Newton's inverse-square law of gravitation has been one of the cornerstones of physics ever since it was proposed 300 years ago. One of its most well known features is the prediction that all objects fall in a gravitational field with the same acceleration. This observation, in the form of the Equivalence Principle, is a fundamental assumption of Einstein's General Relativity Theory. This book traces the history of attempts to test the predictions of Newtonian Gravity, and describes in detail recent experimental efforts to verify both the inverse-square law and the Equivalence Principle....

A history of the attempts to test the predictions of Newtonian Gravity, describing in detail recent experimental efforts to verify both the inverse-square law and the Equivalence Principle. Interest in these questions has increased in recent years, as it has become recognised that deviations from Newtonian gravity could be a signal for a new fundamental force in nature. This is the first book devoted entirely to this subject, and will thus be useful to both graduate students and researchers interested in this field. It describes the ideas that underlie searches for such deviations, focusing...

This book provides the reader with a detailed and captivating account of the story where, for the first time, physicists ventured into proposing a new force of nature beyond the four known ones - the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces, and gravitation - based entirely on the reanalysis of existing experimental data.

Back in 1986, Ephraim Fischbach, Sam Aronson, Carrick Talmadge and their collaborators proposed a modification of Newton s Law of universal gravitation. Underlying this proposal were three tantalizing pieces of evidence: 1) an energy dependence of the CP...