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.
Abstract
Recently, Ciufolini et al. reported on a test of the general relativistic gravitomagnetic Lense-Thirring effect by analyzing about 3.5 years of laser ranging data to the LAGEOS, LAGEOS II, LARES geodetic satellites orbiting the Earth. By using the GRACE-based GGM05S Earth's global gravity model and a linear combination of the nodes Ω of the three satellites designed to remove the impact of errors in the first two even zonal harmonic coefficients J_2, J_4 of the multipolar expansion of the Newtonian part of the Earth's gravitational potential, they claimed an overall accuracy of {5}% for the Lense-Thirring caused node motion. We show that the scatter in the nominal values of the uncancelled even zonals of degree ℓ = 6, 8, {10} from some of the most recent global gravity models does not yet allow to reach unambiguously and univocally the expected {≈ }1% level, being large up to ≲15% (ℓ =6), 6% (ℓ =8), 36% (ℓ =10) for some pairs of models.
- Publication:
-
European Physical Journal C
- Pub Date:
- February 2017
- DOI:
- 10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4607-1
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1701.06474
- Bibcode:
- 2017EPJC...77...73I
- Keywords:
-
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Physics - Geophysics;
- Physics - Space Physics
- E-Print:
- LaTeX2e, 14 pages, 9 tables, no figures. The European Physical Journal C, at press