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Physicists Clarify Exotic Force

Posted by timothy on from the gravity-is-pretty-exotic-stuff dept.

Azazel writes "A research group, including Purdue University physicist Ephraim Fischbach, has completed an experiment which shows that gravity behaves exactly as Isaac Newton predicted, even at small scales. Unfortunately for those in search of the so-called "Theory of Everything," the finding would seem to rule out the exceptions to his time-honored theories that physicists believe might occur when objects are tiny enough."

2 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Did I miss something? by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Yes and no...what's noteworthy about this experiment is what they didn't find. Much like the Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887, which set out measure the 'aether', and instead failed utterly to detect any such thing, this experiment was devised to detect exceptions to the behavior of gravity on a quantum scale, and found no such exceptions.

    Ephraim's not giving up yet, though...he plans on developing another experimental apparatus that is a million times more sensitive than the one that was used in this experiment. Also, even though this experiment was nominally a 'failure', the fringe benefit of clarifying the Casmir force is a big success.

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    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  2. Yes. . .everythings normal BUT. . . by robotkid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The reason why this is interesting is not because "oh look, gravity still works". Most physicists have no doubt that whenever you test it, gravity will still work. In that sense, it is kindof what another poster said, "everything's normal, big deal!"

    But what's eating all the theorists is that they have absolutely no idea why. The venerable laws of gravitation are empirical, in the sense that noone knows where it comes from other than the fact that it is associated with mass. All the other forces of nature have a quantum explanation, and have a particle that transmits them (most notably electromagnetism and photons). Noone has been able to satisfactorily reconcile gravity with any fundamental (quantum mechanical) nature of a particle.

    It's almost scary that we know more about what binds subatomic particles together than what keeps the moon orbiting the earth. It's also ironic that most people's only introduction to physics is newtonian physics which is presented in textbooks as complete and understood. It's true we have the math to predict the effect of gravity to arbitrary precision, but I'm sure engineers can back me up that just because something has a robust empirical law doesn't mean anyone really understands how it works.