{"id":327673,"date":"2025-10-23T23:29:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T23:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/327673\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T23:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T23:29:22","slug":"does-gravity-produce-quantum-weirdness-proposal-divides-physicists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/327673\/","title":{"rendered":"Does gravity produce quantum weirdness? Proposal divides physicists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Conceptual<\/p>\n

Physicists are questioning whether gravity can produce quantum entanglement between two masses.Credit: David Parker\/Science Photo Library<\/p>\n

The nature of gravity \u2014 and whether it can be reconciled with quantum mechanics \u2014 is one of the biggest mysteries in physics. Most researchers think that at a fundamental level, all phenomena follow the principles of quantum physics, but those principles do not seem to be compatible with the accepted theory of gravity.<\/p>\n

For years, researchers have been proposing experiments<\/a> to show whether gravity could produce a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement. Now, two theoretical physicists have complicated the picture by putting forward a controversial, and seemingly counterintuitive proposal: that gravity could have quantum effects without itself being a quantum theory.<\/p>\n

Entanglement occurs when two objects share a common quantum state, meaning that measurements of a property of one object will predict with certainty the results of measurements on the other object. Previous work has suggested that if two quantum objects can be entangled through their mutual gravitational attraction, then that attraction \u2014 and therefore gravity itself \u2014 should be of quantum nature.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Is gravity quantum? Experiments could finally probe one of physics\u2019 biggest questions<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But, in a paper published in Nature on 22 October1<\/a>, Richard Howl and Joseph Aziz at Royal Holloway, University of London, argue that such a description is too simplistic. Instead, they argue, gravity could have quantum effects without itself being a quantum theory.<\/b><\/p>\n

Fields matter<\/p>\n

In their study, Howl and Aziz calculated the interactions of two masses on the basis of a simplified version of general relativity, the accepted theory of gravity first introduced by Albert Einstein in 1915. The two researchers worked not in the context of \u2018vanilla\u2019 quantum mechanics but in that of quantum field theory \u2014 a more advanced formulation of quantum physics in which everything, including matter, is a wave propagating in a quantum field. Therefore, just as photons are waves in an electromagnetic field, electrons become waves in an \u2018electron field\u2019.<\/p>\n

Researchers have previously shown that the gravitational field of Einstein\u2019s theory cannot produce entanglement2<\/a>. But Aziz and Howl say that when two masses interact, they do so not only through the gravitational field itself but also through all the \u2018matter fields\u2019 \u2014 such as the electron field \u2014 as well, something that does have the ability to generate entanglement. \u201cWhen you think more broadly about what a gravitational interaction consists of, then it is possible for classical interactions to create entanglement,\u201d says Howl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Physicists are questioning whether gravity can produce quantum entanglement between two masses.Credit: David Parker\/Science Photo Library The nature…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":327674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10046,10047,492,836,159,6458,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-327673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","9":"tag-multidisciplinary","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-quantum-physics","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-theoretical-physics","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115426084016115073","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327673","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=327673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}