{"id":243619,"date":"2026-09-04T01:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/physicists-test-the-weak-equivalence-principle-in-an-orbiting-space-station"},"modified":"2026-09-04T01:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:38:13","slug":"physicists-test-the-weak-equivalence-principle-in-an-orbiting-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/physicists-test-the-weak-equivalence-principle-in-an-orbiting-space-station","title":{"rendered":"Physicists test the weak equivalence principle in an orbiting space station"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-test-the-weak-equivalence-principle-in-an-orbiting-space-station2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The weak equivalence principle (WEP) is central to Einstein\u2019s general relativity. It posits that gravity must accelerate everything equally, regardless of what it is made from. For the first time, a team led by Ming-Sheng Zhan at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics has tested the principle using clouds of continuously free-falling atoms aboard an orbiting space station.<\/p>\n<p>Their research has been published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aeh4502\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Science Advances<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The weak equivalence principle (WEP) is central to Einstein\u2019s general relativity. It posits that gravity must accelerate everything equally, regardless of what it is made from. For the first time, a team led by Ming-Sheng Zhan at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics has tested the principle using clouds of continuously free-falling atoms aboard [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243619","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=243619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}