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Hi! Thanks for hopping on HN to answer questions. Are you expecting anything particularly interesting or exciting out of these tests?
by chaps 7y ago
Hi! Thanks for hopping on HN to answer questions. Are you expecting anything particularly interesting or exciting out of these tests?
- ISL 7y agoOne day, nature will give up a secret. Gravity and the standard model are, as written, very different theories. Our short-range gravity experiments are simultaneously at the forefront of some classes of high-energy physics one might explore at the LHC and interesting astrophysical/cosmological questions. With our entire program of measurement, we are pushing as hard as we can on the theory of gravity, looking for a gap in the armor to see what's next. The draw of these short-range experiments is that it is totally-unexplored territory, and with every step forward, we continue to check whether or not our oldest-known force behaves as predicted. It's late, so I'm beginning to ramble: There are viable theories that predict that gravity should get stronger at these scales, and viable theories that gravity should get weaker at these scales. With this result, those theories just got squeezed into a smaller box. While this isn't my result (I helped with this one, but am not a prime-mover), for me, the big draw is to study gravity until we push it, like all the other interactions, into the realm of the microscopic.
- chaps 7y agoAh, I realized my comment sounded a little like I was trying to downplay the work! Wasn't my goal -- I truly find this work extremely interesting and at one point wanted to study physics so that I could do particle physics + cosmology. Parameters finding is an absolute must for us as a species if we want to push forward.