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GRAVI, an experiment to test Newton's law at very low accelerations
Hinrich Meyer (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)
Seminar Room 3, 15:00
The motivation to check Newton's law at very low accelerations
comes from apparent failures to correctly describe some basic
dynamic features in astrophysics. This was discovered by
Fritz Zwicky looking at the dynamics of galaxies in clusters (1933)
and at the movement of stars in galaxies (1937). Attempts to
reconcile the observations with Newton's law led to the introduction
of dark matter dominating the matter content of the universe.
However, also a modification of the law of Newton is rather
successful from the phenomenological point of view (Milgrom 1983).
In this context it seems indicated, to test Newton's law at very low
values of the gravitational acceleration.
The experimental setup used at DESY had been developed
at the University of Wuppertal to precisely determine the gravitational
constant G. Data taking proceeds for the new measurement rather
routinely since 8/2009. The experimental setup will be described
in detail and preliminary results will be discussed.
