SDI

The President's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) began in 1983 following his historic March 23, 1983 speech. The SDI program has enjoyed substantial progress since this beginning. As the SDI begins its fourth year, the outlines of a basic system architecture, feasible for deployment in the 1990s, begins to emerge. In addition, SDI technical progress shows great promise not only for an initial strategic defense system, but also for maintaining defense effectiveness into the first decades of the next century against countermeasures designed specifically to defeat defenses.     

Leadership for new US strategic directions

Although faced with the new global challenges of terrorism and peer competition, the USA has been slow to adapt its cold war forces, and newer ‘warfighter’ strategy to meet them. Cyberspace and outer space offer the means to do this, via ‘responsive’ microsatellites and low-cost launchers, and broadband internet information and education services. The US military leadership is, however, not well enough versed in these technologies, with senior personnel largely lacking a space or technical background and having little appetite for change. If the USA is successfully to meet current challenges, it must first create a leadership that is technologically capable and philosophically attuned to change.     

Gravity Probe B Data Analysis

This is the first of five connected papers detailing progress on the Gravity Probe B (GP-B) Relativity Mission. GP-B, launched 20 April 2004, is a landmark physics experiment in space to test two fundamental predictions of Einstein’s general relativity theory, the geodetic and frame-dragging effects, by means of cryogenic gyroscopes in Earth orbit. Data collection began 28 August 2004 and science operations were completed 29 September 2005. The data analysis has proven deeper than expected as a result of two mutually reinforcing complications in gyroscope performance: (1) a changing polhode path affecting the calibration of the gyroscope scale factor C _g against the aberration of starlight and (2) two larger than expected manifestations of a Newtonian gyro torque due to patch potentials on the rotor and housing. In earlier papers, we reported two methods, ‘geometric’ and ‘algebraic’, for identifying and removing the first Newtonian effect (‘misalignment torque’), and also a preliminary method of treating the second (‘roll-polhode resonance torque’). Central to the progress in both torque modeling and C _g determination has been an extended effort on “Trapped Flux Mapping” commenced in November 2006. A turning point came in August 2008 when it became possible to include a detailed history of the resonance torques into the computation. The East-West (frame-dragging) effect is now plainly visible in the processed data. The current statistical uncertainty from an analysis of 155 days of data is 5.4 marc-s/yr (～14% of the predicted effect), though it must be emphasized that this is a preliminary result requiring rigorous investigation of systematics by methods discussed in the accompanying paper by Muhlfelder et al. A covariance analysis incorporating models of the patch effect torques indicates that a 3–5% determination of frame-dragging is possible with more complete, computationally intensive data analysis.     

The Science Case for STEP

The Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle (STEP) will advance experimental limits on violations of Einstein’s Equivalence Principle (EP) from their present sensitivity of 2 parts in 10¹³${10}^{13}$ to 1 part in 10¹⁸${10}^{18}$ through multiple comparison of the motions of four pairs of test masses of different compositions in an earth-orbiting drag-free satellite. Dimensional arguments suggest that violations, if they exist, should be found in this range, and they are also suggested by leading attempts at unified theories of fundamental interactions (e.g., string theory) and cosmological theories involving dynamical dark energy. Discovery of a violation would constitute the discovery of a new force of nature and provide a critical signpost toward unification. A null result would be just as profound, because it would close off any possibility of a natural-strength coupling between standard-model fields and the new light degrees of freedom that such theories generically predict (e.g., dilatons, moduli, quintessence). STEP should thus be seen as the intermediate-scale component of an integrated strategy for fundamental physics experiments that already includes particle accelerators (at the smallest scales) and supernova probes (at the largest). The former may find indirect evidence for new fields via their missing-energy signatures, and the latter may produce direct evidence through changes in cosmological equation of state—but only a gravitational experiment like STEP can go further and reveal how or whether such a field couples to the rest of the standard model. It is at once complementary to the other two kinds of tests, and a uniquely powerful probe of fundamental physics in its own right.