Preliminary Results of a Determination of the Newtonian Constant of Gravitation: A Test of the Kuroda Hypothesis

Two preliminary determinations of the Newtonian constant of gravitation have been performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory employing low-Q torsion pendulums and using the time-of-swing method. Recently, Kuroda has predicted that such determinations have an upward bias inversely proportional to the oscillation Q, and our results support this conjecture. If this conjecture is correct, our best value for the constant is $(6.6740\pm 0.0007)\times {10}^{-11\mathrm{}}{\mathrm{m}}^3{\mathrm{kg}}^{-1\mathrm{}}{\mathrm{s}}^{-2\mathrm{}}$.