Equations that arise when Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are merged.

So in my spare time I'm trying to understand what happens when General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are 'merged'.

Almost all of the searches I have done on the subject have turned up with
the same similar statements:

'General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics don't work together'

'The solutions to simple questions give nonsensical answers with infinities'

'General Relativity requires a smooth geometric "fabric" of spacetime, and Quantum Mechanics says there is a quantum foam generated by the properties of the uncertainty principle, so theres a 'conflict'.'

etc. etc. Just very simple statements aimed at the general public or GCSE students

Yet for the rest of the searches, I run into relativity complicated journals
aimed at postgraduates such as this:

(http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/19/13/312/pdf/0264-9381_19_13_312.pdf
free version (takes a while to load): http://wenku.baidu.com/view/e0c576d86f1aff00bed51edf.html)

Which don't really help me at all.

I can't seem to find any journals or textbooks that give an example of these two theories being combined, and that shows the equations that lead to the infinity answers; a middle ground so to speak, between the general public and postgradutes.

Here is an example of what I'm trying to find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ4zlvqOtE8

Michio Kaku goes through the equations from 3:30 to 7:30 in that short
clip, unfortunately all the 'good stuff' is just left out.

Does anyone know where I could look to find a detailed run through of the
equations he is going through in those clips?

Any help would be much appreciated.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1

suneilr

Original post by goodfellow

So in my spare time I'm trying to understand what happens when General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are 'merged'.

I can't seem to find any journals or textbooks that give an example of these two theories being combined, and that shows the equations that lead to the infinity answers; a middle ground so to speak, between the general public and postgradutes.

Here is an example of what I'm trying to find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ4zlvqOtE8

Michio Kaku goes through the equations from 3:30 to 7:30 in that short
clip, unfortunately all the 'good stuff' is just left out.

Does anyone know where I could look to find a detailed run through of the
equations he is going through in those clips?

Those equations in the video are just the equations from standard GR. Any textbook on GR will give a detailed derivation of those equations.

Second it's quantum field theory not quantum mechanics that needs to be merged with GR. There's a couple of works where people have tried formulating quantum field theory on a curved spacetime, but as far I understand interacting theories aren't renormalisable.

Reply 2

goodfellow

Yeah I've progressed a bit further in what I know about it, I don't think it will be possible for me to give a few statements with equations that explain the reasons behind this problem.

I think most of my time now will be spent looking into what renormalization means, I have a few explanations on it from Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace" book.

Basically the reason for me doing this is to give a 10 minute presentation on string theory, but I've deviated away from that now towards this particular problem.

Equations that arise when Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are merged.

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