alienation news

New theories take flight on speed of gravity, light

Ninety-eight years after Albert Einstein began to transform physics, scientists continue to question his ideas.
So far, he's survived every crucial challenge, including the latest: a challenge to his premise that light and gravity travel at the same speed. Last week in Seattle, scientists announced that in fact, gravity and light travel at the same speed, at least within a 20 per cent margin of error.
But 20 per cent, they admit, is a huge margin of error. To put it in perspective: Twenty per cent of the speed of light is more than more than four times the diameter of Earth per second.
Conceivably, so huge a margin of error might conceal a significant difference in gravity and light speeds. So Einstein's challengers still hope to find flaws in his general theory of relativity.