A Pocket of Near-Perfection
Now orbiting Earth, Gravity Probe B is a technological
tour de force.
Right: Using the most perfect spheres humans have ever created, Gravity Probe B just might turn Einstein's theories upside-down. [More]
The probe, which launched April 20th on a mission to test an unproven aspect of Einstein's theory of relativity, is by all accounts a marvel of human ingenuity and know-how. Only recently has it even become technologically possible to build Gravity Probe B, despite the fact that the idea for the experiment has been around since the 1950s.
"If experimental science is an art, then I would look at GP-B as a Renaissance masterpiece," says Jeff Kolodziejczak, NASA's Project Scientist for GP-B at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
|
Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicts that Earth, by rotating, twists space and time around with it, forming a mild vortex in the fabric of spacetime around our planet. Researchers call this "frame dragging." Most physicists believe the spacetime vortex is real, but no experiment to date has been sensitive enough to detect it unequivocally.
Enter Gravity Probe B.
Left: A spinning spherical gyroscope in Earth orbit should wobble due to frame dragging.
It sounds like a straightforward experiment; the trick is in actually building it. The gyroscope's axis won't drift much, only 0.042 arcseconds over a year, according to calculations. (An arcsecond is only 1/3600th of a degree.) To measure this angle reasonably well, GP-B must have a precision of 0.0005 arcseconds.
"Every aspect of the experiment has to be nearly perfect," Kolodziejczak says. Meeting this challenge has taken almost 40 years of effort from many bright scientists and engineers, primarily at Stanford University, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and Lockheed-Martin.
The Gravity Probe B team had to create the roundest gyroscopes ever made, and set them orbiting Earth inside a force-free pocket. No form of atmospheric drag or magnetic forces could be allowed to penetrate the gyro-chambers. That's tricky because Earth's far-flung magnetic field envelops GP-B and, even at an altitude of 400 miles, Earth's outermost atmosphere exerts drag on the spacecraft. Furthermore, it would be necessary to measure the tilt of the gyroscope's spin axis ... without ever touching the gyroscope itself.
Right: One of the spherical gyroscopes used in Gravity Probe B.
Being in orbit allows the spheres to float within their housings as if weightless, but without other controls, the spinning spheres would still tend to drift and bump into the walls of their containers. The reason is that the spacecraft is being slowed slightly by aerodynamic drag, while the free-floating spheres within the spacecraft's belly are not.
The GP-B team solved this problem by developing a drag-free satellite.
Inside the spacecraft instruments monitor the distance between one of the gyroscopes and its chamber walls with extraordinary precision -- to within less than a nanometer (a millionth of a millimeter). The spacecraft's thrusters respond to any changes in that separation. In effect, the spacecraft chases the gyroscope and flies along the same "drag free" orbital path that it does.
The spheres must also be protected from Earth's magnetic field. Why? Because a faint magnetic signal from the gyroscopes themselves will ultimately be used to detect the all-important change in angle of their spin axes. The intrusion of Earth's magnetic field would swamp that signal.
But how do you block a planet's magnetic field?
Above: Gravity Probe B's big dewar holds hundreds of gallons of liquid helium.
The extreme cold also helps create an ultra-low pressure vacuum in the gyroscope chamber; after pumping out most of the gas, the molecules of gas that remain are very cold and thus hardly moving, which means they exert almost zero pressure. In this pristine, high-vacuum environment, the spherical gyroscope could spin at its operating speed of 10,000 rpm for 1,000 years without slowing by more than 1 percent.
Finally, it's necessary to measure the gyroscopes' spin without nudging the gyroscopes in the slightest.
Once again, superconductivity comes to the rescue. A superconducting sphere, when spun, will produce a weak magnetic field that is precisely aligned with the axis of rotation. The gyroscopes are therefore coated with a metallic layer of niobium of near-perfect uniformity. At the cryogenic temperature in the core of GP-B, niobium becomes a superconductor and it produces a magnetic field when the spheres are spun. By monitoring the magnetic field, engineers can monitor the spin of the gyroscopes--no touching required!
Above: A schematic diagram of the SQUID-method for measuring the tilt of a gyroscope.
To do this, the GP-B scientists use a remarkable device called a SQUID--short for "Superconducting QUantum Interference Device." Attached to a loop of superconducting wire closely encircling each gyroscope, a SQUID functions as an ultra-sensitive magnetic field detector. SQUIDs can detect a change in this field of only 50 billionths of a micro-gauss (5 x 10-14 gauss), which equates to a change of the gyroscope's angle of 0.0001 arcseconds.
A telescope onboard the spacecraft constantly watches a distant star named IM Pegasus. This serves as an external reference point for measuring the tilt of the gyroscopes. IM Pegasus isn't truly a fixed point, though. It will drift ever-so-slightly during the 2 year lifetime of the GP-B mission. Fortunately, astronomers know very precisely how far it will drift, so that motion can be accounted for.
Telescopes. Gyroscopes. Superconducting lead bags and SQUIDs. These are odd materials for art. Among engineers and physicists, though, there's no doubt: Gravity Probe B is a masterpiece.