quantum field theory
The Strong Fields, Integrability and Strings
programme, which took place at the Isaac
Newton Institute in 2007, explored an area that
would have been close to Isaac Newton's heart:
how to unify Einstein's theory of gravity, a
continuation of Newton's own work on
gravitation, with quantum field theory, which
describes the atomic and sub-atomic world, but
cannot account for the force of gravity.
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In the corner of the garden between the Centre of Mathematical Sciences and the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, sits a reminder of our ongoing quest to understand gravity: an apple tree that was taken as a cutting from the tree at Newton's birthplace, the tree that is said to have inspired his theory of gravity. Newton's theory was extended to the cosmological scales by Einstein's theory of general relativity – but can supergravity explain how gravity works in the quantum world? |
