Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Particle accelerators have carried fundamental physics to remarkable precision, but the Planck scale remains fifteen orders of magnitude beyond any foreseeable collider. We argue that this impasse is not a temporary shortfall but an insurmountable one. The way out runs through condensed matter physics: laboratory tests of generalized uncertainty relations, analog systems, and --- most provocatively --- frameworks in which spacetime itself is a condensate. We review the string-loop picture, in which quantization turns the world sheet into a three-dimensional fractal, the corpuscular description of black holes as self-sustained graviton condensates, and the phase-transition structure connecting the Riemannian phase to a pre-geometric one. The conclusion is deliberately provocative: the question of quantum gravity is no longer a question of energy, but of crossing the bridge.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Nicolini, Piero
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214313723