Gravitational G and How Science Works

Zak and Derek discuss the "controversial" value of Newton's gravitational constant G. They cover the history of its measurement and how the value (and confidence in that value) has changed over time.

Gravitational G wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

Relative uncertainty of phsyical constants: https://codata.org/blog/2015/08/04/codata-recommended-values-of-the-fundamental-physical-constants-2014/

Different G experiments with uncertainty bars: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344933668/figure/fig2/AS:1019607263477760@1620104723443/The-eleven-values-of-G-adopted-in-CODATA-2014-after-2000-and-our-latest-two-values.png

The podcast lives at https://www.thehyperfine.com/

Join our listener community on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheHyperfine/

Follow the show on Instagram @thehyperfine: https://www.instagram.com/thehyperfine/

Derek on Instagram (and Twitter) @liketortilla: https://www.instagram.com/liketortilla/

Zak on Twitter @phyzaks: https://twitter.com/phyzaks