Scientists have announced the results of a decade-long quest to measure Newton’s gravitational constant, the force that keeps our feet on the ground and holds planets in orbit.
The pursuit was more or less a bust. The most ambitious effort to date to pin down the fundamental constant, which determines the strength of the attraction between two masses anywhere in the universe, resulted in a number that disagreed with previous findings, including the results of an experiment it sought to replicate.
Stephan Schlamminger, the scientist who painstakingly conducted the latest experiment that began in 2016, called it a “life-sucking” experience. “It was really kind of walking through a dark valley,” added Schlamminger, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
But he has since been able to put a positive spin on his endeavors. “Now, I’ve put it a little bit in my rearview mirror,” he said. “I think every measurement is an opportunity to learn and every measurement brings light into this darkness.”
Fundamental constants of nature are key values that define the behavior of physical phenomena in the universe — and they don’t change regardless of where you are in time or space. They include the speed of light and Planck’s constant, which plays a key role in quantum physics.
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