It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All | Quanta Magazine

A group of physicists has devised a new way of detecting a graviton.

The experiment would still be a herculean undertaking, but it could fit into the space of a modest laboratory and the span of a career.

A conclusive graviton detection would prove that gravity comes in the form of quantum particles, just like electromagnetism and other fundamental forces.

A vat of superfluid helium could be set up to reverberate in response to certain gravitational waves.

The odds that any particular graviton will interact with the beryllium bar are low, but the wave will contain so many gravitons that the overall odds of at least one interaction are high.

If your bar reverberates in concert with a gravitational wave confirmed by LIGO , you will have witnessed a quantized event caused by gravity.

Einstein’s theory of light as an electromagnetic wave was met with skepticism.

The photoelectric effect suggested that something is quantized; otherwise there wouldn’t be a minimum threshold required to get electrons flowing.

Some physicists, including Niels Bohr , continued to explore the possibility that only the matter was quantized, not the light.

In 1925 , Bohr agreed to “give our revolutionary efforts as honorable a funeral as possible”.