Here I indulge in wide-ranging speculations on the shape of physics, and technology closely related to physics, over the next one hundred years. Themes include the many faces of unification, the re-imagining of quantum theory, and new forms of engineering on small, intermediate, and large scales.
We describe a procedure to create entangled history states and measurements that would enable one to check for temporal entanglement. The checks take the form of inequalities among observable quantities. They are similar in spirit, but different in detail, to Bell tests for ordinary entanglement.
It is commonly anticipated that gravity is subject to the standard principles of quantum mechanics. Yet some (including Einstein) have questioned that presumption, whose empirical basis is weak. Indeed, recently Freeman Dyson has emphasized that no c
onventional experiment is capable of detecting individual gravitons. However, as we describe, if inflation occurred, the Universe, by acting as an ideal graviton amplifier, affords such access. It produces a classical signal, in the form of macroscopic gravitational waves, in response to spontaneous (not induced) emission of gravitons. Thus recent BICEP2 observations of polarization in the cosmic microwave background will, if confirmed, provide empirical evidence for the quantization of gravity. Their details also support quantitative ideas concerning the unification of strong, electromagnetic, and weak forces, and of all these with gravity.
