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Gravity measured with record precision

The gravitational constant, G, which governs the strength of gravitational interactions, is hard to measure accurately. Two independent determinations of G have been made that have the smallest uncertainties so far.
  1. Stephan Schlamminger

    1. Stephan Schlamminger is in the Fundamental Electrical Measurements Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA.

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Although gravity seems strong in our everyday lives, such as when lifting a heavy object, it is the weakest of the four fundamental forces. The gravitational force between two bodies is proportional to the masses of these bodies. If one of the bodies is Earth, the force can be considerable. But if the bodies are objects in a laboratory, the force can be too small to measure accurately. For example, the gravitational force between two 1-kilogram objects separated by 1 metre is equivalent to the weight of a few biological cells. For this reason, the gravitational constant, G, which quantifies the strength of this force, is one of the most poorly defined physical constants. But in a paper in Nature, Li et al.1 report high-precision measurements of G using two different techniques.

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Nature 560, 562-563 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06028-6

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