News about gravitation and gravity, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
Chronology of Coverage
Jun. 24, 2014
Gravity Research Foundation, created by businessman Roger Babson in 1949, awards yearly prize for research into workings of gravity; despite this, understanding of the phenomenon of gravity has remained elusive. MORE
Jun. 8, 2014
Gray Matter column by Prof Adam Frank describes being a child and pining for future in which flying cars exist; contends that absence of flying cars serves as a reminder that humans have surprisingly poor control over most of nature's fundamental forces, like gravity. MORE
Mar. 4, 2014
Time Travel column; study of protein crystals, critical in designing new drugs and pesticides, is simpler in absence of gravity, leading scientists to carry out such experiments on space shuttles; some have questioned cost and value of research, citing failed 1989 experiment on shuttle Discovery. MORE
Nov. 7, 2013
European satellite that mapped Earth’s gravitational field in exquisite detail will be pulled down by gravity to its fiery destruction sometime in the next few days, but where and when it will crash remains unclear. MORE
Aug. 13, 2013
Impassioned debate has broken out among world's physicists over what happens to matter entering a black hole; at stake is basis of Einstein's general theory of relativity, theory of gravity, or possibly other long-established principals of nature. MORE
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ARTICLES ABOUT GRAVITY
Astronomers who say they detected ripples from the Big Bang appear to have underestimated the extent to which interstellar dust could have contaminated their results.
September 23, 2014, Tuesday
Instruction, rental and sale of jetpacks has proved popular for a company in Newport Beach, Calif., and other shorefront communities.
August 9, 2014, Saturday
More on Roger Babson, and on the real danger facing George Clooney and Sandra Bullock in “Gravity.”
June 25, 2014, Wednesday
A businessman who was interested in a solution to gravity ended up contributing significantly to better understanding it. But it remains a force that confounds scientists.
June 24, 2014, Tuesday
Why don’t they exist? Because nature’s fundamental forces remain a mystery.
June 8, 2014, Sunday
The discovery of gravitational waves in the fabric of space may go down as one of the greatest in the history of science.
April 12, 2014, Saturday
The telescopic discovery of gravitational waves believed to have been left from the origin of the universe will reverberate for years to come.
March 25, 2014, Tuesday
Experiments with protein crystals that were conducted aboard Discovery in 1989 yielded little, but a project planned for the International Space Station holds promise.
March 4, 2014, Tuesday
Swelled heads, atrophied legs, radiation threats — space takes a toll on the human body, and some health problems still elude doctors more than 50 years after the first spaceflight.
January 28, 2014, Tuesday
The Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer, which mapped Earth’s gravitational field in detail, met a fiery end when it crashed back to Earth.