Laws of Physics May Need an Overhaul

String theorist shakes up 300 years of science

(NEWSER) - Anyone who's ever seen a ball drop knows it's obvious that gravity exists—right? Not so fast, says a prominent string theorist who has called into question 300 years of science with a new paper arguing that gravity is merely an illusion. Dutch physicist Erik Verlinde says gravity is not a basic force itself, but rather a sort of "cosmic frill," as the New York Times puts it, which emerges from some deeper force the way stock markets emerge from the decisions of individual investors. More»

(NEWSER) - On August 25, 1609—400 years ago today—Galileo Galilei introduced Venice to the telescope, and the discoveries it enabled were every bit as revolutionary as Darwinism, writes Peter Walker of the Guardian. With his telescope, a brown stick weaker than today's store-bought models, Galileo detected moon-like phases of Venus, proving that planets revolve around the sun and not Earth. That brought Galileo scientific immortality, but not before he suffered years of persecution. More»

Heretic remains a touchy subject in Catholic Church

(NEWSER) - Galileo Galilei is riling the Catholic church yet again, the Wall Street Journal reports, as an anonymous donor has offered to pay to erect a statue in the Vatican of Catholicism’s most famous heretic. But though the church has come around on science, Galileo remains a touchy subject. He’s “like a Mexican soap opera,” said one Vatican official. “It never ends.” More»

New experiment shows particles at identical speed with light

(NEWSER) - Einstein's theory apparently remains untouchable, and flabbergasted theoretical physicists can cease hyperventilating: Neutrinos do not exceed the speed of light, but they do appear to travel at the same speed as light, according to the results of a recent experiment. The new data confirm Einstein's foundational ideas and refute an experiment from last September which showed neutrinos exceeding the speed of light, threatening to turn the world of physics upside down, reports BBC News . More»

A simple loose cord may explain last year's controversy

(NEWSER) - More evidence that last year's furor over the accuracy of Albert Einstein's work got blown way out of proportion: Physicists believed they'd seen particles traveling faster than light , a phenomenon that would disprove the theory of relativity. But the controversial observations may have been the result of nothing more than a loose wire, experts say. A GPS error may have caused the mistake, says a scientist at CERN, where the initial results were reported. More»