Ideas Lab: Measuring "Big G" Challenge

Funding Opportunity Number: 16-520 Opportunity Category: DiscretionaryFunding Instrument Type: GrantCategory of Funding Activity: Science and Technology and other Research and DevelopmentCFDA Number: 47.049Eligible Applicants Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility"Agency Name: NSFClosing Date: Oct 26, 2016Award Ceiling: Expected Number of Awards: 5Creation Date: Dec 12, 2015Funding Opportunity Description: The gravitational constant, G, describes the strength of gravitation, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions in nature. Although several hundred measurements of this constant have been performed over the last two and a quarter centuries, recent experiments differ by as much as 0.05%, about 40 times the uncertainty of the most precise experiment. Motivations to resolve the current discrepancy with better measurements are two-fold. First, the search for a theory that unifies gravitation with quantum electrodynamics is an active area of research. Such a theory may be able to predict the value of G, and an experimental result may become important to test such theories. Second, understanding the subtleties involved in precisely and absolutely measuring a small force is important for many fields of physics and metrology, including the Casimir effect, spring constants of atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilever, intermolecu...
Source: Grants.gov - Category: Research Tags: Science and Technology and other Research and Development Source Type: funding