The Planck energy is around 1.2×10¹⁹ GeV; the LHC collides at 14 TeV, some fifteen orders of magnitude short. That is why physics holds two theories, each astonishingly accurate on its own turf, with neither reaching the other's: general relativity handles smoothly curved spacetime, quantum mechanics handles discrete particles and fluctuations. At the centre of a black hole and at the universe's first instant both must speak, and both break. Vibrating strings with curled-up dimensions, or the spin networks of loop quantum gravity, are hypotheses that no experimental data yet supports or refutes.
The Planck energy is around 1.2×10¹⁹ GeV; the LHC collides at 14 TeV, some fifteen orders of magnitude short. That is why physics holds two theories, each astonishingly accurate on its own turf, with neither reaching the other's: general relativity handles smoothly curved spacetime, quantum mechanics handles discrete particles and fluctuations. At the centre of a black hole and at the universe's first instant both must speak, and both break. Vibrating strings with curled-up dimensions, or the spin networks of loop quantum gravity, are hypotheses that no experimental data yet supports or refutes.
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