[nine_k]

...and a field is just a value that behaves in a particular way. An example outside QFT: phonons [1] behave like particles, but there is no "palpable" sound field, there's only local distribution of implulses of the molecules of air (or whatever medium) where the sound propagates.

Other fields can be seen as attributes of the space itself, and "elementary particles" as wrinkles on it. Gravity is special because it bends the very geometry of space.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon

[tsimionescu]

> Gravity is special because it bends the very geometry of space.

It's important to remember that this is not true in QFT, and QFT is not true in GR. That is, the math of QFT does not work if spacetime can become curved (at least, if it can become significantly curved).

[raattgift]

Maybe you want to leaf through a copy of Birrell & Davies or Parker & Toms again. QFTCS is good in strong gravity, and is as good as anything else at transplanckian scale (which is to say there's presently no way of knowing when around there QFTCS becomes a bad approximation to an unknown quantum gravity).

We should also remember the enormous cosmological curvature in which testable quantum systems exist; it's not just about compact objects. Significant? There's observed H-sources above z ~ 15, and of course the CMB photons at z ~ 1100. Indeed, B&D deals with Robertson-Walker spacetimes over several chapters before they get to black holes.

Also at the weak but measurable curvature regime there's e.g. Pound-Rebka, time metrology[1], and so forth, and lots of spacecraft confirming the strong equivalence principle (e.g. MESSENGER, LAGEOS) and thus supporting the LLI one expects to find in relativistic QFTs of the sort one would use to describe the behaviour of laser altimeters, distant astrophysical masers (and the Lyman-alpha forest), the spectral lines in stellar atmospheres and so on.

[1] just because it's neat and directly relevant to your comment: https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/q188-b1... [2025]