Gravity B probe Executive Summary: (Nice history of the mission & guts and stuff, but no science)
http://einstein.stanford.edu/content...ecSum-scrn.pdf
I find the poster on the gyroscope polhode moment very fascinating:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by G-probe B Team
The polhode period of each gyro was observed to be changing over time. Each of the four exhibited similar asymptotic behavior. The only explanation that agrees with all the observation was that of energy dissipation in the rotor body. Dissipation moves the spin axis towards the maximum inertia axis where energy is minimum.
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It is a reasonable explanation, but remember, they studied these gyroscopes for decades and never detected any viscous effects. Why did they suddenly show up in microgravity? To account for this effect, they had to add another term to the standard Euler equation.
Again, everything in this poster appears reasonable, but I still have to ask myself if these gyros should have enough internal viscous movement to cause the dampening, because the Earth-based tests said they do not. Remember, the rotational moments of both Pioneer probes dampened much more quickly than expected, and there is currently no explanation for this dampening. For those of us looking for good alternate theories of gravity, these may be important clues. Now I need to figure out how to compare the 'M shaped" frequencies observed in this orbiting probe with tidal charts for the same period...