All articles tagged with #lunar laser ranging
The Moon is gradually moving away from Earth at about 3.8 centimeters per year, a process measured by laser reflectors placed during the Apollo missions. This recession will lead to the end of total solar eclipses in roughly 600 million years, but the Moon will never fully drift away due to the Sun's eventual expansion into a red giant, which will engulf Earth and the Moon together.
Researchers have confirmed with unprecedented accuracy that the properties of mass, such as weight, inertia, and gravitation, are always equivalent, regardless of the specific composition of the mass. This finding reinforces the equivalence principle, a cornerstone of Einstein's theory of relativity, and addresses a critical point of divergence between classical and quantum physics. Using half a century of lunar laser ranging data, scientists have shown that passive and active gravitational mass are always equivalent, supporting the fundamental assumptions of physics and providing further evidence for Einstein's theory.