Cosmic Rays may be powerful enough it's very hard to get good statistics. If we could come by a nice microscopic "black hole" on which we could do experiments, that would really fit the bill!)

So, while we are open to viable new ideas, the hard hurdle that most seem unwilling or unable to pass is being able to match all known experiments. However, that is the critical point that must be satisfied by all theories that wish to be considered as viable. (Even GR and QM had to each satisfy this hurdle before they could be considered.)

So, if you know of something that satisfies this criteria, I'm all ears.

David

First, I think it's awesome that somebody responded to Fred's discussion on rants by ranting. Second, I think it's awesome that the dude thinks that he's unemployed because science isn't democratic. I suggest that going to a faculty board and calling their research a false bible isn't going to win you points with the committee. Third, is the Time Tunnel a man-made bible, or a 60's TV show?

However, if there are those of you who think that the democratization of scientific law is acceptable, I want you to know that I fully support you. I think its about time that we have a voice in simplifying the laws of physics a little. The tax code is easy by comparison. Therefore, I officially announce that I nominate myself a Superdelegate for the Election Board of Scientific Law.

I appreciate your support. I won't let you down.

In a posting that demeans a serious and careful scientist, Jin He rants:

If you visit those more democratic forums, you will see that there are large amounts of discussion on Relativity, Gravity, Cosmology. This means these area of science get big problems!!! You can not suppress the voices of the public!!

Like David Halliday and others here, I have seen too many posts (and received private e-mails) that say, essentially, "I've got this brilliant interpretation that overthrows relativity and/or quantum mechanics, but it is rejected by a cabal of stick-in-the-mud editors and establishment scientists who suppress it because it threatens them."

In the end such posts, and Jin He's rant, ignore that scientists are more open to new ideas and new evidence than almost anyone else.

As long as a growing body of evidence supports those theories and interpretations of natural phenomena, neither ranting nor democratic voting will discredit them. On the other hand credible evidence that is contrary to those theories and interpretations will force their reassessment.

Jin He wants to put the laws of nature to a vote. I would much prefer to discuss the evidence instead.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

For Hawking's view on the preservation of causality presented in accessible language, you might want to read his The Universe in a Nutshell. My review discusses that a bit, both in prose and in its opening limerick!

That's right, a limerick about wormholes, black holes, causality, and a smiling man with a synthetic voice tooling about in a motorized wheelchair.

Enjoy!

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

David.

Are you saying that you won't read Whitehead and Logunov and Hilbert because you rely on my comments instead?

Sincerely,

Christopher

Hi Scruffy.

Thank you again for your reply, to which I have already replied, but now I need to add a small point. This present post is a near duplicate of one I tried to post, but that I cannot find as having made it into the blog.

I was mistaken to contradict you when I wrote that the Whitehead equations are not responsible for the Nordvedt effect. I then thought that their emprical failure was just due to the "Whitehead term". I have now learnt that the Whitehead equations do also predict the Nordvedt effect, and this is one of the now proven five ways in which they are now known to contradict empirical observations, thanks to the great scholarship of Clifford Will. As you say, Whitehead's equations are ruled out as a theory of gravity. But as I have written before, that does not impugn the point I was making.

Regards,

Christopher

David, thank you for your kind and careful reply. I greatly value your thoughtful help.

I did not mention the general theory of relativity, just the Hilbert-Einstein equations. I did not talk about interpretations of theories, just interpretations of equations. My use of the word 'interpretation' does not intend concern with what you call 'what it "really means" and/or "what is really going on". Your posting, though kindly meant, is not a reply to what I wrote, nor to what I meant. Your posting reflects your obviously thorough training in and apparently complete acceptance of the authoritative orthodoxy, and is undoubted testimony to your great intellectual powers and attention to scholarship, but still I have to say in answer to your question "So, does this discussion help you?" that it helps only insofar as it may be the beginning of a valuable discussion if you have time for it. You ask and answer your own question 'Is there some "orthodoxy" that "prevents" us as researchers from considering such? I've never noticed such.' That's quite right, you haven't noticed yourself as in thrall to the orthodoxy. But I am in this correspondence claiming to bring it to your attention that you are so.

Let me clarify. The orthodoxy that I was trying to bring to attention is the idea that space-time is curved in a non-uniform way. This idea was espoused by Einstein and it seems you accept it. But you have the opinions of some more respectable minds than mine to contend with if you want to say that your view takes rational criticism into account. Alfred North Whitehead will be enough as an example for the present. Whitehead draws a distinction between geometrical space and active "space". We start with ideas of space and time for quasi-static far-from-gravity situations. For our basic understanding, we have to start like this. Books of differential geometry are quite unintelligible to students who have not studied Euclidean geometry for years. We go on to look at motion at relativistic speeds, and we find that inertial frames are very helpful, and we come up with Minkowksi geometry. But we don't abandon the basic facts of Euclidean geometry for quasi-static situations. Whitehead points out that there are other uniform geometries besides the Euclidean for a quasi-static space: namely hyperbolic and elliptic. Gauss had the same idea. Experience does not support the idea that we have either of those two uniform geometries in our world for quasi-static situations. But the idea of non-uniform "geometries", Riemannian "geometries" is something else. In my textbooks, Riemannian geometry is introduced in a frame of Euclidean geometry, and the metric refers back to that. In the Einstein curved space-time story, the "metric" does not refer back to a Minkowski frame, but instead it erects a new "locally inertial" frame for every moment of every observer's experience. This is a difference of interpretation of the meaning of 'metric'. The Einstein view is supported by authoritative orthodoxy in its declaration of local measurement as king, with time and space being measured by local atomic clocks. That it takes longer than expected for radar to travel in the Shapiro effect is attributed to "curvature of space-time" and not to slowing of light by gravity. This is a difference in interpretation. Perhaps we might agree that "a transformation can be interpreted as alibi or alias". This is the sense in which I am using the word interpretation.

I think I have said enough to suggest to you what I mean by interpretation. Your email starts with the view that I have 'a number of misunderstandings concerning both General Relativity*, and "interpretations" of theories.' My reading of the situation is that I do not accept the orthodox interpretation of the physical meaning of the terms of the Hilbert-Einstein equations, because I think they have physical meaning only in terms of the Whitehead interpretation. I simply do not write in terms of the orthodox interpretation, and that is what you call 'misunderstanding'. I am writing because I have read many orthodox texts on what they call "general relativity" and I find that they blithely assume the correctness of their position without bothering to confront its logical structure, and so I find them lacking in intellectual coherence. You are welcome to say that this is because I am some kind of dill (a kindly meant soft spoken Australianism for a fool or simpleton), but it will, I think, not be quite so easy for you to say that Whitehead was a dill. He was writing texts of differential geometry when Einstein was in nappies. I would be grateful to have from you an account of how you read Whitehead on these questions.

Christopher