Work
He performed a long series of very sensitive gravity shielding experiments from 1918 to 1922, which have never been reproduced. Majorana's experiments determined that mercury or lead around a suspended lead sphere acted as a screen and slightly decreased the Earth's gravitational pull. No attempts have been made to reproduce his results using the same experimental techniques. Other researchers have concluded from other data that if gravitational absorption does exist it must be at least five orders of magnitude smaller than Majorana's experiments suggest.
Critical of Albert Einstein's relativity theory, he tried to disprove Einstein’s postulate on the constancy of the speed of light, but he failed and therefore his experiments confirmed Einstein's postulate. Majorana also confirmed Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation to high precision.
His later work at Bologna was influenced by correspondence with his nephew Ettore Majorana (1906–1938), a great physicist in his own right.
Read more about this topic: Quirino Majorana
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“To see distinctly the machinery—the wheels and pinions—of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. True work is the necessity of poor humanity’s earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundredths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate its tremendous branches filled with stars. We have a duty to perform, to work upon the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to worship the incomprehensible while rejecting the absurd; to accept, in the inexplicable, only what is necessary; to dispel the superstitions that surround religion—to rid God of His Maggots.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)