Abstract
Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) measures the distance between observatories on Earth and retro-reflectors on the Moon since 1969. In this Letter, we study the possible violation of the equivalence of passive and active gravitational mass (), for aluminum (Al) and iron (Fe), using LLR data. Our new limit of is about 100 times better than that of Bartlett and Van Buren [Equivalence of Active and Passive Gravitational Mass Using the Moon, Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 21 (1986)] reflecting the benefit of the many years of LLR data.
- Received 23 December 2022
- Accepted 25 May 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021401
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
Confirming Gravitational Interactions are Equal and Opposite
Published 13 July 2023
High-precision measurements of the Moon’s orbit show that iron and aluminum feel and exert gravitational forces equally.
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