"The new measurement gives important clues as to where the original experiment, conducted by researchers at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris and published in 2013, went wrong."
"Although hunting for G helps to 'sharpen your axe' for other precision experiments, right now 'it's a pretty useless number', says Schlamminger."
"The work is 'soul draining', says Stephan Schlamminger, a physicist at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, who led the latest work."
"Efforts to measure the gravitational constant date back to 1798, and since then have expanded to a variety of methods, involving swinging pendulums, balancing masses and charting the paths taken by atoms."
The gravitational constant Big G continues to puzzle scientists, as a recent decade-long experiment yielded results that conflict with earlier findings and the CODATA value. This new measurement provides insights into potential errors in previous experiments. Despite the challenges, researchers remain motivated to determine G's true value, although its practical applications are limited. The meticulous work of the NIST team is expected to aid future experiments, marking significant progress in the quest to accurately measure this fundamental constant.
Read at Nature
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