Princeton University Department of Physics Colloquium

ABSTRACT: Insights from black hole physics and string theory suggest that gravity is an emergent phenomenon. The analogy between the Einstein equations and thermodynamics and the dualities between open en closed string theories give important clues towards the underlying mechanism. Motivated by our current understanding of M-theory, I propose a microscopic framework in which gravity, or rather inertia, arises as a reaction force: it is caused by fact that the underlying phase space is influenced by the positions of matter. In a cosmological setting the proposed framework naturally explains the presence of dark energy, and leads to a quantitative match with the observed dark matter.