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Physics
Repubable physicist: we have been looking for the universe’s ultimate secret in the wrong place.
For decades, researchers have been scrutinising the laws of quantum physics in search of a theory that can explain everything in the universe. But they have been looking in the wrong place, according to physicist Jonathan Oppenheim. Instead, he is now searching for the holy grail of science in a completely different place.
© Jonathan Oppenheim
Text Christian Bierlich | Published on 05.10.24
To a physicist, the world is made up of just four forces of nature - but one of them refuses to behave like the others: gravity. It is the force that keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground and the planets in their orbits around the Sun.
Although gravity was the first force of nature to be expressed by scientists via a formula, it is also the force that physicists know the least about. The other three forces of nature - the electromagnetic force and the weak and strong nuclear forces - have a quantum theory that allows us to understand how the forces work on a microscopic level.
Gravity is described by the general theory of relativity: a theory designed to describe interactions between objects the size of planets or larger. But there is no quantum theory of gravity, so we do not know if there are other principles at work, when gravity affects individual particles.
Several physicists have attempted to propose a quantum theory of gravity over the years, but now British physicist Jonathan Oppenheim has made a controversial statement: such a theory makes no sense.