![]() But atoms, which are subject to the strange laws of quantum mechanics, could reveal its weak points. So far, the equivalence principle has withstood all tests. The upshot: An object’s acceleration under gravity doesn’t depend on its mass or composition. That principle states that an object’s inertial mass, which determines how much it accelerates when force is applied, is equivalent to its gravitational mass, which determines how strong a gravitational force it feels. In confirming Galileo’s gravity experiment yet again, the result upholds the equivalence principle, a foundation of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity. As the atoms rose and fell, both varieties accelerated at essentially the same rate, the researchers found. The team launched clouds of these atoms about 8.6 meters high in a tube under vacuum. Researchers compared rubidium atoms of two different isotopes, atoms that contain different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. ![]() ![]() “It represents a leap forward,” says physicist Guglielmo Tino of the University of Florence, who was not involved with the new study. ![]() Two different types of atoms had the same acceleration within about a part per trillion, or 0.0000000001 percent, physicists report in a paper in press in Physical Review Letters.Ĭompared with a previous atom-drop test, the new research is a thousand times as sensitive. In recent years, researchers have taken to replicating this test in a way that the Italian scientist probably never envisioned - by dropping atoms.Ī new study describes the most sensitive atom-drop test so far and shows that Galileo’s gravity experiment still holds up - even for individual atoms. According to legend, Galileo dropped weights off of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, showing that gravity causes objects of different masses to fall with the same acceleration. ![]()
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