We basically figured out QM and GR incompatibility
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.