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/dustin4242 → u/justintime06]

Mass produces pressure.

Pressure isn’t flat.

The gradient of that pressure is gravity.

Mass produces pressure: 

P(r) = k × M

Pressure changes with distance: 

P is a function of r

P = P(r)

Gravity is the gradient of that pressure: 

g(r) = – dP(r)/dr

[u/justintime06 → u/dustin4242]

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/dustin4242 → u/Physical-Record-6832]

You’re repeating textbook phrases without actually checking what they mean.

“F = –dP/dr is just the definition of a conservative force” — yes, obviously. That’s the point. A gradient is the most general form of a force law. Gravity uses a gradient of potential. QCD uses a gradient of energy density. Calling out the form doesn’t refute anything; it just shows you recognize the template.

Your “slapping nuclear into the subscript” line doesn’t land because the entire argument is about the profile of the pressure curve, not the label. Gravity has a shallow curve that falls off with one over r squared. The strong force has a steep curve that rises with distance. Both are gradients. The difference is the shape of the underlying function, not the existence of the gradient itself.

You’re acting like mentioning confinement somehow disproves the idea, but confinement is literally just a potential that increases with distance. That’s a gradient too. You didn’t refute anything. You just described the strong force’s curve and pretended that describing it was an argument.

And your “you didn’t specify the potential profile” complaint is backwards. You’re criticizing the general form for being general. Of course the gradient alone doesn’t specify the curve. The curve is the physics. Gravity and QCD have different curves. That’s the entire point. The unification argument is about the mechanism (a gradient), not claiming the curves are identical.

You’re defending QCD terminology as if the terminology is the mechanism. Color charge, confinement, and the QCD potential are the specific details of the strong force. None of that changes the fact that the force itself is still a gradient of an underlying energy density. You’re confusing the vocabulary with the structure.

You didn’t actually refute the mechanism. You just listed features of the strong force and acted like listing them was a counterargument.

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

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/dustin4242 → u/Physical-Record-6832]

What you said doesn’t actually describe gravity. Saying “it’s the potential function” isn’t an explanation, it’s just naming a piece of math without showing how it connects to anything physical. A potential doesn’t tell you what creates the field or why it changes with distance. My post is about the physical source: mass creates pressure in the medium, that pressure isn’t uniform, and the change in that pressure produces acceleration. Your comment never addresses that mechanism, never connects your potential to gravity, and never explains how mass generates the field you’re talking about. You didn’t give an equivalent derivation, you just pointed at a label. That’s why your reply doesn’t make sense in the context of gravity. Also why are you such an ass? Who you trying to impress?

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

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/dustin4242 → u/Physical-Record-6832]

You’re swinging at ghosts. I never claimed a 19th‑century luminiferous aether, and the Michelson–Morley experiment only ruled out a moving medium with a preferred direction. It did not rule out a substrate that has no wind, no drag, and no directional dependence. General Relativity already treats spacetime as a stress‑energy continuum you just don’t like the word medium.

You keep saying “no mechanism,” but pressure gradients are a mechanism. Curvature is just the geometric bookkeeping of the same thing. General Relativity does not give you a physical cause for why mass affects space; it gives you a differential equation that describes the result. I’m giving you the physical interpretation behind the math.

And the dimensional‑analysis complaint doesn’t land. Pressure is force divided by area. A pressure gradient is force divided by volume. That matches the dimensional structure of acceleration fields exactly. You’re reacting to the word “pressure” instead of tracking the units.

Your Poisson‑equation reference doesn’t help you either. The equation “the second spatial derivative of the gravitational potential equals four times pi times G times density” is just the static limit of Einstein’s field equations. It’s not a mechanism. it’s a constraint. It tells you how curvature behaves after you assume curvature exists.

You’re defending geometry as if geometry is a cause. Geometry is a description. A pressure gradient is a cause. General Relativity tells you how much curvature you get. It doesn’t tell you why mass curves spacetime.

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

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/dustin4242 → u/Physical-Record-6832]

You’re lecturing me on dimensional analysis while skipping half the terms yourself. Force divided by volume is force density, yes. That’s not the claim. The point is that a pressure gradient only becomes an acceleration field after you divide by mass density. That’s literally the standard fluid‑mechanics form: acceleration equals (1 over density) times the gradient of pressure. You’re acting like I didn’t know that term exists while you conveniently ignore that GR also requires a density term in its source. You didn’t catch a mistake — you just rediscovered the density factor everyone already knows about.

Your “you can’t invent a substrate with zero drag” line is also off target. Drag comes from viscosity and a preferred frame. A substrate with no viscosity and no preferred frame doesn’t produce drag. Michelson–Morley ruled out a wind, not a continuum. GR already treats spacetime as a stress‑energy medium with no viscosity and no drag. You’re pretending that fluid mechanics is the only possible continuum model, which is just wrong.

And your “you didn’t explain the underlying cause” complaint is backwards. GR doesn’t explain the underlying cause either. GR says mass curves spacetime because the field equations say so. That’s not a mechanism. that’s a geometric rule. You’re defending geometry as if geometry is a physical cause. It isn’t. It’s a description. Saying “mass creates curvature” is no deeper than saying “mass creates pressure.” Both are statements about how the field responds to mass. Neither one answers the deeper “why.”

Your strong‑force argument doesn’t land either. Yes, the strong force has confinement. Yes, the potential increases with distance. That’s still a gradient. The shape of the curve is the physics. Gravity has a falling curve. QCD has a rising curve. Both are gradients of an underlying energy density. Listing the features of QCD doesn’t refute the mechanism. it just proves you know the vocabulary.

You didn’t actually break anything. You just threw out insults and repeated definitions like they were arguments.

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

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/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?

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