Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Full Version: These experiments could prove Einstein wrong
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/03...stein.html

EXCERPTS: . . . General Relativity is now more than a century old, and so far its predictions have all held up. [...] The most important reason physicists think that general relativity must be wrong is that it doesn’t work together with quantum mechanics...

[...] one of the ways to prove Einstein wrong is to bring more massive objects into quantum superpositions and then measure their gravitational field. If the gravitational field is also in a quantum superposition, then that means general relativity is out and Einstein wrong. This avenue is pursued for example by the group of Markus Aspelmeyer in Vienna.

[...] What would it be good for to prove Einstein wrong? Well, first of all it would give us experimental guidance to develop a theory of quantum gravity, and that could help us understand the quantum properties of space and time, as well as what’s inside black holes or what happened at the big bang.

Many physicists also hope that it will shed light on other puzzles, such as dark matter and dark energy, or explain some nagging anomalous observations in cosmology, like the presence of too many large structures in the universe, which we talked about in an earlier video, or that different measurement of the Hubble rate don’t give the same results.

Personally I think the most promising way to prove Einstein wrong is the approach pursued by the group of Aspelmeyer. And if they succeed they’ll almost certainly win a Nobel Prize. But it’s quite possible that in the end the breakthrough will happen in a way that no one saw coming... (MORE - missing details)

https://youtu.be/Bo4al7sNPkE
Once again: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-11827-...l#pid49318
Theorists keep looking through the wrong end of the telescope! Sigh.
A bit of wild speculation here..

Channelling Feynman (QED) if we try to treat space as continuous all sorts of infinities appear in QM and everything blows up. Clearly space hasn't blown up so QM uses tricksies to get rid of the infinities the theory predicts. If you have a theory like GR that doesn't involve (many) tricksies and one like QM that is riddled with tricksies you might want to look at ways to apply the QM tricksies to GR and .. find they don't work. Is the problem with GR or QM?