[PatrickHenry]

Einstein survives again. (Sorry the subscript codes aren't working. In that last two paragraphs, it should have been g[sub]85[/sub] and g[sub]87[/sub]. Donno why it didn't work out.)

Also, I had thought the weak equivalence principle was different than what is presented in the 2nd paragraph. Live and learn.

[PatrickHenry]

Science list Ping! This is an elite subset of the Evolution list.
See the list's description in my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail me to be added or dropped.

[rudypoot]

The team found that (g85-g87)/g85 = 1.2 x 10-7, with error bars of 1.7 x 10-7...

The error bar is larger than the measured value.

An old saying from one of my science professors:
Industry research is like throwing darts at a bull's eye.
Academic research is like throwing darts and painting bull's eyes around the darts.

[Physicist]

The implications of this experiment, as described here, go beyond the weak equivalence principle. It also tests for the existence of isospin-coupled forces, which would react to the difference in the neutron content between the test subjects.

[longshadow]

Einstein survives again.

That won't stop the ignorant and the insane from denying his theory.

[Lady Jag]

Go Al !!

[Southack]

"Einstein survives again."

Hardly.

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101accel.html

"Einstein first proposed the cosmological constant (not to be confused with the Hubble Constant) usually symbolized by the greek letter "lambda" (L), as a mathematical fix to the theory of general relativity. In its simplest form, general relativity predicted that the universe must either expand or contract. Einstein thought the universe was static, so he added this new term to stop the expansion. Friedmann, a Russian mathematician, realized that this was an unstable fix, like balancing a pencil on its point, and proposed an expanding universe model, now called the Big Bang theory. When Hubble's study of nearby galaxies showed that the universe was in fact expanding, Einstein regretted modifying his elegant theory and viewed the cosmological constant term as his "greatest mistake".

[Buck W.]

Dan Rather can probably help with the subscripts...

[snarks_when_bored]

Here you go:

(g₈₅ - g₈₇) / g₈₅ = 1.2 x 10^-7

Or:

(g85 - g87) / g85 = 1.2 x 10-7

Or (getting fancier):

(g₈₅ - g₈₇) ÷ g₈₅ = 1.2 x 10^-7

[hgro]

Physicists in Germany

These guys have a lot of pull!

[hemi dawg]

Excuse me, but didn't Newton theorize this hundreds of years before Einstein?

(all masses accelerate equally under gravitational force)

[CanisMajor2002]

God does not play dice bump.

[BMCDA]

Bump for later read

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Experiments that involve bouncing laser beams off mirrors on the Moon have confirmed that the Earth and the Moon accelerate toward the Sun at the same rate to better than one part in 10¹³.

Can the physicists explain to me how this is possible? I understand the Galileo experiment with two balls whose masses are an infinitesimal part of the mass of the earth and the measurement crude. But I thought that gravitational attraction depended on the combined masses of the two attracting bodies. The earth has a mass of approximately sun^-6 and the moon has a mass approximately earth^-2 and sun^-8. The combined masses earth+sun and moon+sun differ by much more than 10^-13, so why wouldn't the mutual accelerations vis-a-vis the sun differ by say 10^-6?

[theFIRMbss]

>Physicists in Germany have used an atomic interferometer to perform the most accurate ever test of the equivalence principle at the level of atoms

Until a Freeper
gets a similar result
in his/her garage

and informs us with
a VANITY about it,
it's just a RUMOR!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Short but sweet:

weak equivalence principle