SIGNIFICANT EVENTS - SCIENCE EVENTS
06/07/02
Press Release Describes Use of ISS for Relativity Tests
A recent article published by Alan Kostelecky and colleagues at Indiana University describes how
clocks placed on the international Space Station can provide unique tests of Einstein's theory
of General Relativity. A press release announcing this use of the ISS has just been made public
at NASA's OBPR web site http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/,
and at JPL ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_123.html ).
Kostelecky is quoted to say that, if the clock tests on ISS are found to violate the theories of
General Relativity, then "Finding such changes would cause an upheaval in the science community
and revolutionize our thinking about the fundamental structure of space and time. It would lead
to insight about how our universe formed and how nature operates."
The article relates that measurements in space have several advantages over ones on Earth because
the Earth's rotation axis and its rotation rate are fixed. In space the orbital axis of a
satellite and its rotation rate can be different from those of the Earth, and higher speeds
are possible. Measurements in space would therefore be more sensitive to minute changes that
would violate Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
The paper by Kostelecky and his colleagues appeared in the March 4 issue of the Physical
Review Letters. It is available online at: http://prola.aps.org volume 88, article 090801
for 2002.
Animation of the proposed space station experiments is available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/sg/space_physics.html.
NOTE: The press release has had responses from the following media:
