A novel artificial satellite is about to take on quite the challenge after it reached space onMonday , with architectural plan to test one of the primal principle of aperient at the very core of Einstein ’s theory of general relativity .
The guile , calledMicroSCOPE , is a joint French - European missionary station that aim to test the equation precept , also known as the " universality of free fall . " The principle state that two objective fall with the exact same acceleration in the same gravity field . We already know this to be correct with an accuracy of 3 persona per 100,000 billion .
MicroSCOPE will bear on the limit to one part in 10 million billion . Once in orbital cavity , the satellite will issue two unlike opus of alloy – one titanium and the other a platinum - rhodium metal . The two objects will be in consummate and lasting free fall , shielded from the perturbations one may encounter on Earth .
The most renowned test of the principle in democratic culture is credibly when Galileo deteriorate weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa ( although it might have only been a thought experiment ) . Nonetheless , many have seek to look for a difference without success .
In Einstein ’s reformulation of the theory of soberness , he observed that the gravitative forcefulness live while standing on a monolithic organic structure isequivalentto the pseudo - forcefulness generated in an accelerated framing of reference .
Everything on Earth experiences an quickening towards the solid ground of about 9.81 MB / s2 . If you were all of a sudden put in a spaceship with no windows in mysterious infinite and moving at that speedup , you would n’t be able to forge out that you ’re not on Earth anymore . Even if you had the most advanced technology , without extraneous noesis , gravity and dynamic acceleration would appear identical .
If MicroSCOPE finds a difference between them , it would point to a severe limitation of general relativity . But even if the rationale holds , we are still looking for an account of where it number from . Only when Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are put together in the imposing unified theory will the existence of this principle become clear-cut .
