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Unified Theories and Gravity
Name: N/A
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1991
Question:
If, as Einstein postulated, gravity is not really a force,
but is in fact adescription of how objects behave in curved space-time,
then why do physic
(sorry, I mean physicists) work to unify it with the other three forces?
andrew m childs
Replies:
Well, perhaps what physicists should be doing is modifying the equations
for the other three forces to fit them into Einstein's model of spacetime?
That is also a hard problem, though I think progress has been made. The
problem is that the way Einstein's equations were set up, it makes
space-time itself look like something that ought to be quantum mechanically
described, just like electric fields etc are really described by quantum
mechanics. This leap of logic could be wrong - it could be that Einstein
was right all the way down to very small length-scales and very high
energies - but since we have no way of experimentally testing that
right now, the other approach looks more logically consistent, a criterion
Einstein himself would have approved of. But it could be wrong - and we
really do not have much prospect of experimental tests for several
centuries at least.
Arthur Smith
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Update: June 2012
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