Empirical Foundations of Relativistic Gravity
Wei-Tou Ni

TL;DR
This paper reviews the historical and recent progress in testing relativistic gravity, highlighting experimental advancements and future prospects for more precise measurements to deepen our understanding of gravity and the universe.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive overview of the empirical developments and upcoming experiments in relativistic gravity testing since 1859.
Findings
Significant improvement in experimental precision over 141 years.
Recent experiments like Cassini and Gravity Probe B have refined key relativistic parameters.
Future planned experiments aim for even higher precision in testing gravity theories.
Abstract
In 1859, Le Verrier discovered the mercury perihelion advance anomaly. This anomaly turned out to be the first relativistic-gravity effect observed. During the 141 years to 2000, the precisions of laboratory and space experiments, and astrophysical and cosmological observations on relativistic gravity have been improved by 3 orders of magnitude. In 1999, we envisaged a 3-6 order improvement in the next 30 years in all directions of tests of relativistic gravity. In 2000, the interferometric gravitational wave detectors began their runs to accumulate data. In 2003, the measurement of relativistic Shapiro time-delay of the Cassini spacecraft determined the relativistic-gravity parameter gammaγ with a 1.5-order improvement. In October 2004, Ciufolini and Pavlis reported a measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect on the LAGEOS and LAGEOS2 satellites to 10 percent of the value predicted…
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