Gravitons

[coliver988]

Maybe a step towards anti-gravity, so we'll be TL 8 or 9 soon https://www.newscientist.com/articl...hing-that-behaves-like-a-particle-of-gravity/

 

[mike wightman]

From the article:

This revealed that the excitation had a kind of quantum spin that has only ever been theorised to exist in gravitons. Though this isn’t a graviton per se, it is the closest thing we have seen.

Ziyu Liu at Columbia University in New York who worked on the experiment says he and his colleagues knew that graviton-like excitations could exist in their semiconductor, but it took years to make the experiment precise enough to detect them. “From the theoretical side, the story was kind of complete, but in experiments, we were really not sure,” he says.

The experiment isn’t a true analogue to space-time – electrons are confined to a flat, two-dimensional space and move more slowly than objects governed by the theory of relativity.

However, Zlato Papic at the University of Leeds in the UK cautions against equating the new finding with detection of gravitons in space. He says the two are sufficiently equivalent for electron systems like those in the new experiment to become testing grounds for some theories of quantum gravity, but not for every single quantum phenomenon that happens to space-time at cosmic scales.

Connections between this particle-like excitation and theoretical gravitons also raise new ideas about exotic electron states, says team member Lingiie Du at Nanjing University in China.

Lots of interesting stuff to base handwavium on in this article...
now to go find the actual papers...

 

[coliver988]

And seems out there but hey, aren't we due for the reaction less m-drive about now? https://thedebrief.org/nasa-veteran...duced-enough-thrust-to-defeat-earths-gravity/