
A Brief History of the Grand Unified Theory of Physics - pmcpinto
http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/a-brief-history-of-the-grand-unified-theory-of-physics
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grabcocque
Something I always felt 20 years ago when doing my physics degree, and now 20
years later when no measurable progress has been made down the road of
unification feels even more appropriate:

General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are two astonishingly successful
theories. They don't really have any massive gaps waiting to be filled. The
belief that there _must_ be a way to unify them always seems to me to stem
from the human desire for tidiness, not any sound epistemological reasoning
about how physical laws behave.

We want the theories to be unifiable because we're human. Sadly the universe
doesn't much seem to care what we want.

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whatshisface
Well, maybe they don't need to be unifiable - but GR and the standard model
are outright _contradictory_! We live in one universe, so there must be one
true story about how it is.

~~~
Koshkin
> _We live in one universe_

I think this may be an oversimplification.

~~~
beojan
Nevertheless, GR and QFT describe the _same_ universe.

