SSS 2011-05-06

（单词翻译）

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.

Albert Einstein wins again. A new study has confirmed another prediction of his theory of general relativity. The corroboration¹ appears online in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Einstein's theory recognizes that massive objects warp² the very fabric³ of space and time. If the theory is true, then the Earth should stretch the spacetime in which it sits, like a bowling⁴ ball would deform⁵ a trampoline. What's more, the Earth's rotation⁶ should also produce a drag on local spacetime, like a marble spinning in molasses would pull the goop around it.

To measure these minor⁷ deformations⁸, scientists sent four gyroscopes into space in a mission called Gravity Probe B. And they found that after circling the Earth some 5,000 times the gyroscopes' angle of spin had changed, ever-so-slightly, in response to the Earth's gravitational pull. Which proves that the old man was right.

Gravity Probe B was first conceived in 1959. And the technology created to make the mission fly has been applied⁹ in work on the big bang theory—the real theory, not the TV show—and in GPS, which Einstein would have loved, because even a genius can get lost on the highway.