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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.
Proposed experiment: arXiv:1510.01696.
More detailed theory: arXiv:1510.01262.
See also blog post.
There's a good explanation by a physicist who thinks about experimental validation of quantum gravity here.