https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-6303-1
Reply
Reply to “A comment on “A test of general relativity using the LARES and LAGEOS satellites and a GRACE Earth gravity model, by I. Ciufolini et al.””
1
Dip. Ingegneria dell’Innovazione, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy
2
Centro Fermi-Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Rome, Italy
3
Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Maryland, USA
4
Center for Space Research, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
5
Theory Group, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
6
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany
7
Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy
8
Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics, Alikhanian National Laboratory, Yerevan, Armenia
9
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
* e-mail: giampiero.sindoni@uniroma1.it
Received:
6
July
2018
Accepted:
1
October
2018
Published online:
30
October
2018
In 2016, we published “A test of general relativity using the LARES and LAGEOS satellites and a GRACE Earth’s gravity model. Measurement of Earth’s dragging of inertial frames [1]”, a measurement of frame-dragging, a fundamental prediction of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, using the laser-ranged satellites LARES, LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2. The formal error, or precision, of our test was about 0.2% of frame-dragging, whereas the systematic error was estimated to be about 5%. In the 2017 paper “A comment on “A test of general relativity using the LARES and LAGEOS satellites and a GRACE Earth’s gravity model by I. Ciufolini et al.”” by L. Iorio [2] (called I2017 in the following), it was incorrectly claimed that, when comparing different Earth’s gravity field models, the systematic error in our test due to the Earth’s even zonal harmonics of degree 6, 8, 10 could be as large as 15%, 6% and 36%, respectively. Furthermore, I2017 contains other, also incorrect, claims about the number of necessary significant decimal digits of the coefficients used in our test (claimed to be nine), in order to eliminate the largest uncertainties in the even zonals of degree 2 and 4, and about the non-repeatability of our test. Here we analyze and rebut those claims in I2017.
© The Author(s), 2018
