Quanta's physics writer calls holography the most profound idea in theoretical physics in 30 years, built on three papers cited tens of thousands of times. The citations measure how many theorists took it up, and whether holography describes our own universe is the open question the essay sets out to answer.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence45
One path of a rubidium atom was held against gravity while the other fell freely, and the phase the two arms accumulated matches what Einstein's equivalence principle predicts for a quantum wave.
Reality
- Evidence68
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives35
- Confidence65
A search of LHC collision data for microscopic quantum black holes found none. The exclusion limit that follows is the publishable result. Where that limit sits decides whether theorists have to move.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives62
- Confidence45
Physicists under Italy's Gran Sasso mountain hunted the faint radiation that fluctuating spacetime should produce in a shielded germanium crystal. They found only background. One gravitational route to quantum collapse is now closed.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives68
- Confidence48
Tamas Vami and Danyi Zhang looked through CMS data for microscopic black holes, found none, and published the bound. They also describe the search itself as a new way to look for new particles.
Reality
- Evidence57
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives60
- Confidence52
A germanium detector at Gran Sasso listened for the faint radiation that a jittering spacetime should force out of charged particles, and the VIP collaboration reports it recorded none of it.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives60
- Confidence55
A worldwide survey led from Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute records what working physicists believe about dark matter and quantum gravity, and the way its answer options were drawn shapes what those percentages can prove.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives60
- Confidence40
A team supported by the Foundational Questions Institute calculated what two spontaneous collapse models imply for time and found an intrinsic uncertainty in it, many orders of magnitude below what today's atomic clocks can measure.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+45
- Incentives65
- Confidence55
A Physical Review D paper argues cosmic acceleration is a residue of quantum uncertainty acting on geometry, which would turn two unsolved problems into one. Upcoming surveys are the test.
Reality
- Evidence32
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence28