Talk:Unified field theory

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Archive 1

Introduction section

I would like to suggest that the introduction section be referenced by a known paper or physics book, as some may catch this in the future, and say it is not referenced, thus inaccurate, even though it is.--Craxd (talk) 20:50, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am at a loss to explain the number of physics (and other) pages on Wikipedia using the most abstract possible mathematical formalism to explain simple concepts. Should not the information be be as useful as possible to a general audience? A field: a set of one or more functions of the coordinates that give the value of a physical quantity (gravity, electricity, magnetism, etc.) at those locations. Done. A scalar field requires only a single function, while a vector field ... tensor field ... . Done. But "A global event under the universal topology", "field is incepted", "opponent manifold"? I see this over and over again. I don't know that this helps people understand, please tell me I'm wrong.Bscip (talk) 14:41, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Clean up

Somebody should clean up the last few paragraphs under "Current Status". There's nonsense there about prayers and pyramids being built overnight... and of course absolutely no references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.37.152.229 (talk) 09:08, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --mfb (talk) 14:39, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (January 2018)

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Clean up section Fields in Introduction?

The section Fields in the Introduction is completely missing references and hyperlinks.It actually stands out like that.

It uses a number of terms like Global Events, Universal Topology, and Operational Environment that I can't find elsewhere. And it seems to be written by a single author with only a numeric IP address.

Is this section valid? Can perhaps someone who knows more about the topic clean it up? Klaas van Aarsen (talk) 21:59, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lede ends with mysterious sentence

"The goal of a unified field theory has led to a great deal of progress for future theoretical physics, and progress continues." It's already marked "cit. needed", but over and above that, it mixes past, present and future in a confusing way. "Has led", present perfect, says progress has occurred in the recent past and its results persist: this would be fine, but how can it be true "for future theoretical physics"? I suggest dropping the sentence. Wegesrand (talk) 12:19, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Kind of a conceptual mess

It's not clear to me that it makes sense to have this article and classical unified field theories be separate. The categories I find natural are:

Einstein's attempted unified field theory and closely-related attempts like KK theory (unifying gravity, EM, and sometimes fermions without quantum mechanics). Multiple goals including a more elegant/"unified" replacement for GR+Maxwell (e.g. KK) and a non-quantum explanation of particles, spin, etc. I guess this is "classical unified field theory" per the current state of things.
Electromagnetic unification and Grand Unified Theories. Projects within QFT (mid-20th c. onwards) to unify inconsistent (weak nuclear) or disparate (Standard Model) forces into a simple Lie group or something equally appealing. Gravity is not involved.
Theory of Everything / quantum gravity. Ongoing attempts to construct *any* consistent (usually quantum) theory from GR and the Standard Model, field theory or not.

Do these all belong to a bigger category? Is "unified field theory" the best name for it?

Anyway, I did some cleanup (the lede had some confusing/nonsense phrases unsupported by the cited sources) for now. Patallurgist (talk) 04:33, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Standard Model of Elementary Particles and Gravity" image

I removed this image because:

"The Standard Model" is a theory of the three non-gravitational forces.
You could, maybe, call this the "Standard Model of Elementary Particles" but that is not a common phrase and is a bit confusing.
The SM definitely doesn't include the graviton.
There is no "Standard Model" including gravity.

Possibly the intent was for the image to be parsed as "(Standard Model of Elementary Particles) and (Gravity)" but this is not how anyone is going to parse it. As is, it just gives the impression that the SM includes a graviton. The same image with a different title might be okay but, let's be real, any theory with gravitons *and* SM particles is not *only* going to have those. Patallurgist (talk) 04:47, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]