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Physicists measure the gravitational pull of a ladybug
Physicists measure the gravita. 1/4
The team measured the gravitational pull between two tiny gold balls, one on the end of a glass rod suspended on a wire
Tobias Westphal 2/4
One of the gold spheres used in the experiment, sitting on top of a coin to give an indication of just how tiny it is
Tobias Westphal/Arkitek Scientific
Barbara Mair 4/4
Of the four fundamental forces, gravity is the one we’re most familiar with in our everyday lives, but perhaps surprisingly, it’s the weakest and hardest to measure here on Earth. Now, physicists in Austria have made the smallest measurement of gravity so far, equivalent to the gravitational pull of a ladybug.
Scientists measure the smallest gravitational field yet
The experiment showed Newton s law of gravity holds true even between tiny masses measuring just 90 milligrams.
Credit: Tobias Westphal, University of Vienna.
Physicists at the University of Vienna have managed to measure the gravitational field between two tiny gold spheres with a radius of merely 1 millimeter. In doing so, they’ve effectively measured gravity over the smallest distance to date and probed the nature of gravity at one of the smallest scales that our instruments permit.
Testing the boundaries of fundamental physics
Our knowledge about the subatomic composition of the universe is summarized in what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model describes both the fundamental building blocks out of which everything is made and the forces through which these blocks interact. There are twelve basic building blocks that we know of (six quarks and six leptons) and four fundamental forc
| UPDATED: 10:51, Sat, Mar 13, 2021
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Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces of nature but it is also the most impactful on your day-to-day business. Every time you drop a pencil or an apple lands on your head, gravity keeps your feet firmly planted to the ground. But the strength of gravity varies across the cosmos and the gravitational pull we are used to on Earth is weaker on a smaller and less heavy world like the Moon.