Talk:Graviton/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

String theory in lead

Should string theory be mentioned in the lead paragraph? It’s increasing considered fringe. As far as I know, most mainstream non-string theorists (most of mainstream physics these days) don’t consider string theory even to be a valid theory; to them instead it’s a formerly popular hypothesis that hasn’t borne fruit theoretically, and is completely untestable, at least at this point in time. Monsieur Mercury (talk) 18:55, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Hey, that is maybe the wrongest description of the world of theoretical physicists you could have come up with. If your "mainstream physicists" happen to work in Princeton (& IAS), Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, MIT, CERN (Theory department at least), to just cite a few institutions that are unambiguously recognised as world leading, you will find a very string-friendly attitude, and most these people who accept the description "string theorist". Although they would argue that this notion today is not the same as it was in the 90s, and is much more broad. Other research is good too and exists but the mainstream is with no doubt "string theory". Pitorki (talk) 07:36, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Last section / difficulties

The description of the last section is redundant. It talks about gravity being non renormalisable, but in a language that ignores the notion of effective field theory. It is not a problem per se for a theory to be non-renormalisable. Once you have done a few measurements you can even _use_ this EFT. For instance the Fermi theory, you need to measure the four fermion interaction and then you can use this EFT to some higher energy scale. Same for gravity. This should be written more clearly. Pitorki (talk) 07:38, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Too difficult? Are there sources which give simpler explanations?

@Schwabeditor you added a tag to the article claiming it was too technical. Obviously the article is not too mathematical. What is it that you think is too technical? Do you know of source which give simpler explanations? How can we improve and remove the tag? Johnjbarton (talk) 16:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that the concept of “graviton” is already highly technical. Just like articles on advanced Ricci calculus shouldn’t require too-technical tags because they are, by definition, very technical, this article shouldn’t either.

If a plain-English definition must be given, simply say that the graviton is to gravity as the photon is to electromagnetism. Unfortunately it doesn’t get much simpler than that. OverzealousAutocorrect (talk) 18:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC)