Why laboratory values of G scatter beyond their stated uncertainties

In plain words

About a dozen top experiments, each claiming an error of a few parts in 100000, give values of G that spread by about 5 parts in 10000. Something in how G is measured is not understood.

Precise statement

Laboratory determinations of G (torsion balances in time-of-swing, angular-acceleration and servo modes, beam balances, simple pendulums, atom interferometry) spread over about $5 \times 10^{-4}$ relative, roughly ten times their typical quoted uncertainties of $10^{-5} \text{ to } 5 \times 10^{-5}$, near $G = 6.674 \times 10^{-8}\,\mathrm{cm}^{3}\,\mathrm{g}^{-1}\,\mathrm{s}^{-2}$. Identify the unaccounted systematic effects (or establish any genuine dependence of the measured G on method, material or geometry) that explain the excess scatter.

What would settle it

A consensus set of independent measurements with different methods agreeing within quoted uncertainties at the $10^{-5}$ level, together with an identified correction to the outliers.

Status in the literature

Unverified note: it names recent work and was partly written without a live literature search; it awaits a check by an editor.

NIST published a 10-year blinded torsion-balance result in Metrologia in 2026 that lies about 235 ppm below the BIPM value obtained with the same apparatus design.

Problems built on this one

Special cases

Revision history

Results

No results have been posted on this problem yet.

Post a result · how results are checked

Sign in to follow or save this problem

Comments (0)

Comments are not records: they are not signed, stamped or logged. How comments work

No comments yet.

Sign in to comment.