Gravity

Conventional wisdom has long held that the Milky Way was a flat disk of stars and gas, with a bulge in the middle. But now astronomers have created a more accurate 3D map of the galaxy and found that it’s more warped and twisted than previously thought.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the very fabric of spacetime, caused by some of the biggest cataclysms in the cosmos. Now, an international team of scientists has presented the full catalog of these events, gathered over the last few years across two observation runs.

In recent tests run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), experimental atomic clocks have achieved record performance in three metrics, meaning these clocks could help measure the Earth’s gravity more precisely or detect elusive dark matter.

Physics tells us that a hammer and a feather, dropped in a vacuum, will fall at the same rate. Now, CERN scientists are preparing to drop antimatter in a vacuum chamber to see if gravity affects it the same way it does matter – or if antimatter falls upwards instead.

Hungarian astronomers have spotted two new pseudo-satellites – in the form of clouds of dust – caught in the gravitational tug-of-war between the Earth and the Moon.

Gravity.co's Richard Browning has put his extraordinary jet suit on sale and display at British retailer Selfridges. Those without the cash can throw on an HTC Vive headset and learn to fly the thing in virtual reality, where unscheduled landings will be a lot less messy.

The theory of relativity predicts that any two objects in a vacuum will fall at the same rate. Whether or not this applied to massive objects like planets and stars has long been debated, but now astronomers have shown that the phenomenon does hold true, meaning Einstein was right yet again.

When NASA's GRACE-FO mission launches, it will be able to map the Earth's gravitational field with unprecedented accuracy thanks to a new laser ranging interferometry technique to chart gravitational anomalies with a ten-fold greater precision than the previous GRACE mission.

Some theories suggest there could be many more dimensions that we’re unaware of, mostly because they’re imperceptibly tiny. Now researchers have taken the search for extra dimensions down to the nanoscale, using a neutron beam to study gravitational forces more precisely than ever before.

Personal Flight pioneer and real-life Iron Man Richard Browning has found an innovative way to speed-test the aerodynamics of his Gravity jet suit. He's been flying up and down Europe's longest and fastest zip line in Wales. Check out the video!

Ten men at the University of Nottingham are lying down for science by taking to their beds for three days. The "pillownauts" will provide medical data that could one day help astronauts avoid the risk of developing Type-2 diabetes due to a lack of gravity.

The wonder material graphene has been wrung through just about every experiment on Earth – but how does it fare beyond our planet? A European team has tested graphene in microgravity for the first time, an important step towards realizing it's promising applications in space.