The Force is With You? You may have heard that gravity isn’t a force. This is true. Gravity is not a force; however, this truth leaves us with a number of questions. For example, we’re commonly told ...
There are quite a few fundamental constants. These are things like the speed of light (c) the charge on an electron (e), and the Planck constant (h). These constants are determined with some type of ...
At the end of the 18th century, the British scientist Henry Cavendish measured the force of gravity between two objects for the first time in a laboratory. The objects in question were lead balls, one ...
Gravity is the force of action between two objects. It’s called a natural force because it acts at a distance rather than needing to be in contact. Gravity is the force that holds us down on Earth and ...
Legend has it that Isaac Newton had the moment of inspiration that would lead to his theory of gravity when, on a warm afternoon, he saw an apple fall from a tree and wondered why it should fall down ...
When you travel through the Universe, it isn't just a free ride through empty space. Although you might not think about it very often, there are forces arising from the presence of everything else, ...
Physicist Markus Aspelmeyer vividly remembers the day, nearly a decade ago, that a visitor to his lab declared the gravitational pull of his office chair too weak to measure. Measurable or not, this ...
As far as physicists have been able to determine, nature speaks two mutually unintelligible languages: one for gravity and one for everything else. Curves in the fabric of space-time tell planets and ...
In the 95 years we’ve known about antimatter, physicists have not tested how the elusive inverse of ordinary matter is affected by gravity, the force that pulls masses to Earth and seems to affect all ...