"Quantum Gravity" (talk) in Bournemouth

[BinocularSky]

"Quantum Gravity", a talk by Prof Nick Evans (Theoretical High Energy Physics, So'ton).

Bournemouth Natural Science Society, 39 Christchurch Road, BH1 3NS
7:30pm, Jul 10.

Quantum Mechanics, which deals with the very small, and General Relativity, which deals with the very massive, are two of the most successful scientific theories of all time ... but they are mutually incompatible. Nick is an excellent speaker and will help us to understand how we got to our current understanding and how these incompatibilities might be resolved.

Quote

 

Quantum Gravity is the thorniest problem in modern theoretical physics. I'll explain how electromagnetism has led to a consistent quantum theory which is the best tested theory in science.

Gravity, which at first sight appears very similar, leads to very strong interactions at high energy and everything breaks down. Latest observations of gravitational waves confirm Einstein's general relativity which describes gravity as a 'double copy' of electromagnetism. String theory is one possibility for how to make such a double copy and provides *a* quantum theory of gravity... but alas only in 10 spacetime dimensions. It throws up many strange ideas such as "brane-world" which simply emphasise the other big problem - we don't have any experimental probe of gravity at quantum distance scales. In spite of this' it seems real progress is being made and "holography" seems to be the best example of this.

Convoluted thinking about black holes has revealed string theory to really be a lower dimensional theory and this seems to be a general lesson about quantum gravity.

 

 

[Demonperformer]

A little confused. Is the date right? Jul 02 was last Monday ... but your post reads as an event that is going to happen in the future ... Or is all this quantum gravity producing some kind of local time warp? ?

[BinocularSky]

Oops. Fixed. Thanks. 

[RolandKol]

Will it be about string and M theory witchcraft or something new?