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What is happening inside a black hole? How did the Big Bang begin? How did all the forces combine to form the universe? No big deal. Those are just the biggest questions humans have about the universe. But new discoveries may bring scientists closer to the answer than ever before.
That’s because scientists have finally figured out how to measure gravity in the quantum world. A team from Britain, the Netherlands and Italy used a new technique to detect the weak force of gravity acting on tiny particles. So small, in fact, that it is the smallest mass for which a gravitational signal has ever been recorded.
The technique involved suspending particles weighing just 0.43 mg at extremely low temperatures (about -273 degrees Celsius). They used floating magnets and superconducting devices (known as “traps”) to isolate the vibrations of the particles.
This helped to measure weak attractive forces of only 30 aN. 1 attonnewton (aN) is one quintillionth (1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000) of a newton (N). The force of gravity on an apple placed on a table is approximately 1N, and the gravitational force that scientists have measured is even less than that of a single bacterium on the table’s surface.
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Until now, scientists didn’t understand how gravity worked at the microscopic level. However, the interaction of forces with particles at this scale is different than for normal-sized objects. Even Einstein was puzzled by this. His theory of general relativity stated that there were no realistic experiments that could reveal gravity in the quantum world.
In fact, scientists have been “trying and failing to understand how gravity and quantum mechanics work together” for a century, says Tim Fuchs, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Southampton.
Until now, yes. The discovery, published in the journal Science Advances, brings scientists closer than ever to realizing the so-called “theory of everything” by understanding how forces of this magnitude work.
Perhaps the team’s method will pave the way for advances in measuring quantum gravity. In the future, researchers can scale this method down to continue measuring even smaller particles, bringing science ever closer to understanding the mysterious forces that govern the universe.
“We are pushing the boundaries of science and could lead to new discoveries about gravity and the quantum world,” said study author Professor Hendrik Ulbricht.
“Unraveling these mysteries will help us uncover even more secrets about the very structure of the universe, from the tiniest particles to the most spectacular cosmic structures.”
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