What, you thought Newton cracked this one already? Physicists at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) say they may have a way to measure the effects of gravity at very short distances, say 1/1,000 the diameter of a human hair. “There are lots of competing theories about whether gravity behaves differently at such close range,” says NIST physicist Andrew Geraci. It’s not entirely clear how this information might be used. But, adds Geraci, “progress in the scientific community comes not just from individual experiments, but from new ideas.” And so we thought you’d want to know. 

—Daniel DiClerico