Docentföreläsning: Theories of gravitation beyond Einstein

by Marcus Berg (SU Fysikum)

Thursday 9 Dec 2010, 10:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

FA32

Einstein's theory of gravitation from 1915 is conceptually attractive and observationally well tested, but theoretical and observational uncertainties have accumulated that lead some researchers to believe that we have reached the limit of what Einstein's theory can handle. In this lecture I describe these problems, and how they motivate investigations of new theories of gravitation, "modified gravity". I will give an overview of a few theories that have been the most popular recently, and how they might be distinguished from Einstein's theory by future observations, e.g. through time variation of Newton's constant. Although this is all about classical theories of gravity, I will discuss speculations about how some candidate theories may stand a better chance than Einstein's theory to become part of a future quantum theory of gravity.