Want to get to the bottom of one of the biggest mysteries in science? The best way might be to catch sight of a fast-spinning stellar corpse.
General relativity, which describes massive objects like black holes, and quantum mechanics, which governs subatomic particles, are tremendously successful in their own realms. But no one has yet come up with a way to unite them.
A theory of quantum gravity is one of the most sought after in physics (see “The string-loop theory that might finally untangle the universe“). Several candidates exist, but current Earth-based experiments can’t test them directly. Now, Michael Kavic at Long Island University in New York and his colleagues have devised a cosmic test. Their apparatus: a binary system made up of a black hole and a pulsar.
To read more, click here.