The following press conference is scheduled for the American Physical Society (APS) April Meeting in Long Beach, California April 29-May 2, 2000.

Just in the past two years an exciting new theory of quantum gravity has made startling, testable predictions. The model supposes the existence of extra spatial dimensions (with a characteristic size of perhaps a millimeter) in which gravity, but not other forces, might be operating. One practical implication is that at high-energy collisions at labs like CERN, and maybe even Fermilab, one manifestation of extra dimensions would be a conspicuous disappearance of energy, implying that some of the collision energy had been converted into gluons which disappear into the extra dimension. Another implication of the new model, one that can be probed with tabletop experiments, suggests that the gravitational force might depart from Newton's inverse square law (the force being inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two objects) at distances smaller than 1 mm. Speakers here from Session V12 include Nima Arkani-Hamed of LBL (510-486-4665; [email protected]), one of the authors of the theory paper that launched the model (this paper, in only 18 months, was the 1990s' most cited paper dealing with physics beyond the standard model); John C. Price of the University of Colorado (303-492-2484; [email protected]) will present the first preliminary results from his tabletop experiment; he has not yet found evidence for anything anomalous, but will report the sharpest limit yet on the existence of new forces operating over the 50-150 micron range.

Meanwhile, Gregory Landsberg of Brown University (401-863-1464; [email protected]) will report on the search for extra dimensions at Fermilab and CERN. Eric Adelberger of the University of Washington (206-543-4294) will join several other speakers on the subject of measurements of gravity at the millimeter level and below.

The press conference will be held in room 201A in the Long Beach Convention Center. Press conferences will be held in room 201B. Pressroom hours: Sat-Tues 8 AM to 5 PM. Pressroom phone numbers: 562-499-7780 and 81. Fax: 562-499-7784.

The meeting website, including all the abstracts, is http://www.aps.org/meet/APR00/#general. See also the APS virtual pressroom at http://www.aps.org/meet/APR00/baps/vpr. Journalists intending to attend the meeting should send in their request for a press badge, if they haven't already done so, to Ben Stein at [email protected].