News Physics

Final chapter published in decades-long Gravity Probe B project

Details sum up tests confirming Einstein’s general relativity

quartz spheres with Einstein photo

TESTING EINSTEIN  The Gravity Probe B mission used almost perfect spheres made of quartz to measure two predicted effects of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. 

GP-B Image Archive/Stanford University

By Andrew Grant

- More than 2 years ago

A grueling but ultimately successful effort to test Einstein’s 100-year-old general theory of relativity has come to a close more than half a century after it began.