TORONTO, April 16, 2004 -- A team of astrophysicists from York University will be watching with special interest Monday as NASA launches its latest space probe into orbit around Earth. They are the Canadian contingent in Gravity Probe B, a US$700 million project more than 40-years in the making, scheduled for launch from Southern California’s Vandenburg Air Force Base at 11:01 a.m. Eastern Time.
The team led by Norbert Bartel, a professor in York University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, will help analyze data collected on the probe’s one-year flight to prove if the century’s greatest physicist, Albert Einstein, was right or wrong in his theory on general relativity - the warping of space time caused by planets and stars.
The project by scientists at Stanford University started as a conversation in 1958 but it took until the last few years for the technology – and the money – to make it possible. The mission has cost approximately three times as much as recent probes to Mars and is unique in that it is a fundamental physics project instead of NASA’s more familiar missions of space exploration and enterprise.
The York team includes Michael Bietenholz, Ryan Ransom and Jerusha Lederman, all members of York’s Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences. Their role in the project is to analyze one set of data on movement of the guide star “IM Pegasi,” which Gravity Probe B is focused on throughout its one-year mission. Data recorded by giant, long-range satellite dishes around the world will be used to correct the measurements made by four tiny gyroscopes sealed inside the probe.
The probe’s measurements are expected to show warping of space time as Einstein predicted in 1916 and a related effect called frame-dragging suggested by scientists in the two years following his work.
The York U. team is also responsible for producing the project’s 26-minute multi-media video “Testing Einstein’s Universe: The Gravity Probe B Experiment”. The DVD version of the film includes 80 minutes of information featuring York scientists.
For more information on Gravity Probe B visit http://einstein.stanford.edu/.
For information on Astronomy Films production of “Testing Einstein’s Universe” visit www.astronomyfilms.com.
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To arrange an interview with a member of the York U. Gravity Probe B team, contact:
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David Fuller Media Relations York University 416-736-2100, ext. 22091 |
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