Weird Reality

In the beginning, all that Stephan Schlamminger wanted to do was to write down an equation that would help him obtain a more precise value for G, the gravitational constant that determines the strength of the attraction between massive objects. To gauge that attraction, Schlamminger, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), together with his colleagues, studied the motion of a so-called torsional pendulum—in this case, a set of masses suspended by a thin wire that...

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