ATTEMPTS to reconcile the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics in order to develop a unified theory of everything could get a boost from an unlikely source: lasers.
Physicists have struggled to describe all four fundamental forces using the same theory. Of the four, only gravity lacks a quantum description. Various theories of quantum gravity attempt to provide such descriptions, but testing their predictions needs energies far greater than those found in existing or planned particle accelerators.
Now, João Magueijo of Imperial College London says that high-powered lasers rather than particle accelerators could provide the right set-up to test one popular approximation of quantum gravity known as deformed special relativity (DSR).
At the heart of Magueijo's idea is something called the soccer ball problem. Just as the speed of light in a vacuum is an absolute limit on speed in the theory of special relativity, DSR limits the energy ...
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