James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Cavendish-like: A schematic diagram of the proposed experiment on gravitational interaction between two torsion balances. Two torsion pendula are placed with their equilibrium orientations (dashed ...

It’s been 120 years since Henry Cavendish measured the gravitational constant with a pair of lead balls suspended by a wire. The fundamental nature of gravity still eludes our best minds - but those ...

Last week over in Twitter-land, Philip Ball asked an interesting question: I’ve written a fair bit about historical science, and read more than I’ve written, so this question stuck with me, and seems ...

New measurements of the gravitational constant confirm that the official value needs to be increased and, as John Moore reports, could explain what went wrong in a previous experiment. Ever since ...

Henry Cavendish, FRS (10 October 1731 - 24 February 1810) was a British scientist noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable air, ...

IN the last number of the Proceedings of the Royal Society (vol. xlvi. p. 253), I have given an account of the improvements that I have made in the apparatus of Cavendish for measuring the constant of ...