Majorana 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, Majorana 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. In 1927, he was the organizer of the
Como Conference, celebrating the centennial anniversary of the death of
Alessandro Volta. Majorana also discovered the
magneto-optic Kerr effect in non-ferrous metals like silver, gold and aluminium. A thousand times more weak than the usual effect. ==Selected publications==