THE FIRST RELEASE OF LARES-2 SPACE EXPERIMENT RESULTS ON TESTING FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS

The results of LARES-2 (LAser RElativity Satellite) space experiment to test the General Relativity got their first release in The European Physical Journal Plus, which encompasses various aspects of fundamental and applied physics, including energy, environment, cultural heritage, research infrastructures and citizen science, and welcomes in particular interdisciplinary topics.

The results are in complete agreement with the predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity. Frame-dragging predicted by General Relativity has fundamental implications in high-energy astrophysics and in the generation of gravitational waves. LARES 2 space experiment conducted by Italian Space Agency (PI Prof. Ignazio Ciufolini) provides a significant advance in testing General Relativity. Tremendous work and huge efforts by a group of leading scholars, among them Nobel laureate Sir Roger Penrose, including Prof. Vahagn Gurzadyan, head of the AANL Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics, who is the corresponding author of the article published on November 29, 2023, brought this project to fruition. The article is available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-023-04696-6.

LARES 2 was successfully launched in July, 2022, with the new launch rocket VEGA C of Italian Space Agency (ASI) from European Space Agency spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana).

The article is dedicated to great physicist John Archibald Wheeler.

Sir Roger Penrose and Gurzadyan with alloys of LARES and of the rocket, Accademia dei Lincei, Rome.

R.Matzner, V.Gurzadyan, I.Ciufolini and A.Paolozzi, in European Space Agency spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana) right after the launch of LARES-2.