Our understanding of fundamental physics is so powerful that we can make confident statements about our 13.7 billion year old universe when it was only a minute old. This understanding is based on combining the “standard models” of gravity (Einstein's classical general relativity) and of particle physics (gauge quantum fields of the weak, electromagnetic and strong interactions). Both of these have been tested extensively and precisely and no convincing breakdowns have yet been observed. But this hides huge problems; the two standard models are inconsistent with each other, and do not account for dark matter and dark energy that constitute 95% of our universe. Naturally, theorists have devoted huge efforts to solve these problems and inevitably had to invent new particles or extra space dimensions that were undetectable by any existing experiments.
In 1985 a small group of UW nuclear and atomic experimentalists formed the Eöt-Wash collaboration to develop novel high-sensitivity torsion balances to test some of these theoretical scenarios and to search for subtle new phenomena associated with the breakdown of either of the 2 standard models. As our experimental sensitivity increased by orders of magnitudes, theorists proposed new mechanisms that we could test until a small “graveyard” of proposals was populated.
In 2021 this work was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics “for precision measurements that test our understanding of gravity, probe the nature of dark energy, and establish limits on couplings on dark matter.” I will review the extraordinary instruments we developed and the results we obtained from testing Einstein’s equivalence principle and the gravitational inverse-square law, and probing for Planck-scale Lorentz violation using a quantum gyroscope with no moving parts.
Негізгі бет Gravity: the biggest open question in fundamental physics
Пікірлер: 15