Saturday, November 19, 2011

What does it mean that general relativity has been verified to 5 decimal places?

please help me understand this. i need to know how reliable general relativity is, and this is what i read. however, i don't understand what it means. thanks.|||That is a problem with books that try to make things "easier to understand" by using comparison that are not well understood.





For example, such and such is "the size of 17 football fields".





The expression USUALLY means that it has been verify to an accuracy of 0.00001 = 1/100,000 = one thousandth of one percent = 0.001 %


(these are also phrases that do not help anyone).





It means that someone has calculated some effect using the equations of relativity. The person then gets a "prediction".





Then, someone goes out and actually measures the effect (the real number -- an observation).





[ Prediction - observation ] / observation


is less than 0.001 % off.





Many aspects of General Relativity has been verified to even more accuracy.

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