So when do you think we'll figure out that unifying force of all things?

Question

I mean, why haven't we figured out what gravity is yet?

Answer 1

Because we don't know what carries gravity.

It could take years, decades or centuries. It depends on the nature of gravity. We haven't discovered any particle like gravitons yet, so we don't know what carries or conducts gravity. We know a photon carries light, and it can travel through a vacuum. Sound is a vibration that is conducted so it can't travel through a vacuum. This means gravity is probably some sort of particle.

One theory is that gravity could be generated in another dimension. According to Einstein there are at least 11 dimensions, according to string theory there are at least 20. Gravity is so weak that a minor thing like a magnet can defeat it. But, it travels throughout the entire universe.

Light, photons are the fastest moving particles and some of the lightest, but gravity can change the path of light, as can a mirror or lens.

We don't know how fast gravity travels, what makes it, or even if it can be made artificially. The only way we have to detect it is to watch something fall and measure the speed or to determine an object's mass. The mass of an object determines how much it weighs and that is a function of gravity, but the exact relationship is unknown and something we can't figure out. We need a fundamental advance in physics to understand gravity, and predicting that is like predicting when the lottery number when come up.

Gravity is the least understood force in the universe, yet the most powerful. Nothing blocks it, nothing reduces it or changes it, or bends it or anything. How can it be such a powerful force yet so weak that I can defy it by jumping? Answer that question and you will have made a great leap to understanding what gravity is.

Currently our understanding of gravity hasn’t changed any since Isaac Newton invented physics. Galileo knew it and measured it by rolling objects down an inclined plane (which was genius), but he didn’t know what he was measuring, just that it was an attractive force.

We knew light was transmitted in beams since cavemen discovered fire, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that we understood it was a stream of photons. We really don’t know any more about gravity than the cavemen. Isaac Newton gave us the formula F=ma, and we have measured that under one earth gravity objects fall at the same rate of 9.8 m/s or 32 ft/sec. We know that air resistance can make a feather fall slower than a hammer, but Apollo astronauts dropped both on the moon and in a vacuum they fell at the same rate.

Gravity is maddening, we don’t have a handle on it and until we do then we can’t understand it. The new super collider being built in Europe will let us discover smaller and smaller fundamental particles; it may be that we will find smaller subatomic particles. So far the smallest particles we know of are leptons, electrons, and quarks. Could a quark be composed of “glueons” and could the mythical “glueons” be composed of “gravitons?” Both particles are theoretical and imaginary and may not even exist, but then the Ancient Greeks thought the atom was indivisible, and the fundamental particle of creation. We didn’t know we could split it until the middle of the 20th century. That took thousands of years, it might take thousands of more years to discover what gravity is or we might discover it in the next ten years. It is like the discovery of fire, it took a caveman genius to realize that he or she could use it, and that they could create it and even feed it. But we didn’t figure out a light substitute for flame until Thomas Edison did it. Until that point light was always created by some sort of flame. Electricity was a minor curiosity known since the time before the Revolutionary War, but it took a determined genius like Edison to put electricity together with a glowing substance to create the light bulb. He did it by trial and error. Thomas Edison did not really discover the light bulb as much as he discovered over 100 ways not to make a light bulb. The company he formed has improved the light bulb and we have invented new types, but we owe it all to the genius Edison. Predicting when another genius will be born and take an interest in the field is impossible to predict. They could be reading this post right now, but I suspect we are not that lucky and it is going to take at least a century before we truly understand gravity.

Einstein’s Unified Field Theory was his last work. He proved that electricity and magnetism are two versions of the same force; the electron. After his death others proved that the strong and weak nuclear forces (which bind atoms together and form chemical bonds) are all expressions of electricity as well. We have not unified electricity and gravity yet. Einstein has a great record though and every one of his major theories has been proven to be true. So maybe we need to look at the electron more to figure out what gravity is. The place to start is the super collider in Europe. That is where the next great break through could take place.

Answer 2

Something fundamental about gravity/general relativity, and unified quantum mechanics, seems to make them logically and mathematically incompatible. Some theoretical physicists think that it may have something to do with the concept of time, and how the each theory uses it.

While a unifying "force"(whose behavior would explain the behavior of all other fundamental "forces",) probably exists, It may not be possible to describe such a force; at least not with a *finite* number of statements......

Answer 3

It will be a long time. We have a fairly good idea about gravity; see General Relativity. But the discovery of dark energy and dark matter has further complicated an already outrageously complicated situation; it is difficult to construct a theory which includes phenomena about which you know nothing except that they exist.

Answer 4

Obviously, no one knows, especially since we don't even know if the forces are indeed unified. Gravitation may be completely unrelated to the others.

Answer 5

I don't buy dark energy and matter. I think that they are fudgesicles to explain disparities between theory and observation.