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SYQG: Symposium Quantentheorie und Gravitation

SYQG 1: Symposium Quantentheorie und Gravitation

SYQG 1.4: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 15:30–16:10, VMP4 Audimax 1

Quantum and gravity: blend or mélange? — •Christian Wüthrich — University of Geneva

Do we need to quantize gravity, as it is tacitly assumed in much of fundamental physics? The standard lore falls short of justifying an affirmative answer. Black hole thermodynamics is widely considered, faint though it may be, our firmest hint at a quantum theory of gravity---despite the failure to date to observe Hawking radiation or any other effect that would require going beyond a classical description of black holes. Hawking radiation hitherto merely enjoys a theoretical derivation in a semi-classical theory combining quantum matter with classical gravity. But how can a semi-classical mélange of physical principles possibly justify that the quantum and gravity are blended into a unified fundamental theory when the latter is generally expected to reject at least some of the principles in the former?