Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard

Science - Quantum Gravity

 
Supergravity is a theory of elementary particles based on supersymmetry, the Super part, and Gravity together with the other three forces: the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force.  While General Relativity describes gravity on a large scale, it breaks down at very short distances.  Supergravity describes gravity as a force carried by a boson called the Graviton.  Unlike the other bosons that have spin "1", the graviton has spin "2"; so they all have integer spin, unlike fermions that have half-integer spin, for example, "½", "1½" etc.  Unfortunately, supersymmetry requires every particle, fermionic and bosonic, to have a new supersymmetric "partner" as described above.  An upside of Supergravity is that it avoids the infinities inherent in most other quantum gravity theories.  Interestingly, having fallen somewhat out of favor when Superstrings came along, 11-dimensional Supergravity is now considered to be the low energy limit of "M" Theory.  Here is a somewhat technical introduction to Supergravity from Wikipedia.  

Supergravity

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