Feeling Gravity's Pull: Claudia de Rham Speaks to Fotini Markopoulou for Nautilus

September 14, 2024
by Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI

FQxI physicists Fotini Markopoulou and Claudia de Rham, of Imperial College London, chatted about de Rham's research on gravity for Nautilus magazine recently. De Rham has worked on massive gravity, a framework in which the graviton (the particle hypothesized to be associated with the force of gravity and usually assumed to be massless) has some mass, and moves at less than the speed of light. The benefit of positing a massive graviton is that it could explain the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, doing away with the need to invoke some mysterious dark energy.

Markopoulou also asks de Rham about some of her other exciting pursuits–de Rham made it all the way to the final stage of the European Space Agency's astronaut program–and her latest book, The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity, which can be purchased through the FQxI Bookstore (FQxI receives a donation with purchases made through this link).