Within our cosmos, one force is inescapable.

Gravity. Dark matter can hide from light, dark energy apparently from nearly everything.

Yet nothing can evade gravity.

It's the omnipresent puppeteer, patiently tugging on everything in the universe.

Newton described gravity as a force.

Einstein famously abandoned gravity as a force in favor of a curved space time.

But what conceptually is beyond space time? Is there a quantum

gravity? Can gravity be rewritten once again? I'm Jan 11 and this is the joy of why, a

podcast from Quantum Magazine where I take turns at the mic with my co-host, Steve Strogatz,

exploring the biggest questions in math and science today. In this episode, we ask

physicist Claudia Derram, what might gravity be hiding at a particle level, and how might this

change our fundamental understanding of space time?

Claudia is a professor of theoretical physics and the deputy head of the physics department

at Imperial College London. Her research lies at the intersection of particle physics,

gravity, and cosmology. For her work on massive gravity, she has received numerous honors,

including the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, a Simon's Foundation Award,

an election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also the author of a deeply

personal new book, The Beauty of Falling, about her lifelong quest to understand gravity.

Claudia, thanks so much for joining us.

Pleasure, thanks.

I'm really looking forward to talking.

I kind of want to begin, if not at the beginning, at least as far back as Newton.

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