Austrian researchers Joseph Lense and Hans Thirring used general relativity to show that just as a massive object warps space and time—like a bowling ball resting on a trampoline—so a rotating object drags space (and time) around it, like a spinning stone immersed in a bucket of syrup. This is known as frame dragging and implies, for example, that an asteroid freely falling toward a rapidly rotating neutron star or black hole will get caught up in a whirlpool of spinning space and be whipped around as it journeys downward. The effect is called frame dragging because from the point of view of
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