Spinning Earth drags space.

The article discusses how the Earth's tug on space-time, known as frame dragging, takes place almost exactly as specified by relativity theory, according to Ignazio Ciufolini of the University of Lecce in Italy and Erricos C. Pavlis of the University of Maryland in Baltimore. The theory predicts that the two satellites LAGEOS and LAGEOS2 should be dragged about 2 meters in the direction of Earth's rotation as they orbit. Using 11 years' measurements from laser beams bounced off the satellites, Ciufolini and Pavlis found 99 percent of the expected orbital shift. "This is the first accurate measurement" of frame dragging, claims Ciufolini. Until recently, measurements of gravity variations around the world had lacked accuracy, fueling distrust of frame-dragging results based on those numbers.