Quantum gravity

Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics, and where quantum effects cannot be ignored, such as near compact astrophysical objects where the effects of gravity are strong. Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics, and where quantum effects cannot be ignored, such as near compact astrophysical objects where the effects of gravity are strong. The current understanding of gravity is based on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which is formulated within the framework of classical physics. On the other hand, the other three fundamental forces of physics are described within the framework of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, radically different formalisms for describing physical phenomena. It is sometimes argued that a quantum mechanical description of gravity is necessary on the grounds that one cannot consistently couple a classical system to a quantum one.:11–12 While a quantum theory of gravity may be needed to reconcile general relativity with the principles of quantum mechanics, difficulties arise when applying the usual prescriptions of quantum field theory to the force of gravity via graviton bosons. The problem is that the theory one gets in this way is not renormalizable (it predicts infinite values for some observable properties such as the mass of particles) and therefore cannot be used to make meaningful physical predictions. As a result, theorists have taken up more radical approaches to the problem of quantum gravity, the most popular approaches being string theory and loop quantum gravity. Although some quantum gravity theories, such as string theory, try to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces, others, such as loop quantum gravity, make no such attempt; instead, they make an effort to quantize the gravitational field while it is kept separate from the other forces. Strictly speaking, the aim of quantum gravity is only to describe the quantum behavior of the gravitational field and should not be confused with the objective of unifying all fundamental interactions into a single mathematical framework. A quantum field theory of gravity that is unified with a grand unified theory is sometimes referred to as a theory of everything (TOE). While any substantial improvement into the present understanding of gravity would aid further work towards unification, the study of quantum gravity is a field in its own right with various branches having different approaches to unification. One of the difficulties of formulating a quantum gravity theory is that quantum gravitational effects only appear at length scales near the Planck scale, around 10−35 meter, a scale far smaller, and equivalently far larger in energy, than those currently accessible by high energy particle accelerators. Therefore, physicists lack experimental data which could distinguish between the competing theories which have been proposed and thus thought experiment approaches are suggested as a testing tool for these theories. Much of the difficulty in meshing these theories at all energy scales comes from the different assumptions that these theories make on how the universe works. General relativity models gravity as curvature of spacetime: in the slogan of John Archibald Wheeler, 'Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.' On the other hand, quantum field theory is typically formulated in the flat spacetime used in special relativity. No theory has yet proven successful in describing the general situation where the dynamics of matter, modeled with quantum mechanics, affect the curvature of spacetime. If one attempts to treat gravity as simply another quantum field, the resulting theory is not renormalizable. Even in the simpler case where the curvature of spacetime is fixed a priori, developing quantum field theory becomes more mathematically challenging, and many ideas physicists use in quantum field theory on flat spacetime are no longer applicable. It is widely hoped that a theory of quantum gravity would allow us to understand problems of very high energy and very small dimensions of space, such as the behavior of black holes, and the origin of the universe. At present, one of the deepest problems in theoretical physics is harmonizing the theory of general relativity, which describes gravitation, and applications to large-scale structures (stars, planets, galaxies), with quantum mechanics, which describes the other three fundamental forces acting on the atomic scale. This problem must be put in the proper context, however. In particular, contrary to the popular claim that quantum mechanics and general relativity are fundamentally incompatible, one can demonstrate that the structure of general relativity essentially follows inevitably from the quantum mechanics of interacting theoretical spin-2 massless particles (called gravitons). No concrete proof of gravitons exists, but quantized theories of matter may necessitate their existence. The observation that all fundamental forces except gravity have one or more known messenger particles leads researchers to believe that at least one must exist. This hypothetical particle is known as the graviton. The predicted find would result in the classification of the graviton as a force particle similar to the photon of the electromagnetic interaction. Many of the accepted notions of a unified theory of physics since the 1970s assume, and to some degree depend upon, the existence of the graviton. These include string theory, superstring theory, and M-theory. Detection of gravitons would validate these various lines of research to unify quantum mechanics and relativity theory.