Some comments on the recent results about the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth with the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites
arXiv:gr-qc/0411084
Abstract
With quantitative numerical simulations we show that the secular variations of the even zonal harmonics of the geopotential do affect the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect with the nodes of LAGEOS and LAGEOS II at a \sim 14% level. Thus, the 1-sigma total error in the performed test with the 2nd generation CHAMP-only EIGEN2 Earth gravity model amounts to 51%, contrary to 18% claimed by Ciufolini.
Latex2e, 2 tables, 1 figure, 22 pages, 51 references. It refers to the recent paper: I. Ciufolini, Frame Dragging and Lense-Thirring Effect, Gen. Rel.Grav., 36(10), 2257-2270, 2004. Rewritten version. Quantitative estimates of the impact of the secular variations of the even zonals