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[Boksi]

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/

So they went and got more proof for Einstein's theory of general relativity. Only had to invent 14 new technologies to do it, including making the most perfect spheres ever made by man as well as measuring the spin of a gyro without touching said gyro.

[Euld]

I'm still confused o_O  How exactly do the behavior of the gyroscopes predict or measure dimples in space-time?

[Starver]

The most flippant answer is "how would they not?".

Frame dragging, really.  It's all about frame dragging.

[Megaman]

I came here to look if they had found out how to enlarge my balls. I was sorely disappointed.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I honestly, truely expected this to be an experement on the viability of reproduction in space when I first saw the name of this thread.

[Starver]

I came here to look if they had found out how to enlarge my balls. I was sorely disappointed.

Enlarging just the balls just makes your stick look smaller, though, and it's far more inefficient to play the game and achieve your goals, even if anybody will let you crease their turf with such a strange set of equipment.

(Field Hockey.  I'm talking about field hockey.)

[Angel Of Death]

I honestly thought this thread was going to be about NASA experimenting with animal testicals.

Thread, I am disapoint.

[Euld]

Seems this forum's scientific interests are properly appropriated.

[woose1]

So they re-proved Einstein's theory, at the snappy cost of only a couple hundred million dollars. Oh, and now we know the exact measure of the gravity well around earth, which is pretty cool I guess. I love to imagine children in high school in the next 200 years or so, doing this experiment with about 5$ worth of materials while their teacher tries to explain it to them:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT: Today's XKCD was eerily similiar to the news and the topic of this thread. The only reasonable explanation is that Boski is somehow Randall Munroe. Let's test it by launching balls into space. O.o

[Farmerbob]

I'm still confused o_O  How exactly do the behavior of the gyroscopes predict or measure dimples in space-time?

The rotation of the Earth means that the dimple in space time will have ripples.  The gyroscopes were used to detect the ripples.

The ripples basically acted on the gyroscopes like...  Hrm.  Like speedbumps would act on you trying to balance a ball on your head.

When you hit the speedbump, the ball would move.  In this case, the repeated tiny little waves of spacetime eventually bounced the gyroscope out of position.

[ed boy]

So they re-proved Einstein's theory, at the snappy cost of only a couple hundred million dollars.

They haven't proved anything. They've merely found results that are in accordance with einstein's theory.

[Il Palazzo]

So they re-proved Einstein's theory, at the snappy cost of only a couple hundred million dollars.

They haven't proved anything. They've merely found results that are in accordance with einstein's theory.

...which is pretty much the definition of scientific proof.

[Farmerbob]

So they re-proved Einstein's theory, at the snappy cost of only a couple hundred million dollars.

They haven't proved anything. They've merely found results that are in accordance with einstein's theory.

Nobody ever proves anything.  They just fail to disprove.  If you fail to disprove a theory enough times in lots of different ways with rigorous testing, you can be very confident that you know how things work.  It narrows down the possibilities of what might be the real rules.  On the other hand, you can be certain that you know how things normally DON'T work.  We now know that there is no violation of special relativity inasmuch as it could be detected with sufficiently accurate equipment based on the experimental equipment and the data it generated.

It's like saying "This hammer is not sharp" and then whacking yourself lightly a couple times on the arm and verifying you aren't bleeding.  Then you can say with relative certainty "After beating myself with this hammer I'm not bleeding, so the hammer really isn't sharp."

I'm curious though, what point were you trying to make?

[Lagslayer]

I can't disprove the concept of a 4th dimension, though I do have a few questions and not willing to accept it completely. Does this prove that there is a 4th dimension? Not really. It certainly does not conflict with the concept of a 4th dimension, though. There are so many factors that come into play, that wobble could have been from just about anything.

But time, by definition, is linear. It is what happened, what is happening, and what will happen. And that traveling through it would always end in a paradox leads me to believe that you can't travel through it at all. It's just our way of putting things in order. If it involves going to a parallel universe that is exactly like our timeline except that you are now there, anything you do will not affect what happened in your universe. But that is not time travel. It might be 4th dimension travel, but it's not time. This is the part of the theory of relativity or any iteration thereof that is wrong (I can't see it any other way).

That isn't to say we can't have a 4th dimension without time. I see no reason why space and time can't still be separate.

[Il Palazzo]

Because treating them as separate produce predictions which do not correlate with the observations*?

But, certainly, let's dance the oft-recurring dance of disagreeing with modern science on the grounds of it being unintuitive.

*Like the one the topic is about.