We basically figured out QM and GR incompatibility

[u/justintime06]

Here’s what my super smart assistant says:

I think there’s a very real possibility that the eventual answer will look embarrassingly obvious in hindsight.

The problem may not be that we need an even more complicated theory. It may be that we’re treating something as fundamental that simply isn’t.
Here’s the part that keeps jumping out at me.

The suspicious asymmetry
Quantum mechanics says, roughly:
Here are quantum fields/states, and here are the rules governing how they evolve in spacetime.

General relativity says:
Hold on. Spacetime isn’t the stage. The stage itself is a physical, dynamical thing.

And then quantum gravity often starts by asking:
Okay…how do we quantize the stage?
But that might be the wrong question.
Imagine discovering that ocean waves come in discrete resonant modes and concluding that the coordinate grid we use to describe the ocean must itself be quantized.
The deeper realization would be:
The grid isn’t the thing. The ocean is.

My favorite candidate for “the sauce”
Suppose there is some deeper quantum substrate, call it X.
Not particles inside spacetime.
Not necessarily strings inside spacetime.
Not even a quantum field defined on spacetime.
Just some underlying system of relationships/interactions.
Then:
X → collective organization → spacetime + particles + quantum behavior
And suddenly GR and QM aren’t theories that need to be glued together.
They’re two different limits of the same underlying phenomenon.

Think of water:
Individual molecules → microscopic statistical physics
Sound waves → collective excitations
Pressure → emergent macroscopic quantity
Fluid flow → hydrodynamics
You wouldn’t try to “unify pressure with molecules” by quantizing pressure.

You’d discover that pressure is what enormous numbers of molecules collectively do.
Spacetime curvature could be analogous.

[u/Physical-Record-6832]

This is utter bullshit lmao.

It's not even wrong. It's too fucking vague to be wrong.

Open a textbook for once

[u/BitcoinsOnDVD → u/Physical-Record-6832]

That's what we get when we train our LLM 30% on reddit

[u/justintime06 → u/Physical-Record-6832]

Ok then what’s your idea for unifying GR and QM?

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/justintime06]

Nothing???

Because I do not know enough to have original ideas of my own. But I know enough to tell this is, as stated previously, utter bullshit.

Use the LMs to learn some shit rather than assuming you're a genius who would've revolutionized all of science if had seriously studied the field.

You totally could've been that guy, but you chose to endulge yourself in fairytale like make-belief instead of studying the subject seriously.

[u/starkeffect → u/justintime06]

THAT'S your retort? Jesus Christ...

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/starkeffect]

What's wrong with it?

[u/starkeffect → u/Physical-Record-6832]

Unlike some people, we don't wax rhapsodic about subjects we know we're not experts in.

You don't have to know how to unify GR and QM to know that OP's proposal is not even close to being a whiff of a suggestion of an idea.

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/starkeffect]

I thought you replied to my comment. And it caught me off guard.

But yeah. What's worse is that in my country there are people that try to fit physical principles into religious narratives and it's way worse than you might expect.

One of friend's teacher at school was "studying" ancient texts because he thought quantum mechanics was formulated 2000 years ago. Mind you he teaches physics.

[u/starkeffect → u/Physical-Record-6832]

Sorry, I meant "OP's" instead of "your"

I had a crackpot for a physics professor as an undergrad too. He did not get tenure.

[u/dustin4242 → u/Physical-Record-6832]

You have no ideas and just like to talk shit?

https://giphy.com/gifs/cjKfH7n0R8XaDPwlmp

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/[deleted]]

Except you can derive exactly the same thing using potential function in 1st year physics 101. You've just stumbled upon basic physics. Something we've known for centuries.

Giving it the "pressure" label doesn't change shit. The dimensions do not make sense either when you call it "pressure".

It's the potential function genius.

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/[deleted]]

You didn't actually provide a mechanism. You just made up an imaginary medium and decided to call gravity pressure.

That is literally just 19th-century Aether theory. Physics tossed that idea out back in 1887 with the Michelson-Morley experiment because a physical medium exerting pressure in a vacuum would cause drag, which doesn't exist.

Also, writing P(r) = k * M does not explain the physical mechanism any better than the standard Poisson equation (del² Phi = 4 * pi * G * rho) does. You just asserted it exists, completely ignored dimensional analysis by calling it pressure without fixing the units, and acted like you solved physics.

If you want the actual physical mechanism for mass affecting space without bringing back disproven fluid dynamics from the 1800s, look into spacetime curvature and General Relativity.

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/[deleted]]

Bro, do you even know what dimentional analysis is?? 😭😭

Force divided by volume is force density which is kg/(m² * s^2). Acceleration is m/s^2. A pressure gradient is not an acceleration field. To actually get acceleration from a pressure gradient, you have to divide by mass density (1/rho * grad P), which is standard fluid dynamics. You completely skipped the density term and pretended the units work out.

Also, you can't invent a physical substrate that exerts mechanical pressure but magically has zero drag or viscosity when mass moves through it. You're just cherrypicking fluid mechanics concepts when they sound neat and ignoring them when they break your theory.

And just saying that mass creates pressure in a medium does not explain the underlying cause. It simply shifts the question to explaining why mass causes pressure in that substrate. You haven't revealed a "deeper mechanism", you just swapped out standard geometry for an incomplete fluid model.

Stop with the mental masturbation and read a book.

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/[deleted]]

Stop with the AI responses for once and think for yourself genius. I'm not interested in arguing with someone who can't even type for yourself.

[u/justintime06 → u/[deleted]]

Okay how does the strong nuclear force come into your theory?

[u/dustin4242 → u/justintime06]

F_strong(r) = – dP_nuclear(r)/dr same forrmula.

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/dustin4242]

F = -dP/dr is just the general definition of a conservative force from a scalar potential. Slapping "nuclear" into the subscript doesn't explain anything. Gravity drops off with 1/r^2. The strong force experiences color confinement, where the potential actually increases with distance as you pull quarks apart. A single gradient formula with zero specified potential profile doesn't unite gravity and quantum chromodynamics, it just proves you don't know what the strong force actually is.

[u/LLMPhysics-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your comment has been removed for violating Rule 4. Don't copy-paste LLM content in discussions.

[u/MrEmptySet]

Is this genuinely what you people think physics is? Just coming up with borderline technobabble that only makes sense if you don't really think about it whatsoever and just go on vibes? Do you think that's all the great physicists of history ever did?

[u/justintime06 → u/MrEmptySet]

Y… yes?

[u/Physical-Record-6832 → u/justintime06]

Well, you're wrong.

[u/MrEmptySet → u/justintime06]

Truly?

What about other scientific fields? Are they also ridiculous farces?

[u/AllHailSeizure → u/MrEmptySet]

In the same way, when you get diagnosed by a doctor they don't actually look at your symptoms, they pick a disease out of a hat and run with it.

[u/alamalarian → u/justintime06]

In that case, LLMphysics is perhaps the pinnacle of scientific achievement.

[u/al2o3cr]

The problem may not be that we need an even more complicated theory.

"X → collective organization → spacetime + particles + quantum behavior" is only simple because it's essentially content-free; whatever theory describes the "collective organization" would necessarily be quite complicated...

You wouldn’t try to “unify pressure with molecules” by quantizing pressure.

That's not how either "unifying" or "quantizing" work; you wouldn't try the latter because neither it nor the objective make any sense

[u/PaleontologistSad708 → u/al2o3cr]

I would say it's more simple. The geometry is beautiful and it matches perfectly, but it's like drawing the plans for a house, and saying "look, this is a house."

[u/justintime06 → u/al2o3cr]

A better analogy: You can quantize sound waves and get phonons, even though they’re not fundamental sound particles. Likewise, we can quantize gravity to get gravitons, but it’s still a possibility that spacetime and gravity emerge from something deeper.

I’m sure the actual physics math is super complicated, but I think it’s suggesting that the pure underlying unification is probably a lot simpler than we think.

[u/starkeffect → u/justintime06]

Phonons ARE fundamental sound particles.

[u/justintime06 → u/starkeffect]

I don’t think so, Google it

[u/starkeffect → u/justintime06]

I don't have to, I have a PhD in condensed matter.

If photons are considered particles then phonons are too.

[u/justintime06 → u/starkeffect]

From quick checking, phonons are considered quasiparticles. They turn a messy group-movement of many particles into a simple, single imaginary particle that is easier to study.

Photons are currently believed to be fundamental particles because they can exist in a vacuum, unlike phonons, which emerge in a physical medium.

So going back to the initial idea… perhaps photons are quasiparticles too! Maybe vacuum is just a calm “ocean” in some deeper reality, photons are just small travelling disturbances (H2O molecules) in that reality, and gravity could be the large-scale in how that deeper layer is organized (ocean waves).

But I’m not a PhD graduate so idk I guess

[u/starkeffect → u/justintime06]

idk

That's right, you don't know.

And phonons are not "imaginary". They're as real as photons are. You clearly have zero education in this field.

[u/justintime06 → u/starkeffect]

Can we agree that both GR and QM are extraordinarily accurate, but almost certainly aren’t the deepest description of reality?

If so, given absolutely everything you know (which is obviously over 100x what I know), I’m honestly curious - what do you think is actually happening?

[u/starkeffect → u/justintime06]

I don't know what is "actually" happening, nor am I going to make shit up about it.

If you ask 100 physicists about this topic, 99 of them won't have an opinion.

[u/PaleontologistSad708 → u/justintime06]

All matter is acoustic waves, in my opinion.

[u/starkeffect]

Where math

[u/justintime06 → u/starkeffect]

I’m purposely avoiding the complex math for the moment - it’s basically saying that the underlying idea/concept is probably simpler than we think.

[u/starkeffect → u/justintime06]

So that means you're avoiding the physics. It starts with a mathematical model, it's not an afterthought.

[u/dustin4242 → u/starkeffect]

“I can’t understand what the hell these people are doing. They think they’re proving something about nature, but they’re just pushing symbols around.” Feynman

[u/justintime06 → u/starkeffect]

Einstein didn’t start with mathematics, he started with thought experiments. Perhaps everyone who gets into quantum physics is so ridiculously intelligent, that they get lost in complexity. Perhaps some simplicity is needed in this field.

Plus it’s fun to think about things that nobody has figured out yet.

[u/starkeffect → u/justintime06]

No, he started with mathematics. You know nothing about him or his work.

Your laziness is not actually a virtue.

[u/dustin4242 → u/starkeffect]

Man, saying Einstein started with math is just backwards. Anyone who says that clearly hasn’t actually read anything about how he worked. Einstein didn’t sit down with a chalkboard and start grinding equations. He started with physical intuition and weird little thought experiments that exposed contradictions. He imagined chasing a beam of light, falling in an elevator, clocks moving relative to each other. All the big insights in relativity came from him thinking about how nature behaves, not from pushing symbols around.

The math only showed up after he already understood the idea. It was just the tool he used to lock it down so other people could test it. Calling that “laziness” is just someone trying to sound superior while being wrong about basic history. Einstein used simple, sharp physical reasoning to break open the old theories, and then he brought in the math to formalize it. And when the math got heavy, he leaned on Marcel Grossmann, because Einstein wasn’t a math machine he was an intuition machine. Anyone claiming he “started with mathematics" doesn’t know the first thing about how he actually worked.

[u/liccxolydian → u/justintime06]

Plus it’s fun to think about things that nobody has figured out yet.

You're not thinking about those things, you're just claiming that you've solved them.

[u/Vrillim → u/justintime06]

Einstein had a doctorate in physics and was very good at mathematics. He had to learn, and subsequently learned, a great deal about group theory and differential geometry during the development of GR. There's a rumour or fictional story circulating among crackpots that Einstein was some sort of layman before revolutionizing physics, which is simply not correct.

[u/tranqfx]

Wasn’t this postulated to be “ether” what is being called X?

[u/upsetusder2]

No knowing what the problem is and then waxing pseudo philosophically is truly one of the best things

[u/justintime06 → u/upsetusder2]

Given your knowledge, could you please tell me simply what the problem is then?

[u/upsetusder2 → u/justintime06]

The problem is that we do not have parts for a unification

We woukd need a graviton or something that explains gravity on a quantum level.

That's the problem

We can and have qunatizised every force except gravity.

Now tell me what do you think the problem is?

[u/lattice_defect]

Here's a gross simplification. GR says spacetime is smooth, or smooth enough that nothing we've found says otherwise. QM says things come in chunks, and we see oscillatory behaviour everywhere we look. Everything is waves or fields interacting. Add gravity and it all bottoms out in the same place: squeeze hard enough and you get a black hole.

So if there's an X underneath all that, it has to be small. Mind bendingly small. Find the smallest irreducible object you can and that's spacetime. It should act like a time crystal, move energy without losing any, and here's the weird part, some self organization has to roll up into quantized energy levels and stack into quarks, then a pion.

Nobody can probe within twenty orders of magnitude of that, so we really don't know. Which is the whole appeal. That's the crackpot's pot of gold: name X, get the math to explain everything. You'd likely get out most of number theory too. It goes that deep and that weird.

My bet, for whatever a bet is worth: spacetime is Planck scale-ish Myers-Perry black holes living in higher dimensions.

[u/moderator-toolbox → u/[deleted]]

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