{"247961":{"#nid":"247961","#data":{"type":"event","title":"Testing Gravity via Lunar Laser Ranging","body":[{"value":"\u003Ch5\u003ESchool of Physics Colloquium Series: Professor Tom Murphy, University of California, San Diego\u003C\/h5\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForty years ago, Apollo astronauts placed the first of several retroreflector arrays on the moon. \u0026nbsp;Laser range measurements between the earth and the moon have provided some of our best tests to date of general relativity and gravitational phenomenology--including the equivalence principle, the time-rate-of-change of the gravitational constant, the inverse square law, and gravitomagnetism. \u0026nbsp;A new effort called APOLLO (the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation) is now collecting measurements at the unprecedented precision of one millimeter, which will produce order-of-magnitude improvements in a variety of gravitational tests, as well as reveal more detail about the interior structure of the moon. \u0026nbsp;This talk will include an overview of the science, a description of the instrument and its performance, evidence for dust accumulation on the lunar surface, re-discovery of a lost Soviet reflector, and an outlook for advancing the state of gravity tests in the solar system.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Testing Gravity via Lunar Laser Ranging"}],"uid":"27664","created_gmt":"2013-10-22 12:11:31","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 02:05:26","author":"Alison Morain","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2013-11-11T14:00:00-05:00","event_time_end":"2013-11-11T15:00:00-05:00","event_time_end_last":"2013-11-11T15:00:00-05:00","gmt_time_start":"2013-11-11 19:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2013-11-11 20:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2013-11-11 20:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"126011","name":"School of Physics"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"77781","name":"Testing Gravity via Lunar Laser Ranging"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1795","name":"Seminar\/Lecture\/Colloquium"}],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:alison.morain@physics.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ealison.morain@physics.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}