All very interesting, but how does this prove time-travel is possible. Clearly,
we are all time travelers, but we can only move in one direction. Special
Relatively, proven for a long time, shows us that we can vary that rate
somewhat, but the concept is only truly meaningful if we can go back in time.



"Joe" wrote in message
om...
(Bobsprit) wrote in message
...
We know time travel is possiable if we can go faster than light.


No, we don't know this at all. It's just a theory and taught as such in any
physics class....which you clearly never took let alone passed.
I'm not hitting Josie, folks....he's doing it to himself!

RB


It's been proven, and will be proven again next month boobie.

After many years of planning, design, testing and delays, NASA's
Gravity Probe B mission is slated to launch from Vandenberg Air Force
Base in California on Monday April 19, 2004 at 12:01 pm Central time.
This revolutionary mission, with Stanford University as prime
contractor, has been designed to test two cornerstone effects of
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The mission is managed
by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and it has had a long and rocky
road to travel before it ever was to be mounted on its Delta II
booster on the launch pad.

The Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission, once it reaches its 400-mile high
polar orbit, will be used to measure how space and time are warped by
the presence of the Earth. The GP-B mission is the culmination of one
of the greatest technical challenges ever undertaken in the history of
space exploration and has been decades in the making.

In 1959, physicists at Stanford University first proposed launching a
satellite to test relativity. In 1964, NASA and the Department of
Defense started funding the development of key technologies to make
this mission possible. In 1976, the Gravity Probe A was launched on a
nearly 2-hour flight from Wallops Island, VA and used a MASER atomic
clock to demonstrate that time changed as it rose to weaker levels of
gravity. The GP-A returned valuable data as it rose to 6200 miles
above the Earth and then plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean. This set
the stage for the more ambitious GP-B mission, which was first defined
in 1982, with the basic design of the instrumentation from that study
the same 22 years later.

The GP-B instrument assembly, which was developed by Stanford
University, consists of a block of fused quartz containing four ultra
precise gyroscopes and a lead proof mass all bonded to a fused quartz
telescope. This telescope will be trained on the steady guide star IM
Pegasi for the duration of the mission and will be the calibration
standard for the gyroscopes. The instrument package is housed in a
giant thermos bottle, called a dewar, containing 613 gallons of
superfluid, super cold liquid helium that will keep the package cooled
to 2 degrees above absolute zero (minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit) for
the duration of the mission. The gyroscopes are the size of Ping-Pong
balls and made from fused quartz. A coating of niobium allows the
gyroscopes to become superconductors at the dewar temperatures and
enables them to be levitated and spun at 10,000 rpm. This super cooled
instrument assembly sits inside a vacuum bottle at a pressure that is
10 times lower than the pressure outside the spacecraft in the near
vacuum of Earth orbit. This allows for the gyroscopes to be maintained
in an environment that will not disturb their operation and will be so
perfect that they will be able to measure the Earth's effect on them.
Super sensitive magnetometers will be able to measure the gyroscopes
spin and orientation and any changes they might feel.

Boobsie we have flown atomic clocks on supersonic aircraft and they
run slower. Its a fact. Not some obscure article printed in an old
copy of Omni magazine, BTW one of my favorate mags.

Im not slapping boobsie folks, he slappin himself. No wonder his
forehead is so flat.


Joe