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Originally Posted by ToSeek
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Bob Kahn
...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 (SAC -- http://einstein.stanford.edu/MISSION/mission2.html#sac), 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] Š 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. |
Funding runs out in September.
I have mixed feelings about this. I hate to see any science team disassembled; and I believe gravity is not understood at the most fundamental level - we need this type of science team, and more experiments of this type.
What is disappointing, is that they have not really released anything useful years after the end of the mission.
As far as the data, either there is an unexpected 'patch effect' that the team has focused their attention on, or the physics behind their observations is not understood, or both. I said several pages up I would rather see another mission, or a construction of new spheres to see if the type of patch effects they speculated entangled their data are the root cause of the failure to observe frame dragging effects.
In any case, I hope the final report includes some salvagable data, and clues for where we should keep looking.
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Originally Posted by Kahn
Now, in 2008, the scientific justification for completing the GP-B experiment is even more valid. During the past five years, there has been little progress on other relativity experiments, but GP-B was launched, operated, and collected all of the necessary data. After two years of intense work, the GP-B science team is very close to completing the data analysis.
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Perhaps it is time to look elsewhere.