Background: The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) provides unprecedented horizon-scale images of supermassive black holes, offering a unique testing ground for theories of gravity. The Nexus Paradigm (NP), a quantum gravity model, posits a quantized spacetime with a halved Schwarzschild radius and makes distinct predictions for observable features like the dark depression and emission ring.
Methods: We perform a rigorous Bayesian statistical analysis to test the NP against EHT observations of Sgr A* and M87*. Using Gaussian likelihoods and priors informed by mass–distance uncertainties, we compute the posterior distribution for the angular scale parameter Θg and assess the model's goodness of fit via the χ2 statistic. We directly compare the NP to General Relativity (GR) using Bayes factors.
Results: The NP demonstrates remarkable agreement with the data, achieving a combined fit at a 4.37σ confidence level (99.997%). Predictions for the dark depression, emission ring, and base diameter all agree with observations at the <0.1σ level. In stark contrast, GR's prediction for the dark depression is inconsistent at the ~13σ level. The Bayes factor overwhelmingly favors the NP over GR, at approximately 10³⁶.
Conclusion: Our analysis provides strong statistical validation for the Nexus Paradigm as a viable quantum gravity framework. These results underscore the power of EHT observations to probe the quantum nature of spacetime and challenge classical gravitational models in the strong-field regime.
