Comment by jerf
3 years ago
The universe runs on some principle. It may not be accessible to us, either for inability to gather the data, inability to represent it in our heads, or sheer staggering complexity, but there is some unified theory.
3 years ago
The universe runs on some principle. It may not be accessible to us, either for inability to gather the data, inability to represent it in our heads, or sheer staggering complexity, but there is some unified theory.
A GUT would be a theory in which a single fundamental force/interaction exists - one that unifies the electro-magnetic interaction with the weak interactions*, and the strong interaction, and perhaps with gravity. But there is no reason why the universe shouldn't have 3 or 4 different fundamental interactions.
In contrast, QM/QFT can't deal with particles curbing space-time, and GR can't explain the movement of elementary particles, so we know for sure those two theories can't be completely correct: there must exist something we're missing to explain how gravity works at the lowest detail level.
* these are already unified to some extent as the electro-weak interaction, which as I understand is believed to be a single kind of interaction at very high energy levels, as seen in the early universe, with 2 different aspects at the lower energies typical of our age. I may be wrong on some of the details here though.