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I'm going to start my graduate studies in theoretical physics. My supervisor wants me to work on quantum gravity. He gave me the liberty to chose a particular approach to Quantum gravity (Excluding string theory, he does not like string theory).

So I'm thinking which approach to Quantum gravity should I chose? I have a fascination about twistor model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistor. But I think it's not that developed fully due to lack of attention from physicists.

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(Beware dissing string theory in certain parts! ;)) If you are not already invested in a particular line of research my suggestion would be to read up on as many different approaches as you can and follow your fancy. It is more important to work on a topic that interests you and that you can make headway on. But try to find an area where you can carve out a niche, and where the "big problems" are not too far beyond the practical problems where you can make progress. I'll let experts on various approaches say how feasible this is in theory X. I'm just repeating my supervisors advice here. :) – Michael Brown Jan 9 at 11:36
Thanks for the comment. – Aftnix Jan 9 at 11:44
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Well, string theory is where you could learn the most. Ideally, anything you do should be complementary to string theory, so you're at least not filling your mind with false ideas. You could work on "Vasiliev gravity" or "higher spin gauge theory", which is another theory, including gravity, for which gauge/gravity dualities exist. Twistors are also potentially relevant. arxiv.org/abs/0808.3907 is a paper which tries to apply twistors, in the contemporary way, directly to general relativity. – Mitchell Porter Jan 9 at 11:55
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There doesn't exist any known, not-yet-falsified approach to quantum gravity than string/M-theory. You may want to contact the president of your university and ask him or her to fire your supervisor because the latter is definitely incompetent. In particular, twistors are interesting and became useful and important but they're not a tool to deal with quantum gravity problems per se. They're just an unconventional tool (new variables) to deal with the Minkowski spacetime - especially the flat one (without gravity) - and especially scale-invariant theories defined on that spacetime. – Luboš Motl Jan 9 at 12:15
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Is this for a PhD? I ask because I'm surprised your supervisor gave you the choice of approach. The reason is that these are highly specialized fields, and unless your supervisor has specific expertise in the one you choose - then you'll be stuck. Most of the current twistor work is on MHV for Yang Mills - it would be hard to find many others working in the stuff in Mason/Skinner's paper, so I too would be a little hesitant to recommend "quantum gravity via twistors". (PS I'd try to make the question a bit more specific before the authorities complain!). – twistor59 Jan 9 at 12:39
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closed as not constructive by David Zaslavsky♦ Jan 9 at 16:53

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