Some comments about a recent paper on the measurement of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth with the laser-ranged LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites

Abstract

In this brief note some comments about the observable used in a recently published paper on the measurement of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring in the gravitational field of the Earth are presented. It turns out that, among other things, the authors might have yielded an optimistic evaluation of the error budget because of an underestimation of the impact of the secular variations of the even zonal harmonics of the geopotential. More realistic evaluations point towards a 15-45% error at 1-3sigma level, respectively.

arXiv commentLatex2e, 8 pages, no tables, no figures, 17 references. It refers to the Letter to Nature I. Ciufolini and E.C. Pavlis, Nature, 431, 958-960, 2004. Scientific criticisms on the released error budget presented

References in corpus (5)

• The impact of the static part of the Earth's gravity field on some tests of General Relativity with Satellite Laser Ranging
• The impact of tidal errors on the determination of the Lense-Thirring effect from satellite laser ranging
• The impact of the new CHAMP and GRACE Earth gravity models on the measurement of the general relativistic Lense--Thirring effect with the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites
• The new Earth gravity models and the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect
• Towards a few-percent measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect with the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites?