Posted on 05/07/2025 7:04:03 AM PDT by Red Badger
The new theory, developed by physicists at Aalto University, describes gravity in a way that’s compatible with the Standard Model of particle physics, opening the door to an improved understanding of how the Universe began.
The Standard Model of particle physics describes electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, which are three of the four known fundamental forces of nature. The unification of the fourth interaction, gravity, with the Standard Model has been challenging due to incompatibilities of the underlying theories — general relativity and quantum field theory. While quantum field theory utilizes compact, finite-dimensional symmetries associated with the internal degrees of freedom of quantum fields, general relativity is based on noncompact, infinite-dimensional external space-time symmetries. Mikko Partanen & Jukka Tulkki aim at deriving the gauge theory of gravity using compact, finite-dimensional symmetries in a way that resembles the formulation of the fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. Image credit: DESY / Science Communication Lab.
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“If this turns out to lead to a complete quantum field theory of gravity, then eventually it will give answers to the very difficult problems of understanding singularities in black holes and the Big Bang,” said Aalto University’s Dr. Mikko Partanen.
“A theory that coherently describes all fundamental forces of nature is often called the Theory of Everything.”
“Some fundamental questions of physics still remain unanswered. For example, the present theories do not yet explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the observable Universe.”
The key was finding a way to describe gravity in a suitable gauge theory — a kind of theory in which particles interact with each other through a field.
“The most familiar gauge field is the electromagnetic field,” said Aalto University’s Dr. Jukka Tulkki.
“When electrically charged particles interact with each other, they interact through the electromagnetic field, which is the pertinent gauge field.”
“So when we have particles which have energy, the interactions they have just because they have energy would happen through the gravitational field.”
A challenge long facing physicists is finding a gauge theory of gravity that is compatible with the gauge theories of the other three fundamental forces — the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force.
The Standard Model of particle physics is a gauge theory which describes those three forces, and it has certain symmetries.
“The main idea is to have a gravity gauge theory with a symmetry that is similar to the Standard Model symmetries, instead of basing the theory on the very different kind of spacetime symmetry of general relativity,” Dr. Partanen said.
Without such a theory, physicists cannot reconcile our two most powerful theories, quantum field theory and general relativity.
Quantum theory describes the world of the very small — tiny particles interacting in probabilistic ways — while general relativity describes the chunkier world of familiar objects and their gravitational interaction.
They are descriptions of our Universe from different perspectives, and both theories have been confirmed to extraordinary precision — yet they are incompatible with each other.
Furthermore, because gravitational interactions are weak, more precision is needed to study true quantum gravity effects beyond general relativity, which is a classical theory.
“A quantum theory of gravity is needed to understand what kind of phenomena there are in cases where there’s a gravitational field and high energies,” Dr. Partanen said.
“Those are the conditions around black holes and in the very early Universe, just after the Big Bang — areas where existing theories in physics stop working.”
“Always fascinated with the very big questions of physics, we discovered a new symmetry-based approach to the theory of gravity and began to develop the idea.”
“The resulting work has great potential to unlock a whole new era of scientific understanding, in much the same way as understanding gravity paved the way to eventually creating GPS.”
Although the theory is promising, the duo point out that they have not yet completed its proof.
The theory uses a technical procedure known as renormalization, a mathematical way of dealing with infinities that show up in the calculations.
So far Dr. Partanen and Dr. Tulkki have shown that this works up to a certain point — for so-called ‘first order’ terms — but they need to make sure the infinities can be eliminated throughout the entire calculation.
“If renormalization doesn’t work for higher order terms, you’ll get infinite results,” Dr. Tulkki said.
“So it’s vital to show that this renormalization continues to work.”
“We still have to make a complete proof, but we believe it’s very likely we’ll succeed.”
“There are still challenges ahead, but with time and effort he expects they’ll be overcome,” Dr. Partanen said.
“I can’t say when, but I can say we’ll know much more about that in a few years.”
The team’s paper was published in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics.
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Mikko Partanen & Jukka Tulkki. 2025.
Gravity generated by four one-dimensional unitary gauge symmetries and the Standard Model. Rep. Prog. Phys 88, 057802;
doi: 10.1088/1361-6633/adc82e
Too funny. Sounds like Data and Laforge discussing a way to save Enterprise’s bacon in an episode of TNG. Thanks for posting.
Ah yes. The classic elucidation of the famed turbo encabulator.
IN ENGLISH:
THE EARTH SUCKS & KEEPS YOU “GROUNDED”.
They can’t even define what a ‘woman’ is and they expect us to believe them when they try to define gravity’?..................
Precisely. They don’t have anything. Feels like rebranded string theory. 40 years, all the funding, and all retractors driven out of Physics, and they have NOTHING to show for it.
Susskind and his crew are imposters.
“It will never answer the question of how everything came from nothing................”
Nope. I look at it like they are simply trying to understand God’s universe and how it is structured. That will keep them busy forever. Fascinating topic.
(with a Bang Ding Ow)
The Standard Model of particle physics describes electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, which are three of the four known fundamental forces of nature. The unification of the fourth interaction, gravity, with the Standard Model has been challenging due to incompatibilities of the underlying theories —
"Y are things so heavy in the future?"
It's like the Jews say, "!כל הכבוד" -- kol ha-koved! 😉
( kol hakavod)
The gathering man, Agur the son of Jakeh, knew a thing or two! (actually, three or four)
And then it took Frank the Pug to ask "when are you gonna learn"...
Quantum theory describes the world of the very small — tiny particles interacting in probabilistic ways — while general relativity describes the chunkier world of familiar objects and their gravitational interaction.
They are descriptions of our Universe from different perspectives, and both theories have been confirmed to extraordinary precision — yet they are incompatible with each other.
Incompatible??
*WYSIWYG*
It's like that famous "eye" of the needle. A person isn't going to dream about what he can't envision in the first place.
I checked out the several [ancient] references for the wordings, and discovered the eye as the little hole that is made *by* the needle. 🪡 Heads or tails?
For example The Point, for opening the door:
“Open for me” – Rabbi Yasa said: The Holy One blessed be He said to Israel: My children, open for Me one opening of repentance like the eye of the needle [כְּחֻדָּהּ שֶׁל מַחַט], and I will open for you openings that wagons and carriages enter through it.
Like, כְּ-חֻדָּהּ as in compare:
חַד ᴵ adj. 1 sharp. PBH 2 pointed...
חַד ᴵᴵ adj. one, single...
◌חַד (combining form) one, uni-, mono-. [From חד ᴵᴵ.]
חֹד m.n. PBH sharpness, edge, point, apex. [From חדד.]
“Y are things so heavy in the future?”
Fad diets that don’t work.
“turbo encabulator”
Never saw this vid. This could be an episode of Star Trek Next Gen. /LOL
That is the PRE-BIG BANG Theory.
The Universe was created not by adding everything to nothing, but by removing something from everything.
Removal of anti-matter created an imbalance, chaos, disorder, destruction. The Imbalance left matter whose purpose is to balance everything again. That matter is our universe. The imbalance is what gives our Universe energy.
When the balance is restored, the energy dissipates, the matter returns to ZERO because matter and anti-matter have equalized and we are back to the PRE-BIG BANG.
We have attempted to achieve this balance by trying to reduce the temperature (vibrational energy) of a particle to absolute zero, but we cannot. That's because it would take all the energy in the universe to do so. If we succeeded the universe would cease to exist(including us), Leaving us with an answer that no one would ever know.
Ergo the reason we can never get an answer is that we are asking the wrong question.
The question "how?" does not matter. The question we should pursue (and which will work out much better for us) is "why?".
To summarize: If the universe(matter) was created from nothing, then nothing in the universe matters.
I don’t believe religion and science are incompatible, therefore, I don’t believe God is separate from science. It might be that the end-game of science is proving God exists, because science says that must be the single answer that is possible.
I do make the argument for a creator, “how did everything appear out of nothingness, at some random point in time, for no particular reason?”. Without God, there’s no reason for everything to exist.
It does seem that we’re beginning to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge, I have faith that we will succeed in breaking this seal of knowledge and coming to this conclusion.
Reminds me of the joke:
Man tells God that God isn’t needed anymore because now he can make Man from dirt.
Then God tells him, don’t use my dirt, go and make your own dirt.
The Universe exists, therefore God exists..............
Where was all the matter that they think was all in a ball about the size of a pea that then exploded? It expanded into what?
New!
A lot of words for... nothing. Zero substance.
“We’re looking at it differently, but we still aren’t any closer to an answer.” - paraphrasing.
I once had a list of 50 words you could drop randomly into your writing that made you sound smart.
People that understand infinity have no problem with this.
The Standard Model has failed with the observations from JWST.
They keep making adjustments to it, but at some point, you have to admit it’s broken.
But that would put put a lot of theoretical physics out of work, so they won’t say that part out loud.
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