An international team of astrophysicists has conducted the largest-ever test of the theory of gravity, confirming that Newton's law of universal gravitation holds over distances of hundreds of millions of light-years, according to infohub.kz.
The study, led by Patricio A. Gallardo of the University of Pennsylvania, used data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The researchers analyzed cosmic microwave background radiation that emerged 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
As this ancient radiation passes through massive galaxy clusters, it undergoes subtle distortions that allow precise measurements of the velocities of cosmic objects and the strength of gravitational attraction.
The results show that gravity weakens with distance exactly according to the inverse-square law formulated by Isaac Newton and later incorporated by Albert Einstein into general relativity. This finding challenges alternative modified gravity hypotheses, such as MOND, and strengthens the case for the existence of invisible dark matter.