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Science 27 March 1998:
Vol. 279. no. 5359, pp. 2100 - 2103
DOI: 10.1126/science.279.5359.2100
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Reports

Test of General Relativity and Measurement of the Lense-Thirring Effect with Two Earth Satellites

Ignazio Ciufolini, Erricos Pavlis, Federico Chieppa, Eduardo Fernandes-Vieira, Juan Pérez-Mercader

The Lense-Thirring effect, a tiny perturbation of the orbit of a particle caused by the spin of the attracting body, was accurately measured with the use of the data of two laser-ranged satellites, LAGEOS and LAGEOS II, and the Earth gravitational model EGM-96. The parameter µ, which measures the strength of the Lense-Thirring effect, was found to be 1.1 ± 0.2; general relativity predicts µ equiv  1. This result represents an accurate test and measurement of one of the fundamental predictions of general relativity, that the spin of a body changes the geometry of the universe by generating space-time curvature.

I. Ciufolini, Istituto Fisica Spazio Interplanetario-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, and Dipartimento Aerospaziale, Universitá di Roma "La Sapienza," via Eudossiana 16, 00184 Rome, Italy.
E. Pavlis, Joint Center for Earth System Technology, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA.
F. Chieppa, Scuola Ingegneria Aerospaziale, Universitá di Roma "La Sapienza," Rome, Italy.
E. Fernandes-Vieira and J. Pérez-Mercader, Laboratorio de Astrofisica Espacial y Fisica Fundamental (INTA-CSIC), Madrid, Spain.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)