{"id":191927,"date":"2024-06-27T02:28:34","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T07:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/experiment-captures-atoms-in-free-fall-to-look-for-gravitational-anomalies-caused-by-dark-energy"},"modified":"2024-06-27T02:28:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T07:28:34","slug":"experiment-captures-atoms-in-free-fall-to-look-for-gravitational-anomalies-caused-by-dark-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/experiment-captures-atoms-in-free-fall-to-look-for-gravitational-anomalies-caused-by-dark-energy","title":{"rendered":"Experiment captures atoms in free fall to look for gravitational anomalies caused by dark energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/experiment-captures-atoms-in-free-fall-to-look-for-gravitational-anomalies-caused-by-dark-energy2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dark energy\u2014a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate\u2014was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new and exotic particle causing the expansion.<\/p>\n<p>Pushing the boundaries of this search, University of California, Berkeley physicists have now built the most precise experiment yet to look for minor deviations from the accepted theory of <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/gravity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">gravity<\/a> that could be evidence for such a particle, which theorists have dubbed a chameleon or symmetron. The results are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41567-024-02518-9\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the June 11, 2024, issue of <i>Nature<\/i> Physics.<\/p>\n<p>The experiment, which combines an <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/atom+interferometer\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">atom interferometer<\/a> for precise gravity measurements with an <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/optical+lattice\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">optical lattice<\/a> to hold the atoms in place, allowed the researchers to immobilize free-falling atoms for seconds instead of milliseconds to look for gravitational effects, besting the current most precise measurement by a factor of five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dark energy\u2014a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate\u2014was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new and exotic particle causing the expansion. Pushing the boundaries of this search, University of California, Berkeley physicists have now built the most precise experiment yet to look for minor [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}