Welcome to the quantum science podcast.

Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

A new experimental proposal suggests detecting a particle of gravity is far easier than anyone

imagined. Now physicists are debating what it would

really prove. That's next. Quantum Magazine is an editorially independent online publication

supported by the Simons Foundation to enhance public understanding of science.

Detecting a graviton, the hypothetical particle thought to carry the force of gravity,

is the ultimate physics experiment. But conventional wisdom says it can't be done. According to one

famous estimate, an Earth-sized apparatus orbiting the sun might pick up one graviton every

billion years. Another calculation has suggested that to snag one in a decade, you'd have to

park a Jupiter-sized machine next to a neutron star.

In short, it's not going to happen.

A new proposal overturns the conventional wisdom.

Blending a modern understanding of ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves, with developments in quantum technology, a group of physicists has

devised a new way of detecting a graviton, or at least a quantum event closely associated with a

graviton. The experiment would still be a Herculean undertaking, but it could fit into the space of a modest

laboratory and the span of a career.

Mateo Fidel is an experimentalist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who wasn't

involved in the proposal.

It doesn't look too crazy, so it's something that can be reached in a few years' research.

Currently, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity

...