A Discover reader asks: Are we any closer to understanding the root cause of gravity between objects with mass? Can we use our newly discovered knowledge of the Higgs boson or gravitational waves to perhaps negate mass or create/negate gravity? — Jeff Lepler, Redford, Michigan
Sorry, Jeff, but scientists still don’t really know why gravity works. In a way, they’ve just barely figured out how it works.
The Higgs boson discovery four years ago helped verify how objects acquired their mass, but that doesn’t shed much light on gravity itself.
In the 17th century, Isaac Newton was the first to formally connect an apple falling toward Earth and Earth itself “falling” around the sun. The force behind both was gravity, and Newton understood it as just an attraction that grew stronger between two objects the more massive and the closer they were.
Albert Einstein came along a few centuries later ...
