The Problem With Quantum Gravity

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When people thought about this hypothesis that the world was made of strings rather than particles, they kept running into the puzzle. It kept predicting a spin-to particle in particular, which has all the properties of the graviton. So eventually, they realized, well, look, gravity exists. Let's just take it seriously as a theory of gravity. And one of the reasons why it was not that popular is because, well, very few people were thinking about quantum gravity.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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