Invisible Obstacles in the Hunt for Quantum Gravity express
Physicists are trying to hear a whisper in a noisy room. They build a soundproof booth, but even inside, their own breathing and heartbeat create interference. That's roughly how the search for quantum gravity goes: they want to see gravity bind two particles into a single whole — entangle them. The particles are placed in a vacuum and enclosed in a conducting screen to eliminate electric forces. But if the particles are superconducting, their strong diamagnetism (the property of repelling magnetic fields) calls for an additional magnetic screen.
However, the screen is not perfect. The particle feels its proximity through quantum vacuum fluctuations — tiny jolts that occur even in empty space. This is known as the Casimir effect: two surfaces attract each other simply because there are fewer virtual particles between them than outside. Moreover, the superconducting particle and the screen interact magnetically, like two tiny magnets. Both effects shift the particle's phase: its internal rhythm. This shift masks the gravitational signal.
But that's not all. The screen, traps, and detectors don't stay still: they vibrate from heat. The authors showed that these vibrations turn phase shifts into real noise. This noise destroys the entanglement — the very quantum link they're after. Worse, thermal vibrations of the screen can themselves create entanglement between the particles, and then physicists might mistake a false signal for a gravitational one. To avoid this, the scientists calculated how still every part of the setup must be — down to fractions of a nanometer and arcseconds. They also recommend cooling the screen and optimizing its shape to weaken the parasitic forces.
So the hunt for quantum gravity resembles calibrating ultra-sensitive scales: you have to account for even the breath of a butterfly outside the window. And only then, perhaps, will we manage to hear the whisper of spacetime.
You can feel the Casimir effect with your hands: if you bring two glass plates very close together, they stick — partly due to quantum vacuum forces.
In Liu Cixin's novel "The Three-Body Problem," ultra-precise gravitational wave detectors suffer from quantum noise — much like in this article.