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Warp wrote:
> Is it just a question of coolness, or is there some practical issue
> in play here?
I think it's more a combination of two things:
One - that the two theories are incompatible. Relativity requires
continuous functions. Quantum disallows continuous functions. If space
(including gravity etc) is smoothly continuous at the smallest levels,
quantum theory would give the wrong answer. If space were discontinuous
at the smallest levels, relativity would give the wrong answers, even at
the big sizes. So, basically, people *know* that one of them is "wrong",
even though both are giving the right answers to the precision with
which they can be measured. And QED at least has been measured and
matches predictions to something like 15 decimal places, which is an
incredible precision.
Two - figuring out the combination might lead to all kinds of new
discoveries. Just as an example, in 1890 or so, people thought they knew
all about how light worked, and so on, except for one or two little
anomalies, like black-body radiation and the photoelectric effect at low
light levels. It took a whole new shift to quantum calculations to be
able to understand those effects. That resulted in lasers,
semiconductors, understanding genetics at the individual protein level,
and so on.
If you can unify the operations of gravity and quantum interactions, you
might be able to make electrogravitics, anti-gravity, gravity-powered
light bulbs, stuff like that. Who knows? If you could get quantum
miracles(*) to work reliably over space-like distances, you could get
teleportation, time travel, stuff like that.
Plus, it might explain *why* quantum stuff is random, and whether
there's any underlying unmeasurable rules, and so on, even if you can't
manipulate it.
(*) AKA very low probability quantum teleportation events, like in
tunnel diodes only long distances.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Remember the good old days, when we
used to complain about cryptography
being export-restricted?
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