Einstein: "E pur si muove"


This epoch sentence is attributed to Gallileo who said it after his trial in Vatican. In reality, the biggest Gallileo enemies were his university colleagues in Pisa and Padova and his opponents in Germany.

In 1918 Lense and Thirring, basing on general theory of relativity, noted that a rotating mass creates time-space deformation (besides "ordinary" deformation caused by mass in itself) - like pulling it in direction of the rotation. By analogy to magnetic force, which is created by rotation of the electrical charge, it is called gravimagnetic force. Gravimagnetism explains, for example, why plasma streams around the black holes are placed in the same direction for millions years.

Unfortunately (?) such an effect in the case of Earth is unsignificantly small - it causes change of Moon's orbit just by a few millimeters per year. Einstein, commenting Lens-Thirring's equation noted, that the effect would be greater if Moon was closer to Earth.

In 1996 using laser impulses from Earth, changes in the orbit of Lageos satellite was measured with up to 1 cm precision. Scientists measured the shift of about 1 degree per 120 years due to the gravimagnetic force. Taking into account that changes of the orbit caused by non spherical shape of the Earth are 10 million times bigger in magnitude, Einstein would say for sure: "E pur si muove (time-space)!"