Falling objects in orbit show Einstein was right — again

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Falling objects in orbit show Einstein was right — again
France Dernières Nouvelles,France Actualités
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Einstein: Still right.

“The equivalence principle is the most important cornerstone of Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” says Sabine Hossenfelder, a physicist with the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany who was not involved in the study. “We know [it] eventually has to be altered because it cannot in its present form take into account quantum effects.”

To help search for potential alterations, the MICROSCOPE experiment tracked the motion of nested metal cylinders — a 300-gram titanium outer cylinder and a 402-gram platinum inner one — as they orbited the Earth in near-perfect free fall. Any difference in the effect of gravity on the respective cylinders would cause them to move relative to each other.

From April 2016 to October 2018, the cylinders were shielded inside a satellite that protected them from the buffeting of solar winds, the minuscule pressure that sunlight exerts and the residual atmosphere at an orbital altitude of a little over 700 kilometers high. By performing the experiment in orbit, the researchers could compare the free fall of two different materials for extended periods without the confounding effects of vibrations or of objects nearby that could exert gravitational forces, says Manuel Rodrigues, a MICROSCOPE team member and physicist with the French aerospace lab ONERA in Palaiseau. “One of the lessons learned by MICROSCOPE is … that space is the best way to get an important improvement in the accuracy for this kind of test.

Over its two-and-a-half-year mission, MICROSCOPE found no sign of cracks in the equivalence principle, the new study reports. The finding builds on a previous interim report from the experiment

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