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General Relativity

Frame Dragging

Frame dragging is a prediction of general relativity that says a rotating mass does not just curve spacetime, it drags it around in the direction of its spin, like a ball spinning in honey pulls the honey around with it. Nearby objects and even light get subtly swept along in that rotation.

The effect is extremely small for anything the size of the Earth, but it is real and it has been measured. NASA’s Gravity Probe B satellite confirmed it in 2011 by detecting a tiny, predicted drift in the orientation of onboard gyroscopes caused by the Earth’s rotating mass.

Frame dragging becomes far more dramatic around a rotating black hole, where it creates a region called the ergosphere just outside the event horizon, in which spacetime is dragged around so violently that nothing, not even light, can stay still relative to a distant observer.

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