{"id":208402,"date":"2025-03-12T02:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T07:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/new-strategy-in-the-hunt-for-quantum-gravity"},"modified":"2025-03-12T02:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T07:10:07","slug":"new-strategy-in-the-hunt-for-quantum-gravity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/new-strategy-in-the-hunt-for-quantum-gravity","title":{"rendered":"New Strategy in the Hunt for Quantum Gravity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-strategy-in-the-hunt-for-quantum-gravity.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Predictions of theories that combine quantum mechanics with gravity could be observed using highly sensitive photon detection in a tabletop experiment.<\/p>\n<p>Quantum-gravity theories attempt to unite gravity and quantum mechanics. A proposed tabletop experiment called Gravity from the Quantum Entanglement of Space Time (GQuEST) would search for a predicted effect of such theories using a new type of interferometer\u2014one that counts photons rather than measuring interference patterns. The GQuEST team has now calculated the sensitivity of their design and shown that it can recover the predicted signal 100 times faster than traditional interferometer setups [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v18\/37#:~:text=To%20search%20for%20a%20quantum, laser%20frequency%20by%2017%20MHz#c1\" class=\"\">1<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Quantizing gravity implies that spacetime is not continuous\u2014it becomes \u201cpixelated\u201d when you look at scales as small as 10<sup>\u2212<\/sup><sup>35<\/sup> m, far too small to be probed in any experiment. However, certain quantum-gravity models predict that spacetime can fluctuate\u2014a kind of spontaneous stretching and squeezing in the spacetime fabric that might produce observable effects [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v18\/37#:~:text=To%20search%20for%20a%20quantum, laser%20frequency%20by%2017%20MHz#c2\" class=\"\">2<\/a>]. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t detect a single pixel, but you could detect the coherent fluctuations of many pixels,\u201d says Caltech theorist Kathryn Zurek. She has formulated a \u201cpixellon\u201d model, which predicts that collective fluctuations inside an interferometer can cause a detectable frequency change, or modulation, in the interferometer\u2019s output light [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v18\/37#:~:text=To%20search%20for%20a%20quantum, laser%20frequency%20by%2017%20MHz#c3\" class=\"\">3<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v18\/37#:~:text=To\">https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v18\/37#:~:text=To<\/a> search for a target= --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Predictions of theories that combine quantum mechanics with gravity could be observed using highly sensitive photon detection in a tabletop experiment. Quantum-gravity theories attempt to unite gravity and quantum mechanics. A proposed tabletop experiment called Gravity from the Quantum Entanglement of Space Time (GQuEST) would search for a predicted effect of such theories using a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}