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A confirmation of the general relativistic prediction of the Lense–Thirring effect

Nature volume 431, pages 958–960 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

An important early prediction of Einstein's general relativity1,2,3 was the advance of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, whose measurement provided one of the classical tests of Einstein's theory4. The advance of the orbital point-of-closest-approach also applies to a binary pulsar system5,6 and to an Earth-orbiting satellite3. General relativity also predicts that the rotation of a body like Earth will drag the local inertial frames of reference around it3,7, which will affect the orbit of a satellite8. This Lense–Thirring effect has hitherto not been detected with high accuracy9, but its detection with an error of about 1 per cent is the main goal of Gravity Probe B—an ongoing space mission using orbiting gyroscopes10. Here we report a measurement of the Lense–Thirring effect on two Earth satellites: it is 99 ± 5 per cent of the value predicted by general relativity; the uncertainty of this measurement includes all known random and systematic errors, but we allow for a total ± 10 per cent uncertainty to include underestimated and unknown sources of error.

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Figure 1: The ‘orbital gyroscope’ used to measure the Lense–Thirring effect.
Figure 2: Observed orbital residuals of the LAGEOS satellites.
Figure 3: Post-fit orbital residuals of the LAGEOS satellites.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) for making available for our use the laser ranging data collected by their network, through their data service at CDDIS, NASA/Goddard, USA, and the GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam, Germany. E.C.P. acknowledges support from NASA. I.C. thanks R. Matzner and N. Cabibbo for comments. We thank R. Peron for reading the manuscript and, together with G. Chionchio, D. Lucchesi, D. Pavlis and F. Ricci, for computer support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Innovazione, Università di Lecce and INFN Sezione di Lecce, Via Monteroni, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    I. Ciufolini

  2. Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET/UMBC), University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Maryland, 21250, USA

    E. C. Pavlis

Authors
  1. I. Ciufolini
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  2. E. C. Pavlis
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Correspondence to I. Ciufolini.

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Discussion

Error analysis and error budget of the measurement of the lense-thirring effect using the nodes of Lageos and Lageos 2. (DOC 45 kb)

Supplementary Figures 1S and 2S

Additional N-frequency fits of the lense-thirring effect. (DOC 256 kb)

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Ciufolini, I., Pavlis, E. A confirmation of the general relativistic prediction of the Lense–Thirring effect. Nature 431, 958–960 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03007

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