Brilliant scientists at Caltech University believe that space and time may be made up of "space-time pixels", rather than being as smooth and continuous as they appear.

Professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, Prof. Adhikari, has suggested in a paper that he has written that space and time may be made up of "space-time pixels", rather than being as smooth and continuous as they appear.  Pr. Adhikari, has suggested in a new press release that these pixels may be really small. How small? Very. "So small that if you were to enlarge things to be the size of a grain of sand, then the atoms would be as big as galaxies."

The whole point and purpose of this theory created by Adhikari are to bring together the established rules of physics, governed by general relativity, with the more complex field of quantum physics.

The extraordinary demonstration that the universe is made of pixels also aims to show whether gravity can really be broken down into its basic components. A difficult subject even for quantum physicists themselves! The field, which has yet to be explored, is called 'quantum gravity.

"Many scientists mistakenly think that quantum mechanics and gravity are incompatible," he says. Falaise Cheung is a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech who works with Adhikari.  "But if we can do quantum mechanical experiments on this planet, which has gravity, the two are obviously consistent. Problems arise when you ask subtle questions about black holes or try to combine theories on very short scales," Cheung added.

Overall, if we could 'zoom in' to space-time, would we find the single photons that form the light, according to quantum mechanics? Or would it be a continuous spectrum?

Scientists believe that gravity on a smaller scale is made up of hypothetical single "gravitons", a component of string theory that resonates at a particular frequency.

Moreover, on an even smaller scale? Will we unify the laws of general relativity with those of quantum physics?

"When I drop my cup of coffee, I wish I could blame it on gravity alone," jokes Adhikari. "But, in the same way, that temperature is not 'real' but describes how a bunch of molecules vibrate, spacetime may not be a real thing."