No graviton, just bent space?

Question

I often hear of the search for a graviton
but as I understand it gravity is not an energy particle per se
or even sub particle at all. (A unified field maybe?).
As I underastand it any mass has some form of connection to all mass in the universe.
What affects a mass on the spiral arm has an effect on a mass on the other side of the galaxy it might be almost infinitessimily small but it is there. So if gravity does not work on any particle exchange theory but functions as it does because it's mass impacts on the omnipresent space-time soup (I happen to think this soup as a Higgs boson field type or similar) why is there still a search for a graviton as in particle?

Answer 1

If the graviton exists, then it is a boson (a gauge boson -- spelling of gage may vary): a particle tht mediates a force between two others.

Problem : on the particle level, gravity is so weak "there is little hope of detecting single gravitons experimentally in the foreseeable future."

However, the graviton was predicted by some theories (e.g., String theory) and, if it exists, would solve the "smoothness" of Einstein's general relativity: at the particle level, the universe behaves in a discrete fashion -- i.e., by quantum jumps, not in a smooth manner (for example, there are minimum quantities of energy that can go into certain events; if you do not have that level of energy, then the event cannot occur).

Answer 2

The problem you are having is confusing a model to the thing being modeled. All of our formulas and visual models are approximation tools which give us answers that happen to be close to what we are able to measure. Early last century there were similar problems related to the duality of light having attributes that seemed to be like a particle while also having other attributes that seemed like a wave. Any model we build to help us try to predict what something is going to be like in the future or was like in the past is only an approximation of the real thing. pushing any analogy to the extreme will make that analogy produce inaccurate predictions.

Answer 3

Because if we can disprove or prove either the unified field theory or the graviton theory, it will help us understand the idea of gravity better.

Answer 4

Simple answer, because we are not sure of either hypothesis yet. So we search for evidence of both.