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An Experiment Could Determine Whether Gravity Is Quantized (forbes.com)
TheAlexKnapp writes: Physicist Brian Koberlein explains an experimental proposal by Großardt et al, which would attempt to determine whether gravity is quantized. "Their idea," explains Koberlein, "is to take a charged disk of osmium with a mass of about a billionth of a gram and suspend it an electric field. This is small enough that its energy levels in the electric field would take on quantum behavior when cooled to temperatures a fraction of a Kelvin above absolute zero, but its also massive enough that its gravitational pull would affect the quantum behavior."
The two primary approaches to a quantum gravity, the "perturbative approach" and "the semi-classical method," predict different results from this type of interaction. So the results of the experiment, could, in principle, elucidate the right approach for developing future theories of quantum gravity.
The two primary approaches to a quantum gravity, the "perturbative approach" and "the semi-classical method," predict different results from this type of interaction. So the results of the experiment, could, in principle, elucidate the right approach for developing future theories of quantum gravity.
Physicists are quantized, so they want everything else to be quantized.
Does Time come in quanta?
Nope. Cubes.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm curious about the choice to use osmium. Sure, it is the densest element, but iridium is almost the same density and osmium easily forms toxic compounds while iridium doesn't (easily, I mean).
Its very small and no one is going to eat it.
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