The post title is taken from the announcement for today’s colloquium talk. The abstract:
Quantum gravity is the theory which is thought to underlie quantum theory and general relativity. I will introduce the subject, emphasizing recent results which suggest that spatial geometry is discrete. Such discrete geometry may have an observational signature, especially if it breaks Lorentz invariance. I will describe limits on such discrete geometry effects by astrophysical observations and will also argue that, in the not too distant future, quantum gravity may become physics and enjoy contact with observation and even experiment.
Well, at least there won’t be anything controversial there…
(Actually, I suspect I may be the only one on the faculty who is up on the String Theory Wars. We used to have a visitor who was a string theorist, but he left quite a while ago, and none of the permanent faculty do research in cosmology or quantum gravity, so this is unlikely to ruffle that many feathers. Which is probably for the best…)