One of NASAs most complex measurement satellites has confirmed that Einstein was right all along: massive objects do distort the fabric of time and space. This geodetic effect may only be part of Einsteins Theory of Relativity, but these results confirm a significant chunk of what the genius had hypothesized some 90 years ago. The rest of the theory namely the frame-dragging effect will take another few months to be tested by the probe.
Could this be the first step towards designing a gravity drive such as the one that allowed a ship to travel through space and time in the 1997 movie Event Horizon? Lets hope that such a spacecraft will have a better fate than the Hollywood one!
Ninety years after he expounded his famous theory, a $700m Nasa probe has proved that the universe behaves as he said. Now the race is on to show that the other half of relativity also works.
Source: The Observer