Dr Stuart Marongwe and Dr Moletlany iTshipa are both based in the University of Botswana\u2019s Physics Department. Marongwe is the principal architect of the Nexus Paradigm, developed over nearly two decades. Christian Corda, of the Department of Mathematics and Physics at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in the United States, is the paper\u2019s co-author.<\/p>\n
A quantum-gravity theory developed over two decades at the University of Botswana predicted the exact shape of two supermassive black holes and the world\u2019s largest telescope has just confirmed it with 99.9972% statistical confidence, providing answers to Albert Einstein\u2019s major question.<\/p>\n
Built in Gaborone<\/p>\n
The theory behind the claim is known as the Nexus Paradigm. Its architect, physicist Stuart Marongwe of the University of Botswana, has spent years arguing for a strange premise: That spacetime is not the smooth, continuous fabric Einstein pictured, but quantised, built from discrete units, like matter, which is built from atoms rather than an infinitely divisible paste. Under that premise, a black hole\u2019s event horizon and the bright ring of light around it should settle into specific, calculable sizes rather than a free-floating range of possibilities.<\/p>\n
Working with colleague Tshipa at the University of Botswana and physicist Christian Corda at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in the United States, Marongwe translated that premise into quantifiable figures. \u201cThe theory effectively predicted a set of characteristic rulers for structures surrounding these black holes, and the rulers closely match what the telescope observes,\u201dsaid Dr Marongwe.<\/p>\n
Einstein never finished the job. His general relativity described gravity beautifully at the scale of planets, stars and galaxies, but it refused to shake hands with quantum mechanics, the theory governing atoms and particles. He spent the last three decades of his life chasing a \u201cunified field theory\u201d that would join the two, and died in 1955 without one. Seventy years on, reconciling gravity with the quantum world remains one of the most stubborn open problems in physics, and most attempts to solve it predict effects so small they would only show up at energies far beyond anything a particle accelerator on Earth could produce. That is what makes the new result unusual. It does not require smashing particles together. It asks whether the fingerprints of quantum gravity might already be in plain sight, stamped across objects millions of times the mass of the Sun.<\/p>\n
Asked whether this is an answer to Einstein\u2019s headache, Dr Marongwe submitted that this fills the gap that Einstein, unfortunately, left unanswered; hence, there is no cue as to whether it would be answered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have just released a set of new knowledge, and there is a quest by the bulk of the media, either to silence it or water it down. Yet this is a major discovery,confirmed with 99.9972% statistical confidence. If it was released in the Global North, it would be all over the global media structures. Yet we have Africans here at the University of Botswana pushing the knowledge frontiers forward without acknowledgement,\u201d argued Dr Marongwe.<\/p>\n
Not a defeat for Einstein<\/p>\n
None of this means general relativity has been overthrown. It has passed more than a century of tests, from falling apples to orbiting satellites to gravitational waves. Reading a blurred radio image of a black hole involves plasma physics, magnetic fields and reconstruction algorithms that can shift the numbers in either direction. The authors are explicit on this point: what they have shown is that one measurable feature, examined in one way, lies much closer to a quantum-gravity prediction than to the classical one used for comparison, not that Einstein\u2019s century-old framework has been dismantled.<\/p>\n
What it suggests is more interesting than a winner and a loser: that the search for a theory beyond Einstein\u2019s, the one he spent his final decades pursuing and never found, may not require new machines at all. It may already be visible in telescopes that exist today, pointed at the largest objects in the universe rather than at the smallest particles.<\/p>\n
What would prove it wrong<\/p>\n
The authors are careful to present their result as an opening, not a conclusion, and to state plainly what would falsify the theory. Sharper future images from the Event Horizon Telescope, measurements of the polarisation of light bent around each black hole, observations at shorter wavelengths, and eventually space-based interferometry could each independently confirm or refute the Nexus Paradigm\u2019s predictions. That, the researchers argue, is precisely the point of a theory of quantum gravity that yields numbers a telescope can check, a theory that can be proven wrong, a bar most rivals in the field cannot clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Stuart Marongwe and Dr Moletlany iTshipa are both based in the University of Botswana\u2019s Physics Department. Marongwe…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1037597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[25],"tags":[22676,60718,48618,1539,70339,492,159,447,67,132,4280,68],"class_list":["post-1037596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-answer","tag-botswana","tag-einstein","tag-of","tag-physicists","tag-physics","tag-science","tag-to","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-university","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117198053041468974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1037597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}