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Re:New test of the gravitational 1/r2 law at separations dow... by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @11:59AM (#22804386)
You say seismic vibrations increase the noise a lot but not, that I saw, anything about what measures you take against them?

Presumably you do some sort of active noise cancelling for vibrations (like noise cancelling headphones)?

Seismic noise must be a common problem in physics experiments, which other experiments have the best environmental vibration cancelling systems ... do people pay for use of them like they would for use of a space telescope?

Re:New test of the gravitational 1/r2 law at separations dow... by ISL on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @01:10PM (#22814829)
We are moving from passive to active isolation now. The isolation that we need right now isn't too challenging. The hard part is ensuring that it doesn't disturb other properties of our instruments. We are sensitive to nanoradian rotations at millihertz frequencies, so we have to ensure that our isolation systems don't add any rotation noise.

Regarding isolation-as-a-service: Most of these kinds of experiments run for many years in a university setting. The environmental requirements for each instrument vary widely, too. "Isolated-environment laboratories as a user facility" is an interesting idea to consider. I'm not sure if it would soar in the academic-research marketplace, but there might be a niche somewhere.