Scientists opened a sealed envelope after 10 years. Gravity still didn’t make sense
A decade-long NIST experiment has produced a new measurement of the universal gravitational constant that differs unexpectedly from another leading result, deepening a 225-year-old physics puzzle.
A decade-long NIST experiment has produced a new measurement of the universal gravitational constant that differs unexpectedly from another leading result, deepening a 225-year-old physics puzzle.
The short version
- The discrepancy is tiny, but for one of nature’s most fundamental constants, it is large enough to keep scientists wondering whether hidden experimental errors or something more surprising is involved.
- For 10 years, physicist Stephan Schlamminger had been chasing one of the most stubborn numbers in science.
- Now, after a decade of experiments, corrections, and painstaking analysis, the answer was sitting inside a sealed envelope.
What happened
Schlamminger, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), had spent much of the previous decade trying to measure the universal gravitational constant. Known to physicists as big G , this fundamental number determines the strength of gravitational attraction throughout the universe.
Why it matters
The number hidden in the envelope was the key that would finally unscramble his experimental data and reveal what his team had measured.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at ScienceDaily — Top Science via the links above and below.