Post by University of Wollongong

A study by UOW physicist Dr Enbang Li has demonstrated that gravity can influence the behaviour of light, a breakthrough that could assist future technologies designed to monitor groundwater, locating mineral deposits and detecting underground changes linked to volcanic activity and carbon storage. “Tiny shifts in gravity can reveal critical changes beneath or around us, from underground water levels to magma build-ups below volcanos that could indicate future eruptions. Our research suggests light-based sensing technologies may one day provide a new way to detect and monitor those changes with very high precision,” says Dr Li. Gravity sensing is already used in mining, infrastructure, defence and geoscience to “see” beneath the Earth’s surface by detecting differences in underground density of rocks, minerals, water or tunnels. Dr Li said the findings also build on fundamental questions in physics dating back more than a century. “In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and independent of the observer’s motion. Our experimental results suggest that photons can interact with the Earth’s gravitational field in ways that may influence how light transmits, which provides a new perspective on this longstanding assumption.” #ThisIsUOW