Speaker
Description
The direct imaging of supermassive black holes by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has provided an unprecedented opportunity to test the foundations of gravitational physics. In this work, we present the first Bayesian statistical analysis of the Nexus Paradigm (NP) — a quantum gravity framework that models spacetime as a lattice of entangled spinorial modes — against the EHT’s observations of Sagittarius A and M87. The NP predicts distinctive horizon-scale features, including a halved Schwarzschild radius and quantized orbital structures, leading to precise angular diameter predictions for the dark depression, emission ring, and base diameter. Using mass-to-distance priors and Gaussian error likelihoods, we demonstrate that NP aligns with the observed EHT features at a confidence level exceeding 4σ, while General Relativity (GR) underestimates the dark depression size. The resulting Bayes factor of ~10³⁶ decisively favors NP over GR in this context. These results suggest that quantum entanglement of spinorial modes may underlie the emergence of spacetime geometry, with black hole shadow observations offering a direct empirical probe of quantum gravity. This work not only marks a critical step in bridging GR and quantum mechanics but also establishes a new empirical avenue for testing fundamental physics, paving the way for next-generation EHT observations and gravitational wave astronomy to further challenge and refine our understanding of spacetime.
