Question how close are we from finding a theory of everything?

Not with THOSE four forces. But with these four forces it already has been done, one hundred years ago. The four detected forces are the electric, the magnetic, gravity and the life force. The life force is only located here on earth and considered to be a super nature force. As such, it is not included in the theory of everything, because that theory only pertains to physicality forces. So, uniting the E and the M with gravity is the theory of everything. This is the Classic Theory of everything. It is the zenith of classical physics. It starts with Parson's Magneton(1915,1917). It uses a physical model, for mass, and has not been taught in our modern schools. This model uses absolute time and length. An empty and square space. Only one physical entity in existence. Randomness and probability is not permitted. And light, is not a wave, and has a conditional velocity, just like all other velocities have.

And so, for some, physicality is no longer a mystery. The basic tenant is Simplicity, and the acceptance that some questions can not be answered with our tools and intellect.

And never will be.
 
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The closest anyone has come to unifying everything has been Edward Witten's M Theory.

In the early 1990s, string theory was in a bit of a theoretical pickle. For decades, theorists had poured their hearts and minds into the idea that the fundamental building blocks of reality are tiny, vibrating strings. This was a potentially revolutionary idea, capable of uniting all the forces of nature and all the building blocks of matter into a single, harmonious picture.

The pickle, however, was that there were five independent candidates for string theory, each one looking radically different than the others. Which one was right?

The five different string theories had a few commonalities. For one, they all involved strings. They also all required our universe to have 10 total dimensions: the usual three spatial dimensions, one for time and six more compact dimensions that are tiny and curled up on themselves at submicroscopic scales.

And in all the theories, the ways strings vibrate give rise to the richness of our physical world, from the forces of nature to the building blocks of matter to physical constants themselves. But when it comes to physical theories, details matter, and the five competing string models differed in the details. Some theories only had closed loops of strings, while others allowed open, wiggling strings. Some theories only allowed vibrations to travel in one direction on the strings, while others allowed both. And some theories were combinations of other theories.

For reference, in case you're curious, the names of the five string theories are: Type 1, Type IIA, Type IIB, SO(32) heterotic, and E8xE8 heterotic.

They obviously couldn't all be correct descriptions of nature, but which one was the "real" string theory, and which were the phonies? The problem was (and still is today) that string theory isn't complete — there's no such thing as the final equations of string theory, something that could be printed on a t-shirt, that describes the theory in the same way that we have the Einstein's theories or the Maxwell equations for electromagnetism.

We only have approximations that we hope — but can't prove — are close to the actual theory. And so the five string theories represent five different approximations, with no way of being able to decide which one is best.

And then 1995 happened, when prominent theoretical physicist Edward Witten gave a talk at the annual string theory conference. In the talk, he offered a radical suggestion: perhaps the five string theories weren't so different after all.

It turns out that there are interesting connections, called dualities or symmetries, among the five theories. For example, something we don't know about strings is how strongly they like to interact. But if you take, say, Type 1 string theory and ramp up its interaction strength, you end up with the weaker version of SO(32) heterotic.

And there's more. Sometimes strings can wind around a tiny, curled-up dimension a certain number of times with a certain momentum, but the duality of that has the number of windings and the momentum flipped. Type IIA and Type IIB string theories are related by such a duality.

These dualities suggest that the five string theories are all related, somehow, and are probing something much, much deeper. That deeper thing can be guessed at by following all the dualities. By attempting both dualities on the five string theories, sometimes you get links to one of the other five, and sometimes you get dualities to somewhere new.

What is that "somewhere new"? Edward Witten suggested calling it "M-theory", with the "m" open to interpretation (e.g., "mother," "mystery" or "membrane") until such time as we actually understand it.

M-theory is like an uber-theory of strings, showing how all five string theories are really just small corners of a much larger, and much more mysterious, theory. We used to think of the five string theories as separate planets, with our theoretical and mathematical explorations confined to little islands on those planets. But M-theory revealed that all those islands actually shared the same, much larger, planet all along.

One curious feature of M-theory (the little that we know about it, that it) is that what we consider string theory appears to be just a low-energy approximation of the real deal. And that real deal requires not 10 but 11 dimensions in our universe.

What's more, the fundamental object of reality is no longer the string but the d-brane. "Brane" is just a fancy word for multidimensional vibrating things, with the letter "d" signifying the dimension, giving us everything from 1-branes (strings) to 2-branes (sheets) to 3-branes (blobs) and more.

For the most part, these branes lie low and mostly just act like strings, with the eleventh dimension not playing much of a role in the grand cosmic symphony.

Beyond that, there isn't much known about M-theory. String theorists usually work in one of the five usual regimes, since they've been so well studied for decades, and the additional dimension and the introduction of branes makes the already-fiendish mathematics of string theory that much worse. Still, theorists continue to probe at the edges, hoping to someday give a full name to the "m" in M-theory.

See: https://www.math.toronto.edu/mgualt/Morse Theory/FloerWittenMorse.pdf

See: https://www.space.com/string-theory-11-dimensions-universe.html

Witten's original paper on eleven dimensions, 'HETEROTIC AND TYPE I STRING DYNAMICS FROM ELEVEN DIMENSIONS' by Petr Horava and Edward Witten may be found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9510209.pdf

Excerpt below:

"We also wish to further explore the relation of string theory to eleven dimensions. The strong coupling behavior of the Type IIA theory in ten dimensions has turned out to involve eleven-dimensional supergravity on R10 × S1, where the radius of the S1 grows with the string coupling. An eleven-dimensional interpretation of string theory has had other applications, some of them explained in 3-5. The most ambitious interpretation of these facts is to suppose that there really is a yet-unknown eleven-dimensional quantum theory that underlies many aspects of string theory, and we will formulate this paper as an exploration of that theory. (But our arguments, like some of the others that have been given, could be compatible with interpreting the eleven-dimensional world as a limiting description of the low energy excitations for strong coupling, a view taken in [1].) As it has been proposed that the eleven-dimensional theory is a supermembrane theory but there are some reasons to doubt that interpretation,1 we will non-committally call it the M-theory, leaving to the future the relation of M to membranes."

See: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9510209.pdf

* Perturbation theory - In quantum mechanics, perturbation theory is a set of approximation schemes directly related to mathematical perturbation for describing a complicated quantum system in terms of a simpler one. The idea is to start with a simple system for which a mathematical solution is known, and add an additional "perturbing" Hamiltonian** representing a weak disturbance to the system. If the disturbance is not too large, the various physical quantities associated with the perturbed system (e.g. its energy levels and eigenstates) can be expressed as "corrections" to those of the simple system. These corrections, being small compared to the size of the quantities themselves, can be calculated using approximate methods such as asymptotic series. The complicated system can therefore be studied based on knowledge of the simpler one. In effect, it is describing a complicated unsolved system using a simple, solvable system.

See: https://tok.fandom.com/wiki/Perturbation_theory_(quantum_mechanics)

** Hamiltonian function - also called Hamiltonian, mathematical definition introduced in 1835 by Sir William Rowan Hamilton to express the rate of change in time of the condition of a dynamic physical system—one regarded as a set of moving particles. The Hamiltonian of a system specifies its total energy—i.e., the sum of its kinetic energy (that of motion) and its potential energy (that of position)—in terms of the Lagrangian function derived in earlier studies of dynamics and of the position and momentum of each of the particles.

The Hamiltonian function originated as a generalized statement of the tendency of physical systems to undergo changes only by those processes that either minimize or maximize the abstract quantity called action. This principle is traceable to Euclid and the Aristotelian philosophers.

See: https://www.britannica.com/science/Hamiltonian-function

Given this new phase 11-dimensional phase of string theory, and the various dualities between string theories, we're led to the very exciting prospect that there is only a single fundamental underlying theory -- M-theory. The five superstring theories and 11-D Supergravity can be thought of as classical limits. Previously, mathematicians and scientists have tried to deduce their quantum theories by expanding around these classical limits using perturbation theory. Perturbation theory* has its limits, so by studying non-perturbative aspects of these theories using dualities, supersymmetry, etc. we've come to the conclusion that there only seems to be one unique quantum theory behind it all. This uniqueness is very appealing, and much of the work in this field will be directed toward formulating the full quantum M-theory.

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Hartmann352
 
We can unify the four fundamental forces of nature. We have already unified gravity and electromagnetism in a way that justifies unification as nothing more than a proposal for further research: The Higgs mechanism shows that the two forces are really just different aspects of one single force, namely electroweak.

What is interesting about this unification of gravity and electromagnetism is that it shows us how to unify two seemingly very different forces of nature. Now, we still have a long way to go before we can fully unify the other fundamental forces: Strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and perhaps even quantum mechanics itself.

The first step toward the unification of the strong nuclear force is to find a suitable candidate for its quantum field theory. The standard model contains three such fields: A Higgs field, an electron field and a quark field. However, all these fields are carried by massless particles (the photon carries the electrodynamic charge, which is equivalent to light), so they cannot be truly fundamental.

The fundamental particles of nature are the quarks and leptons. The strong nuclear force is carried by gluons, which are massless. Therefore we need an additional quantum field to carry this force.

The GUTs of the 1970s postulated two additional fields, called X and Y. The 'X' field carried a new charge (hypercharge), which was supposed to be the fourth fundamental force. However, these models were shown to be inconsistent with the electroweak theory.

Therefore, a candidate for the fundamental strong field is the axion, which was first proposed in 1977. The axion has been ruled out by experiments on solar neutrinos and superfluid helium as well as some astrophysics observations.

So, the unification of forces is a contentious area. There are several 'levels' of unification that have been banded about in literature:

Level one is the unification of strong and electroweak forces. This has been accomplished by the discovery that both are manifestations of a single electroweak force.

Level two is the unification of electroweak and gravitational forces. This has not yet been accomplished, but Steven Weinberg has proposed that it may be possible to derive a theory of quantum gravity from an extended version of the standard model.

Level three is the unification of all four forces.

There is no evidence that such a unification exists, but there are some attempts to construct theories which unify the four fundamental forces.

Level four is the unification of a single force with itself. This has not yet been accomplished and may be impossible.

Gravity remains the hardest of the forces to unify because a convincing model for quantum gravity has yet to emerge. In technical terms, the obstacle is that the quantum field theories for the electroweak and strong nuclear forces allow the use of mathematical techniques called renormalization to avoid problematic infinities arising in the calculations. The field equations for gravity are not renormalizable.

Currently, many physicists are developing ambitious concepts often called theories of everything, which would not only unify gravity with the other forces but would also, ideally, explain why fundamental physical constants (such as the gravitational constant, G) have the values they do. Among the approaches considered promising by many physicists is a class of ideas often labeled string theory, in which the ultimate building blocks of matter are not particles but rather extremely tiny one-dimensional strings highly coiled through more than four dimensions. (Some well-developed concepts related to string theory go by the name of superstring theory and M-theory.) A criticism of the string theory approach, however, is that experimental observations may never be able to distinguish which of a nearly infinite number of variations on it is correct.

See also: M-theory; Quantum gravitation; Strong-interaction theories based on gauge/gravity duality; Superstring theory; Supersymmetry

Loop quantum gravity is a rival to string theory with many advocates: It proposes that space itself has a discrete granularity on the order of the Planck scale (about 10–35 meters). Formulations of loop quantum gravity still have difficulty predicting how smooth space emerges at larger scales, however. Moreover, even if loop quantum gravity does reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics, it would not directly help with the unification of gravity, electromagnetism, and the two nuclear interactions as manifestations of a single underlying force.

The rules governing favored classical variables and their sets of favored quantum operators lie in three separate divisions, namely, canonical variables, spin variables, and affine variables.

The affine quantization approach that has been chosen to deal with gravity, will experience a unification unlike any other approach toward classical and quantum gravity. The classical formulation of gravity that is chosen considers a spacial slice that undergoes a temporal advancement. A procedure such at that, known as the ADM approach, consists of essential variables as well as additional variables that need to be eliminated through the presence of various constraints. While constraints are handled well enough classically, quantizations involving constraints may cause some problems. One such constraint is that the Hamiltonian density should vanish, and as a quantum constraint that the Hamiltonian operator is limited to Hilbert space vectors that have a subset of eigenvalues that vanish. To do so properly, it is necessary that the Hamiltonian operator is well defined prior to restricting its physically important spectrum. Canonical quantization efforts to quantize gravity have encountered difficulties in ensuring a proper operator, and, fortunately, affine quantization is successful in this issue.

Preserving the commutation relation, can be next extended from the initial few observables describing the Lie algebra to a larger algebra of observables and the universal enveloping algebra. It is constructed out of the Lie algebra of the Galileo group. It includes for instance polynomials of observables.

Summing up: there are some fundamental symmetry groups in common with classical and quantum physics. These groups are the building blocks used to construct the grand unified theory, since they are deeply connected to basic notions like the concept of reference frame and basic physical principles as the relativity principle. The existence of these groups creates a link between classical and quantum physics. This link passes through the commutator structure of (projective) representations of the group which is (projective) isomorphic to the Lie algebra of the symmetry group. Quantization procedures just reflect this fundamental relationship. Next the two theories evolve along disjoint directions and, for instance, in quantum theory, further symmetry groups arise with no classical corresponding.

See: https://www.accessscience.com/content/unification-theories-and-a-theory-of-everything/BR0814141

See: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=105887

See: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/573908/what-is-the-secret-behind-canonical-quantization

The Schwarzschild solution to the Nexus graviton field
by Stuart Marongwe

Dr. Marongwe has offered a number of ideas on the graviton and its quantization. Look into his work. He has a number of ideas

"The Schwarzschild approach is applied to solve the field equations describing a Nexus graviton field. The resulting solutions are free from singularities which have been a problem in general relativity since its inception."

See: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219887815500425

A regulating particle for the force of gravity, named a ‘graviton’; comparable to photons, which regulate the electromagnetic force, gluons regulating the strong nuclear force, and W and Z bosons regulating the weak force. Gravitons have been theoretically predicted for some time, but are also believed to be incredibly difficult to detect.

The curvature of spacetime can be compared to the flow of heat in thermodynamic systems; a behavior called ‘Canonical Quantisation’.

In addition, equations of galactic and cosmic evolution are derived from first principles. The energy states of spacetime can be described in terms of spacetime lattice vibrations; high-energy spacetime elements have shorter intervals compared to low-energy elements.

If this description is correct, several other mysteries could also unravel, including the question of why the force of gravity is so much weaker than the electromagnetic, strong, and weak nuclear forces. Gravity is a phenomenon that appears at low energy levels or quantum vibrations of spacetime. The weakness of gravity may be due to the small value of the cosmological constant.
Hartmann352