Darren Orf in Popular Mechanics: One of the biggest headaches of the physics world is that Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity—which does a pretty good job of explaining physical phenomena on the macro-level, at least until you get sucked into a black hole—doesn’t quite square with the quantum world.
While some physicists work within the bounds of these theories to find a Grand Unified Theory (the holy grail of physics), others are proposing tweaks or wholesale changes to Einstein’s masterwork.
One of these general relatively rethinks is Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), which eschews the need for hypothetical (yet observational) concepts like dark matter. But most physics agree that MOND comes with its own heap of issues.
Other hypotheses, instead, take a different approach—simply tweaking aspects of general relativity to make them a bit more agreeable with quantum mechanics. This is the category into which the idea of ‘fuzzy gravity’ fits comfortably.
Three scientists from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece published a paper in the journal Progress of Physics that details this slightly altered take on Einstein’s magnum opus. At its most basic, the idea posits that spacetime might be discrete rather than continuous. This isn’t a new idea—for decades, physicists have pondered if spacetime is more like a tapestry of points, similar to the way that matter is made up of atoms. At the moment, however, we’re just not capable of probing space to such small Planck lengths (or 10-20 times the diameter of a proton).
More here.
