EINSTEIN’s theory of gravity has so far never failed, but that could change as general relativity is set to face its most precise test yet.
The theory is founded on the principle that gravitational mass is the same as inertial mass, but testing this is not easy. Sava Dimopoulos of Stanford University in California and colleagues suggest that by letting two beams of atoms fall and interfere in a gravitational field, they should be able to measure even very minor deviations from the path predicted by Einstein (www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0610047). It should be possible to test the theory to an accuracy…
