laser beam in lab
laser beam in lab Scientists at UCL are helping to develop an experiment to test whether gravity is quantum - one of the deepest questions about our universe. General relativity and quantum mechanics are the two most fundamental descriptions of nature we have. General relativity explains gravity on large scales while quantum mechanics explains the behaviour of atoms and molecules. Arguably the most important unsolved problem in fundamental physics is the correct way to bring these two theories together - to determine whether gravity operates on a quantum level. While theoretical work has proposed many possibilities, experiments are needed to fully understand the behaviour of gravity. For 100 years experiments on the quantum nature of gravity seemed out of reach, but now scientists based at UCL as well as the the Universities of Warwick, Yale (USA), Northwestern (USA), and Groningen (the Netherlands) will work together to investigate this conundrum. Their new idea is to levitate two microdiamonds in a vacuum and put each into a quantum superposition of being in two places at the same time.
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