New theory seeks to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
New theory seeks to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
A radical theory that consistently unifies gravity and quantum mechanics while preserving Einstein’s classical concept of spacetime is announced today in two papers published simultaneously by UCL physicists.
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
this sounds interesting, but am potato. can anyone smart explain how this might or might not be so much nonsense?
Classical Physics breaks in three situations: if it's too fast, too massive, or too tiny. To address that, new theories appeared. Among them:
- special relativity - handles fast stuff
- general relativity - handles fast and massive stuff
- quantum mechanics - handles tiny stuff
- quantum field theory - handles tiny and fast stuff
What researchers are looking for is a theory that is able to handle all three things at the same time, superseding both the relativities and the quantum theories. That's the Theory of Everything that everyone is looking for. (Except me. I'm looking for my cup of coffee.)
And most people look for it in a specific way: they try to adapt relativity to quantum phenomena. Those researchers however are doing something different: they're imposing a limit on the quantum theories, saying that they break under specific situations, because spacetime would work more like in classical physics than like in quantum mechanics - in other words that quantum theories need to be fixed to relativity, not the opposite.
The researchers then devised a stupidly simple experiment to test their hypothesis out.
that adds some clarity, thank you!