Is Sabrina Pasterski the next Einstein? Meet the physicist who built her own aircraft at 12 and is exploring Einstein’s biggest unanswered questions about gravity

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski was building an aircraft when most children her age were still busy with school projects. Years later, she would move from working on machines that fly to studying some of the biggest questions about the universe.

Today, Pasterski is a theoretical physicist at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Her research focuses on gravity, black holes and the relationship between quantum physics and space-time. She also leads the institute's Celestial Holography Initiative, a research project supported by an $8 million grant from the Simons Foundation.

How did Sabrina Pasterski build her own aircraft as a teenager?

Pasterski was born in Chicago in 1993. Her interest in flying began early. She started taking flying lessons at the age of nine and soon became interested in how aircraft were built.


At around 12, she began working on a kit aircraft. It was not a simple school project. She spent years assembling the plane, making changes to its design and working through the technical requirements needed to make it safe to fly.

She completed the aircraft at about 14 and went on to fly solo as a teenager. The project took considerable time and effort, with hundreds of hours spent building and working on the plane.

Her interest in aviation also brought her into contact with the aerospace industry. She later had opportunities to work with organisations such as NASA and Boeing. However, her interests gradually moved towards a different subject: physics.

Why did she choose MIT and Harvard for her physics career?

Pasterski joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at 17. She initially entered the university with an interest in aerospace engineering. But her academic interests changed as she explored more difficult questions about nature and the laws of physics.

She eventually moved towards theoretical physics. She graduated from MIT with a perfect 5.00 GPA and ranked at the top of its physics programme.

Her education did not stop there. She went on to study at Harvard University, where she completed her PhD in physics in 2019. During this period, she worked with physicist Andrew Strominger.

Her research began to focus on gravity and the mathematical rules that describe the universe. She also worked on the study of gravitational waves and a phenomenon known as the spin memory effect.

What is Sabrina Pasterski trying to discover about gravity?

Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity explains gravity. It describes how massive objects, such as stars and planets, affect space and time. The theory has helped scientists understand everything from planetary motion to black holes.

Quantum mechanics, meanwhile, explains how very small things behave. It deals with atoms, particles and the basic building blocks of matter.

Both theories have been tested extensively. The problem is that they do not fit together completely. Scientists still do not have a fully developed theory that explains gravity and quantum physics within one framework.

This is known as the quantum gravity problem.

Pasterski is working on this wider scientific challenge. Her research does not mean that she has found the final answer. Instead, she is exploring mathematical ideas that could help scientists understand how gravity behaves at the quantum level.

One of the main areas of Pasterski's work is celestial holography. The basic idea is to investigate whether information about our universe can be described using a theory with fewer dimensions.

Think of a hologram. It can store information about a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface. Scientists are studying whether a similar mathematical idea could help explain the universe.

This does not mean that the universe is literally a picture or that the world around us is an illusion. It is a way of exploring how information about space-time and physical events can be represented.

Pasterski leads the Celestial Holography Initiative at the Perimeter Institute. The project brings together researchers working in quantum gravity, mathematical physics and related areas. An $8 million grant from the Simons Foundation has provided support for this research.

The aim is to develop the field further and find new ways to study the relationship between gravity and quantum theory.

Pasterski has often attracted attention because of her achievements at a young age. Building an aircraft as a teenager, graduating at the top of MIT's physics programme and earning a PhD from Harvard are unusual milestones.

Some media reports have described her as the next Einstein. However, such comparisons can create expectations that do not reflect how scientific research actually works.