Scientists observe Einstein's gravity in the quantum world

223 points - last Friday at 8:28 PM

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MathMonkeyMan yesterday at 10:13 PM
Here's the [paper][1] on the arxiv.

I found it hard to believe that they accounted for other forces precisely enough that they could attribute the phase change to gravity, but this is beyond me so I trust the result.

At first I thought "they showed that you can measure a particle falling in gravity," which seemed dumb because we already know that particles fall in gravity. But they showed that you can measure a single (aggregate) particle falling in gravity, which is pretty cool because if gravity is quantum then that means that they observed an interaction between the graviton and their rubidium atom.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.14535

pjungwir yesterday at 10:03 PM
I was wondering last night: are any of the fundamental forces "blocked" by an intervening object? I assume not, since there is nothing like that in the equations. But that is kind of interesting, since sometimes you hear talk of hypothetical particles like gravitons.
hoppp yesterday at 10:45 PM
I am not very well versed in the subject but

if quantum objects can fall and multiple quantum waves can occupy the same space, then why doesn't everything always collapse into a single point?

Why does it only happen in black holes and outside of that quantum waves instead create emergent systems instead of just collapsing together?

Does high gravitational force nullify emergence in space/time?

Might be a stupid question. I don't study this subject much.

gaze today at 12:39 AM
Vlatko tends to show up on papers with let's say, big claims. Consider the superconducting qubit/Tardigrade paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.07978
hammock last Saturday at 1:19 PM
There is a GREAT, accessible video about this experiment here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfjnTJos_no

miles_io today at 2:06 AM
Mind-bending stuff. Always wondered when we'd start seeing GR effects pop up at the quantum scale, makes sense.
stared yesterday at 10:59 PM
Is it a subtle effect that cannot be explained by Newtonian gravity (i.e. a different potential affecting, V(z) in the Hamiltonian)?
ck2 yesterday at 8:45 PM
so many great PBS Space Time on this concept

* https://www.youtube.com/@pbsspacetime/search?query=graviton

shevy-java yesterday at 8:18 PM
So do we finally have one unified theory or are we still none the wiser?
ziomerlojahsay yesterday at 9:39 PM
[flagged]
hyperhello yesterday at 9:23 PM
Unfounded speculation, but is it possible that every particle could have a different individual light speed, and the one we know is just the average speed that they have to drop or speed up to, the way a car needs to travel at the same speed as the highway?
dmfdmf yesterday at 10:51 PM
I thought QM and GR were mathematically incompatible. How do you even perform an experiment without accepting one frame or the other? Sus.