Quote:
Originally Posted by gzhpcu
Why does it sound mystical? When I say "what things really are", I mean what is the reality of the microworld? QM has its limitations, does not include gravity, is incompatible with GR at extreme conditions, like black holes or the Planck length.
String theory, which is totally unproven to date, postulates vibrating 1 dimensional strings for the elementary particles. M theory brings n dimensional branes into play.
These are all different mathematical models of the microworld.
But what is actually present down there? (I know we will probably never be able to know...)
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QM is is incompatible with GR under all conditions -- one theory is stochastic and one is deterministic. Fortunately each provides good approximations until you have the extreme conditions in which quantum effects and gravitational effects are important simultaneously.
String theory is not just totally unproven, it has been superseded, by M theory. M theory is supposed to be, based on a 1995 talk and paper by Witten, a unification of what were 5 distinct competing string theories, but so far as I know the "dictionary" providing the M theory translation among those theories remains conjectural. So one of the remaining questions of M theory is "what is it ?".
But the question of "what is it?", has not been answered at much higher levels. What is an electron ? There is a very good theory for describing the behavior of phenomena involving electrons -- quantum electrodynamics. But it has some pecularities, and the description of the electron itself is a bit fuzzy -- as reflected for instance in the predicted infinite self-energy of the electron.