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Why do we need a quantum theory of gravity?
Lots of people have asked. It is a good question to ask because it evokes interesting answers. I will tell you my current answer---we can all have different reasons, and they can change from year to year---there is no single correct answer for all time, to this question.
Most recently, the Amsterdam physicist Theo Nieuwenhuizen ("theon")
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~nieuwenh/
asked this question in a conversation between several physicists at Peter Woit blog Not Even Wrong
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=308
there are currently 39 comments and "Theon" comment is number 35
so to find it you can go to the end and scroll back a few. He said:
"Did anybody question whether we really have to quantize gravity?"
The answer is obviously yes, I have seen this questioned several times, and discussed. So people HAVE questioned whether. But probably Theo knows this, and only asked to encourage people to think.
Maybe we at PF can actually use Theo's question better than the people at N.E.W. because, for one thing, the multithread format of PF board is better than the blog format. In blogs like Peter's, a conversations get covered over and lost very quickly. New comments on a thread do not bring the thread back into sight. (Cosmic Variance has a rudimentary sidebar menu of active threads, but most blogs do not.)
Lots of people have asked. It is a good question to ask because it evokes interesting answers. I will tell you my current answer---we can all have different reasons, and they can change from year to year---there is no single correct answer for all time, to this question.
Most recently, the Amsterdam physicist Theo Nieuwenhuizen ("theon")
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~nieuwenh/
asked this question in a conversation between several physicists at Peter Woit blog Not Even Wrong
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=308
there are currently 39 comments and "Theon" comment is number 35
so to find it you can go to the end and scroll back a few. He said:
"Did anybody question whether we really have to quantize gravity?"
The answer is obviously yes, I have seen this questioned several times, and discussed. So people HAVE questioned whether. But probably Theo knows this, and only asked to encourage people to think.
Maybe we at PF can actually use Theo's question better than the people at N.E.W. because, for one thing, the multithread format of PF board is better than the blog format. In blogs like Peter's, a conversations get covered over and lost very quickly. New comments on a thread do not bring the thread back into sight. (Cosmic Variance has a rudimentary sidebar menu of active threads, but most blogs do not.)
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