Tag: gravitation
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Dropping science like Galileo dropped the orange
Over the past few years, the MICROSCOPE spacecraft performed precision experiments to test the difference between gravitational mass, which governs how strongly matter responds to gravity, and inertial mass, which is the measure of resistance to being pushed. Our modern theory of gravity, Einstein’s general theory of relativity, says these masses are equivalent, which is…
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Earth is a freeeeee faaaallin’ laboratory for testing general relativity
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] And if I can be shameless: Forbes pays according to traffic, so the more of you who click on the link below and read my stuff, the better they…
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Testing Einstein’s theory with a new space probe to Mercury
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] And if I can be shameless: Forbes pays according to traffic, so the more of you who share and visit and read my stuff, the better they pay me.…
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Could gravity have mass?
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] Might gravity have mass? From Physics World: When confronted with something unexplained in the data, scientists face several possibilities. Maybe there’s an error and the result is spurious. Maybe…
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How can we see black holes if they’re invisible?
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] The Shadow of a Black Hole From NOVA: The invisible manifests itself through the visible: so say many of the great works of philosophy, poetry, and religion. It’s also…
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Why do some want to modify general relativity?
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] And yes, I did refer to MOND as “a fungus in the basement of astronomy”. Do We Need to Rewrite General Relativity? For NOVA “The Nature of Reality”: General…
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Blogging about science for Forbes Magazine
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] As of this week, I will be blogging regularly for Forbes on planetary science, climate change, physics, and math. My first two posts are up; go check them out…
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Measuring the spin of a black hole using X-rays
The region near a black hole is one of the most extreme environments in the Universe, but historically it’s been hard to study directly. Using the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR telescopes, astronomers have measured the rotation of gas near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy. They found that this…
Bowler Hat Science 