文档介绍：Evicting Einstein
A physics experiment on the drawing board for the International Space Station could help find the
grand unifying "Theory of Everything."
March 26, 2004: Sooner or later, the reign of Einstein, like the reign of Newton before him, will
come to an end. An upheaval in the world of physics that will overthrow our notions of basic
reality is inevitable, most scientists believe, and currently a horse race is underway between a
handful of peting to be the essor to the throne.
In the running are such mind-bending ideas as an 11-dimensional universe, universal "constants"
(such as the strength of gravity) that vary over space and time and only remain truly fixed in an
unseen 5th dimension, infinitesimal vibrating strings as the fundamental constituents of reality,
and a fabric of space and time that's not smooth and continuous, as Einstein believed, but divided
into discrete, indivisible chunks of vanishingly small size. Experiment will ultimately determine
which triumphs.
Above: According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, the sun's gravity causes starlight to
bend, shifting the apparent position of stars in the sky.
A new concept for an experiment to test the predictions of Einstein's relativity more precisely than
ever before is being developed by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Their