Uniting quantum mechanics and gravity at last. From Anil Ananthaswamy at New Scientist
One approach towards reconciling gravity with quantum mechanics has been to show that gravity at its most fundamental comes in indivisible parcels called quanta, much like the electromagnetic force comes in quanta called photons. But this road to a theory of quantum gravity has so far proved impassable.
Now Antoine Tilloy at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, has attempted to get at gravity by tweaking standard quantum mechanics.
Odd that no one has thought of this before, given all the strenuous mental effort that has gone into the topic… But now,
Nonetheless, his model makes predictions that can be tested. For example, it predicts that gravity will behave differently at the scale of atoms from how it does on larger scales. Should those tests find that Tilloy’s model reflects reality and gravity does indeed originate from collapsing quantum fluctuations, it would be a big clue that the path to a theory of everything would involve semiclassical gravity. More.
The main thing is, it’s good that testability still matters somewhere.
See also: Physicist at Forbes; Is the inflationary universe not science any more?
and
Question for multiverse theorists: To what can science appeal, if not evidence?