Don Lincoln: prediction

Transcript context

…Quick 10-second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go to lexfridman.com/sponsors. And now, dear friends, back to my conversation with Don Lincoln. We did a whirlwind tour of the history of physics and took a little tangent on this incredible discovery of the Higgs boson. But we didn’t go all the way yet. There’s this dream of the grand unified theory, the GUT, that is a step towards the TOE, theory of everything. So can we talk about the GUT first? So what’s entailed in the GUT? So the GUT is short for grand unified theory. We talked about that there were four known subatomic forces, the electromagnetic force, gravity, the strong force, and the weak force. And electroweak symmetry unification merged the weak force and electromagnetism into the electroweak force. So what GUT hopes to do is to merge the electroweak force and the strong force into one grand unified force. Now, that leaves gravity outside because gravity is seemingly fundamentally significantly different. Then subsequently, it is hoped that at a higher energy, we will be able to blend the theory of everything together with all of the known subatomic forces, the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, and then gravity. But so, as you say, GUT is sort of a way station along the way. That’s the goal, and at this point, I would have to say that I do not see a fast progress in the immediate future. I think we’re a ways away from that at this point. You mean on the gravity front?…

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