Benjamin Koch

New Capabilities

Lead author of the q-desic equation paper

For over a century, physics has rested on two pillars that refuse to fit together: quantum mechanics, which governs atoms and subatomic particles, and Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime. Every attempt to merge them has produced either mathematical nonsense (infinities that can't be removed) or predictions too small to ever measure. A team at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) may have changed that second problem. Their new "q-desic equation," published in Physical Review D, shows that when the cosmological constant—the term representing the universe's accelerating expansion—is included, quantum corrections to particle paths become large enough to potentially observe at cosmological distances.

Updated Mar 9