this is vaguely related to the string theory related post from a day or two ago, it's all bazinga science folks TL;DW string theory is a big thing because people that read pop science really liked it and it took a long time for physicists to come out in force and say "this is untestable garbage"
fr tho which ones more "acceptable" theory. i have watched pop sci videos and really didn't understand it even after like five times, its so confusing.
i think its basically just standard model plus giant question mark in place of gravity
Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model are pretty rock solid, same with General Relativity. The issues come up with the fact that they're mutually irreconcilable. There's other theories for quantum gravity but, no luck so far there (e.g. loop quantum gravity). There's other interpretations of quantum mechanics than the standard Copenhagen one, like pilot wave theory but it doesn't comport with what we know about Quantum Field Theory (which has tons of evidence).
Otherwise, it's one of the big open problems in physics.
People want to unify gravity and the 3 other forces that are more important on the atomic scale because combining forces is how we used to make really big leaps. Like electricity and magnetism turning out to just be electromagnetism - and then later the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism were unified into a single force called the electroweak force that spontaneously seperates at ""low"" temperatures. It's the big hope that everything can be unified into one big theory of everything, but tbh it could just be that they aren't able to be unified and it just isn't how the universe works.
hegel in shambles if true
wow, pop science is really behind. I've never heard of this before. Come to think of it, I don't really know anything about the strong or weak forces
the standard model is wildly successful, it predicted a boatload of particles which physicists then knew to look for and find; conversely string theory is not really conducive to this kind of experiment-setup and has yet to produce major experimental results