Physicists Just Made The Smallest Gravitational Field Measurement Ever
10 MARCH 2021
The tiny gravitational field between two 90-milligram spheres of gold has just been measured for the first time.
This makes it officially the smallest gravitational field ever successfully measured - an achievement that could open the door to probing gravitational interactions in the quantum realm.
There s a big problem with the mathematics we use to describe the Universe; in particular, the way gravity behaves. Unlike the other three fundamental forces in the Universe - weak, strong and electromagnetic - gravity can t be described with the standard model of physics.
Einstein s theory of general relativity is the model we use to describe and predict gravitational interactions, and it works beautifully in most contexts. However, when we get down to quantum scales, general relativity breaks down, and quantum mechanics takes over. Reconciling the two models has so far proven very difficult.