Word: newtons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that binds atomic nuclei and a "weak" one that governs certain types of radioactive decay. Last week researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that they may have found the best evidence yet for a hypothetical, elusive "fifth force." If confirmed, their findings could mean that Sir Isaac Newton's famous inverse- square law of gravity* is in danger of losing the exalted position it has held for three centuries. "It's like saying Mom and apple pie's no good anymore," admits the leader of the gravity project, Geophysicist Mark Ander. "You just don't do that lightly...
...last summer. They lowered a supersensitive gravity meter into a mile-deep hole bored in glacial ice -- chosen because its density is more uniform than that of rock -- and monitored the gravitational pull as the meter descended. What occurred was startling: the expected increase in gravitational force predicted by Newton was there, but it got stronger faster than expected. Either something was enhancing the force of gravity or the researchers had come upon a heretofore unknown, far more complex working of gravity itself. Or, just possibly, they had made a mistake...
...What we're really talking about is the possible modification of gravity, which is the fourth force," adds Thomas. Even Ander stresses that rigorous confirmation is needed before he accepts the results of his Greenland experiment. Says he: "You keep saying to yourself, 'Gee, I've gotta be wrong -- Newton certainly can't be wrong...
FOOTNOTE: *Newton's law holds that gravitational pull increases in inverse proportion to the square of the distance between two bodies...
During the 18th century, however, Enlightenment scholars began to question the whole fabric of revealed religion. In the age of Newton, they believed that the Scriptures must be subjected to the same rigorous scientific scrutiny as the laws of nature; nothing could be taken on faith. One such self- confident rationalist was Thomas Jefferson. After leaving the White House, he wrote a biography of Jesus that kept many of the teachings but discarded numerous Gospel passages that, in his judgment, could not have been authentic. The true words, he said, were "imbedded as diamonds in dunghills...