Francis Everitt

This physicist has been working for 46 years to prove Einstein wrong.

Gravity Probe B

is getting close to a verdict.

I bet Einstein is right.

To do this Everitt and his team made the roundest spheres ever made. The question is: Does the Earth drag its frames?

This sounds like gibberish. It does mean something. The issue is the nature of rotational motion.

Since Newton's time it was clear that if a bucket with water spins around its axes the water's surface is not flat. The farther away from flat, the faster it rotates. So in a way, straight line motion at constant speed is indistinguishable from rest, but rotational motion is absolute.

Then came Mach, a physicist from the early twentieth century. He said that if the whole Universe rotated the other way, and the bucket staid at rest, one could also see the bent water surface. Problem is, as Feynman used to say, one cannot turn the whole Universe around. So this is not an experimental question.

Einstein's theory though, has a way to look into these issues. If geometry and gravity are as linked as his theory demands, then there must be some effect on space time just because a big object is rotating. The biggest object we can set our "hands" on, is the whole Earth. Then the problem is to put a little sphere near the Earth, and make the little guy turn around. If it moves around differently from a little ball away from any big chunk of matter, then we can start to do experiments, instead of just imagining that we are playing with the Universe as if it was a huge top.

Let us wait for the patient Dr. Everitt to find out the answer.

UPDATE:Wikipedia

I won the bet.