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In Our Time
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The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |
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| "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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THE GRAVITON
Read audience comments on this edition.
Find out more about this subject by going to our research page.
Albert Einstein said "I know why there are so many people who love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees the results". Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life trying to find a theory that would unify electromagnetism with gravity, but success eluded him.
The search is still on for a unifying theory of gravitational force and hopes are pinned on the location of the graviton - a hypothetical elementary particle that transmits the force of gravity. But the graviton is proving hard to find. Indeed, the next big research project which involves the largest earth-based laboratory in the world - a circular ring which goes underground for about twenty-seven miles and spans Switzerland, France and Germany - still won't allow us to detect gravitons per se, but might be able to prove their existence in other ways.
The idea of the graviton particle first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, when the notion that particles as mediators of force was taken seriously. Physicists believed that it could be applicable to gravity and by the late 20th century the hunt was truly on for the ultimate theory, a theory of quantum gravity.
So why is the search for the graviton the major goal of theoretical physics? How will the measurement of gravitation waves help prove its existence? And how might the graviton unite the seemingly incompatible theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics?
Contributors
Roger Cashmore, Former Research Director at CERN and Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford
Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey
Sheila Rowan, Reader in Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow
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