• Question: What are gravitons?

    Asked by anon-244430 to Ondrej, Jordan, Eleanor, Ed, Christine, Alice on 11 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Eleanor Jones

      Eleanor Jones answered on 11 Mar 2020:

      Gravitons are theoretical particles that would hypothetically mediate the force of gravity. Just like photons are the particles carriers for the electromagnetic force, the graviton would do the same thing for gravity. If they exist, we have a lot of detailed predictions about their properties, but we have not yet discovered one.

    • Photo: Edward Banks

      Edward Banks answered on 11 Mar 2020:

      In addition to Eleanor’s explanation- some experiments like LIGO and Virgo in America may be able to shed light on the nature of gravitons (again, if they exist). There’s a big problem detecting individual gravitons though- they would interact so infrequently that even if we had a detector the size of the entire Earth, it would only detect roughly one graviton every hundred years!

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