Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law · HackerPapers discussions

Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law — mentioned by JimBlackwood

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 16:19:31 GMT

No, what you’re saying is correct. If the inverse square law was obeyed perfectly, space would be restricted to 3-spatial dimensions. The extra spatial dimensions are usually theorized to be extremely compact so the effects of a higher power law (the inverse square law can be generalised to 1/r^(n-1) with n as your amount of dimensions.) can be neglected. Of course, to prove it you’d have to at some point measure these effects, and there is some evidence that the inverse square law breaks down. (https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0307284.pdf)

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Tests of the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law — mentioned by ISL

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 16:01:04 GMT

Apologies for the delayed reply -- HN's noprocrast setting is a powerful taskmaster. What we do is search for deviations from Newton's inverse square law. Depending upon the distance over which an experiment is performed, the ISL can be correct to a precision as high as ~10^-10 [1]. In particular, our group works to test whether the inverse-square law (or indeed gravity at all) happens as predicted at distances shorter than 100 microns [2]. It still amazes me that at distances shorter than half the diameter of a human hair, nobody has any idea whether gravity even happens. Newton's early…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.