Their domain is supposed to be the universe, I think. Later people said GR is for the large scale and QM is for the small scale but nothing in the theories actually says this, AFAICT.
It could be that a straightforward extension of one or the other would solve the problem, somehow embracing or correcting the other. But all the obvious ways to do that have been explored and have failed.
Or it could be that both are fundamentally conceptually wrong, like Newtonian gravity was ‘wrong’ (though quite accurate most of the time). If that is the case the actual solution would look very different and would then be shown to approximate QM and GR in limiting cases.
String theory is not really a theory of physics; it is more like the idea that a certain type of theory, not yet identified, may work. So it is more of an approach or a program. But even if ST is successful, it would leave a lot of unanswered questions. And after decades their is not much sign of a breakthrough.
To be fair one key problem is a lack of data. If we could build accelerators 10^12 times as powerful as current ones, we may have something to work on. But there are so many possible theories given current data. Given no data, and no way to test theories, physics degenerates into a popularity contest.
Their domain is supposed to be the universe, I think. Later people said GR is for the large scale and QM is for the small scale but nothing in the theories actually says this, AFAICT.
each one was constructed for their respective domains. Not surprising that they don’t automatically keep their validity in other domains. Quantum mechanics came with their own limiter, the ad hoc Born rule without which it doesn’t predict anything. GR is too weak for small source masses, so we have no idea when and if it stops applying.
To be fair one key problem is a lack of data. If we could build accelerators 10^12 times as powerful as current ones, we may have something to work on. But there are so many possible theories given current data. Given no data, and no way to test theories, physics degenerates into a popularity contest.
Indeed we need more data, but not necessarily at high energies. If anything, measuring gravitational effects of the sources that contain 100,000 nucleons, not 10^23 nucleons would be more illuminating than a super mega LHC. Or gravitational effects of any system that can be put into spatial quantum superposition (i.e. not just a SQUID).
Their domain is supposed to be the universe, I think. Later people said GR is for the large scale and QM is for the small scale but nothing in the theories actually says this, AFAICT.
It could be that a straightforward extension of one or the other would solve the problem, somehow embracing or correcting the other. But all the obvious ways to do that have been explored and have failed.
Or it could be that both are fundamentally conceptually wrong, like Newtonian gravity was ‘wrong’ (though quite accurate most of the time). If that is the case the actual solution would look very different and would then be shown to approximate QM and GR in limiting cases.
String theory is not really a theory of physics; it is more like the idea that a certain type of theory, not yet identified, may work. So it is more of an approach or a program. But even if ST is successful, it would leave a lot of unanswered questions. And after decades their is not much sign of a breakthrough.
To be fair one key problem is a lack of data. If we could build accelerators 10^12 times as powerful as current ones, we may have something to work on. But there are so many possible theories given current data. Given no data, and no way to test theories, physics degenerates into a popularity contest.
each one was constructed for their respective domains. Not surprising that they don’t automatically keep their validity in other domains. Quantum mechanics came with their own limiter, the ad hoc Born rule without which it doesn’t predict anything. GR is too weak for small source masses, so we have no idea when and if it stops applying.
Indeed we need more data, but not necessarily at high energies. If anything, measuring gravitational effects of the sources that contain 100,000 nucleons, not 10^23 nucleons would be more illuminating than a super mega LHC. Or gravitational effects of any system that can be put into spatial quantum superposition (i.e. not just a SQUID).