This is so cool. In a couple days NASA will launch a satellite filled with gyroscopic equipment designed to finally test once-and-for-all Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. It’ll orbit over the poles and “measure how space and time are warped by the presence of the Earth, and, more profoundly, how the Earth’s rotation drags space-time around with it.” I’ve just been reading about Einstein’s theory in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and this experiment just sounds so tomorrow. We’re testing things that previous generations thought untestable and unknowable. Bring on the tractor beams and warp drives!