The Physicist Who Puts Penrose’s Quantum Ideas To The Test | Ivette Fuentes
Professor of physics Ivette Fuentes is doing groundbreaking work at the interface of quantum mechanics and gravity. At the heart of Fuentes’ work are Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs)—ultra-cold states of matter in which millions of atoms behave as a single quantum system. These systems are exquisitely sensitive to gravitational effects, making them ideal candidates for probing whether gravity plays an active role in quantum collapse, as Roger Penrose has long suggested.
In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Fuentes reflects on her original, cross-disciplinary approach to physics by drawing on her background as a dancer: first, one must fully master the classical forms—the established fields of physics—but true novelty only emerges when one dares to break the rules.
0:00 Introduction
4:06 Fuentes about her background as a dancer & Physics as a dance
10:08 The tension between general relativity and quantum mechanics
12:26 Strategies for unifying gravity and quantum theory
17:26 Ivette Fuentes’ work in quantum optics
21:08 Quantum field theory in curved spacetime
28:15 Roger Penrose’s dissatisfaction with quantum theory
34:52 If gravity collapses the wavefunction
37:39 Fuentes’ view compared to Penrose
44:21 Bose–Einstein condensates explained
49:51 Do phonons have gravitational effects?
55:02 The metaphysical implications of Fuentes’ work
1:01:12 Does metaphysics play a role in physics?
1:02:45 Working with Roger Penrose
1:06:30 Quantum mechanics and consciousness
1:10:40 Not surrendering to purely epistemic approaches
1:14:02 Parsimony in doing physics
1:17:37 Letting go of deeply held assumptions
1:24:29 The current paradigm in physics
1:26:13 What would physics look like from an idealist perspective?
1:27:17 Fuentes’ upcoming paper
1:29:00 Wearing different hats as a physicist
1:30:27 How Fuentes thinks about reality at home
1:31:59 Physics, classical ballet, and modern dance
Archival footage used under fair use:
Bose Einstein Condensates visualised: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shdLjIkRaS8
LIGO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtp71NT0GNg
Spacetime visualisations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNqTamaKMC8
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@cordera9543
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Gravity, the force that seeks symmetry and never finds.
@elizabethwinsor-strumpetqueen
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
I took all my higgs bosons out and now I'm completely weightless!
@victorioaraoz
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
no one comes here to read for an hour an a half. wtf
@victorioaraoz
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
stop the forced caption please. it's really not needed
@vahdis
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Thank you so much for doing these interviews and helping expand all our views of the world. Quantum mechanics is starting to look less spooky magic and I can't wait to see how the world builds on future discoveries 🙂
@LocalTransportationGuy
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Happy New Year from here on the home planet! Do you all have a new year where you are located or are you on a different timing system?
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” —– Albert Einstein
"In the quote of the day, Albert Einstein talks about life, hope, and learning. The quotes given by the world-renowned physicist have always been a source of huge motivation for people around the world. Albert Einstein’s quote of the day emphasizes learning from the past and ensuring a better present, which will create hope for tomorrow." — "The Economic Times."
Incidentally, for you historians out there, the American automobile was invented simultaneously by the sales and marketing departments of several corporations in the fall of 2025. It's currently estimated that it will take between 50 and 100 years for we-the-people to complete the first phase of beta testing on the vehicle itself and another 1000 years to verify the rationality of the infrastructure necessary to support it and the various other weight classes of vehicles.
Would-be Local Transportation & Systems guy; planet Earth.
@DaveTerrasidio
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
shes amazing
@markorossie9296
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Brilliant. Now the particles aren’t merely bumping into each other — they’ve organised themselves into a perfectly coordinated ballet, straight out of a classic Disney film.
@CloudAquarius
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
26:14 Researchers at ETH Zurich did a significant experiment in 2023 where physicists successfully placed a 16 microgram-mass sapphire crystal into a superposition. We're talking in the range of 10^16 atoms all being in a superposition.
@Mlab923
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
In my view, mass behaves like a denser state of space, similar to the relationship between ice and water. Energy, on the other hand, can be thought of as the flow of space from a dense, unstable state into a less dense, more stable one. I propose the existence of the smallest space volumes that undergo phase transitions, which I call “phasons,” and I believe that these density differences settled in the early universe and gave rise to particles. In my understanding, matter and space are simply different density states of the same thing. Fields, meanwhile, are interference patterns created by oscillations. I published a work in the zenodo.
@gdotone1
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Absolutely right, mass must be redefined
@Juan-Gaviota
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Seguimos sin comprender que hay detrás de lo que percibimos como materia. Los resultados prácticos hacen cenizas a cualquier intuición clásica. Por tanto, no entiendo cual es el sentido de autodefinirse materialista.
Cómo humanos solo podemos adoptar el punto de vista de nuestra conciencia, que es la que contiene el sentido y la persepcion, por tanto todos somos en el fondo espiritualistas.
@RWin-fp
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Impressive interview Hans. petje af. Of all physicists, Ivette is the closest to understanding gravity. She focusses in BEC’s which is indeed the single most important experiment to alter gravity locallly, as explicitly predicted by Modified Special Relativity (MSR). This recent 4 axial MSR theory provides a solid link to both QP and GR ( as it has all 4 GR tensors emerging fromit). As such it FULLY explains the fundamentent under GR answering all there is to know about gravity. I thought Ivette has read it, but as the interview progresses, it appears she might not have, and even more impressed with her to intuitively get much of it right..Nonetheless. gravity anno 2025 is fully explained by 4 axial MSR theory…all that remains is testing…and she seems to be the one person able and willing to do it….
@Mirror2uu
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
More and more I believe we need to rewrite every science book in school because everything I was taught is now wrong.
@semuaguest
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
❤
@magicsinglez
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
I suppose she does need to redefine mass
@dltooley
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
I think this is the third Fuentes interview I’ve watched, following Jaimungal. It is awesome to hear Professor Fuentes speak of her intellectual development grounded in classical dance training. And following the life metaphor of then proceeding from the rigorous fundamentals of ballet to the freedom of modern dance to her philosophical speculation on consciousness following Penrose is truly mind expanding.
I am reminded of the Emma Goldman quote, “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
@mypooybear555
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Just get to the science.I hate all the talking in the beginning.I just wanna hear her reasoning and explanation
@albertbahoogadin
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Rebuild the current cosmic mathematical structure absent time. Until we do we go nowhere just like the kast 100 years.
The arrogance of man to interject a human non constant construct as a universal fundimental has been mans longest lasting mistake to date…..
Stop pandering to ego and just damn well do it!!!
WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE AT THIS POINT!!!
The universe is not static, open your eyes and look, it creates therefor not static. Again stop pandering to ego x
@borispetrovchich3141
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Fuentess is outstanding, but interviewer was boring with his obsession with “conciseness” blabbering
@robertanderson5092
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Reality is composed of a set of interacting emergent phenomenon arising from the chaos of nothingness.
– Some Stoner
@jpr3579
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
As a followup to my question above,
are we only talking about Louis de Broglie's concept of wave-particle duality?
I take this as a given. So why is a superposition of a mass even a a question?
@jpr3579
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
At 58:24, Ivette talks about a mass in a superpostion of left and right…
It took a while for me to formulate the question, but,
by what definitions can you say that the one mass is in two locations?
Is it some kind of qubit?
Reading the comments, I can get an inkling, but not a concrete picture (if that is a possibility).
@jpr3579
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
At 58:24, Ivette talks about a mass in a superpostion of left and right…
@ShannonWiltshi-jq8fl
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Yvette is right about the core issue. A lot of ideas circulating in the thread resemble earlier discussions, but often without the underlying structure that motivated them. In our case, those ideas come from a concrete technical framework rather than speculation.
We’re not just exploring a mass model—we’re working within a broader unifying framework, parts of which we’re preparing for formal release. We’ll be posting the first results publicly on arXiv soon, where the details can be evaluated properly.
@sourabhsubhasish8816
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
I don't understand anything at all😢😢😢
@marcin4xm
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Another tale of moss and fern about gravity. This professor knows nothing, and her theories have brought nothing new to the field. Maybe I don't know something, and in 30 years in a position generously paid for by our taxes, she made a discovery explaining the inconsistency between the theory of gravity and space observation? Or maybe she developed some way to even the slightest manipulation of gravity? No? Then she should keep quiet and stop telling tales about unicorn farts.
@stephene.robbins6273
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
As usual, yet another of the infinity of physicists who fail to ask this question: Which Special Relativity are you trying to reconcile to QM – the logically destroyed, distorted version, post Langevin, or the logically consistent version, pre-Langevin?
@LuisAldamiz
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
How can you make any "progress" in physics without addressing the fundamental issues about the nature of mass, time, etc.? It's physics, not engineering, for Chaos' sake!
@bodiless99
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 pm
Matter slows time. The gradient that forms is time dilation.
Gravity does not bend time. Time gradients are gravity. Matter's trajectory shifts in 3D space to stay aligned with an altered path through the 4th dimension.
If time ticks faster outside the matter halo of galaxies it can account for solar orbital velocities and may account for dark energy as well. We need to be studying time.
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