A quantum of space-time

摘要

An experiment in a shed in the suburbs of Chicago could show that dark energy is simply an emergent property of space-time, much as fluid dynamics emerges from how water molecules interact. The goal of the Holometer experiment is to find the fundamental units of space and time. These would be a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. Like matter and energy at the quantum scale, these bits of space-time would act more like waves than particles. "The theory is that space is made of waves instead of points, that everything is a little jittery, and never sits still," says Craig Hogan at the University of Chicago, who runs the experiment. The Holometer is designed to measure this "jitter".