NIST WEIGHS IN ON THE MYSTERY OF THE GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 -- The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards & Technology issued the following press release:

NIST scientists Stephan Schlamminger (left) and Vincent Lee examine the torsion balance they used to measure the gravitational constant, big G, a decade-long undertaking. The time had come to open the envelope, but Stephan Schlamminger, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), wasn't sure he wanted to know the secret number that lay inside.For the past 10 years, Schlamminger had spent most of his working hours trying to measure a single quantity, known as the universal gravitational constant, which determines the strength of gravity everywhere in the universe. The secret n...