Roger Penrose and Ivette Fuentes: A Bold New Test of Gravity

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Previously titled “ANNOUNCEMENT: Testing the Limits of Gravity w/ Penrose Λ Fuentes” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal 1h 9m 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 23 days ago
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What is the Ron Folman T‑Cubed experiment and why is it important?

Roger Penrose 0:00
Quantum mechanics, people say it's it's a most wonderful theory and most amazing description of the universe. Yes, that's true. But it doesn't give you a description of the universe which involves significant mass displacements.
Curt Jaimungal 0:16
Quantum theory says that any object, even a mountain, can exist in two places simultaneously. However, you never see this. Why? Today I have a huge treat as this was months in the making. A new experiment which until today was in the pre-publishing phase and is now published. Sir Roger Penrose and Professor Yvette Fuentes are here to talk about the controversial consequences. Has for understanding the relationship between quantum theory, collapse, and gravity. My name's Kurt Jaimungle, and on this channel I interview researchers regarding their theories of reality with rigor and technical depth. Today I finally have permission to show you a conversation that spans how Roger sees mass displacements as causing collapse, the difference between active and passive gravity, and the intricacies of this new
Curt Jaimungal 1:06
New Ron Fullman T-Cubed Experiment. We also go over Penrose's speculation about dark matter and cyclic cosmology. I traveled from Toronto to film live at Oxford University's Math Institute. I truly hope you enjoy this. I'm joined here with Roger Penrose and Yvette Fuentes. Welcome. Thank you all for coming again.
Ivette Fuentes 1:29
Thanks. Great to be here.
Curt Jaimungal 1:31
So there's an experiment that's making the rounds. It's pre-published. Not published yet. Maybe as of this recording it's published, but It's called the Ron Folman phase experiment. You both see it as extremely important, however there's disagreement in the field about its interpretation, so before we get to The importance of the experiment. How about you explain what the experiment is, Yvette, and then we'll hear, Roger, why you think it's so important?
Ivette Fuentes 1:59
Okay. Yes, so um it's a very special atom interferometer. So maybe I should start by explaining what an atom interferometer is. So um well uh a regular interferometer you have a a photon and you pass it through what we call a BIM splitter, uh which lets the photon uh go through one trajectory and then Another it's reflected by some mirrors and then in another beam splitter which is cr a crystal that um um allows the the two paths to interfere and then at the output of the interferometer you see uh interference fringes and uh with a certain um contrast and and so on. So uh black and white interference uh uh fringes typical from a wave uh propagation in the interferometer. So another Interferometer is kind of the same thing, but instead of using photons, is using atoms.
Ivette Fuentes 3:06
And well one of the things that I find really beautiful about light and matter interactions is that if you have the um atoms being uh Interfered, but it's not a good thing. Instead of one uses like a crystal to interfere with phot photons you use laser fields so light field to make like the to play the role of the beam splitter for the atoms and so on. So a regular uh atom interferometer you would have atoms arriving to the laser that splits the atom. So the atom goes itself in a superposition of two different trajectories. It gets reflected again instead of mirrors there are fields that uh reflected back so that they can interfere again at another um laser and then you can detect the the output uh and so on.
Ivette Fuentes 3:58
So that's kind of uh one version of this super famous experiment uh that was done in the early times of quantum mechanics with electrons, right? That uh the interference f fringes of electrons were observed, confirming that um you know, that they behave quantum mechanically, this uh particle wave duality experiment. So that's uh now almost a hundred years since uh uh the Nobel Prize was um given to um uh Pauli for that uh and and so on. But since then people have been doing interference with atoms and even With bigger systems, the record is by Marcus Arndt, where he can put um uh molecules in the interferometer and see the the fringes and and the contrast. Now what uh Rohn uh did was a very special type of interferometer because um well usually there's two different versions of it.

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