FROM remote observatories on the Tibetan plateau to a cave in a Shanghai suburb, Chinese researchers were this week poised for an ambitious once-in-a-century experiment. The plan is to investigate a controversial notion that few in the west have the means or motivation to look at: the possibility that gravity suddenly drops by a minute amount during a total solar eclipse.
As New Scientist went to press, geophysicists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences were preparing an array of sensitive instruments at six sites across China ready to take gravity readings on Wednesday, 22 July, as the eclipse passed…
