Quantum Gravity - Is the Free Market Working Well?

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There's a feeling that there's been unfairness in how the representation of these different approaches to quantum gravity has been distributed throughout academia. I personally think that string theory has a good reason to be a the leading candidate, but i also think th t it would be very healthy for the field to be doing various other things. A, with all a respect and and appreciation for strength yeri this is not far from me for saying that strength try should not be founded, should be thrown out of university, or anything like that. O, what are your feelings about the fairness? Is the freemarket of ideas working well here? Or is there should we are we not being quite fair enough

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two great triumphs of twentieth-century theoretical physics. Unfortunately, they don't play well together -- despite years of effort, we currently lack a completely successful quantum theory of gravity, although there are some promising ideas out there. Carlo Rovelli is a pioneer of one of those ideas, loop quantum gravity, as well as the bestselling author of such books as Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and the recent The Order of Time. We talk about how to make progress on this knotty problem, including whether string theory will play a role (Carlo thinks not). [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/rovelli.mp3" social_email="true" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Carlo Rovelli is a professor of theoretical physics at the Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy of Aix-Marseille University in France. In 1988, he and Abhay Ashtekar and Lee Smolin introduced the idea of loop quantum gravity. He is also the author of the "relational" interpretation of quantum mechanics. Home page Wikipedia page Google Scholar publications Amazon.com author page Talk on The Physics and Philosophy of Time Twitter Download Episode See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.