A Modest Proposal to Solve the Crisis of Modern Physics

Modern physics is in a state of deep crisis because the two new theories vs classical physics of General Relativity GR and Quantum Mechanics QM, are incompatible and so cannot be combined into a Unified Field Theory UFT of modern physics. Without a UFT the whole project of modern physics as fundamentally different from classical physics is shaky, because in some fundamental way it must be wrong. 

Einstein struggled for 40 years after presenting GR in 1915 into his death in 1955 to form a UFT including GR and electromagnetism/QM, but was never close to anything of value. Nobody was more successful. UFT is still only wishful thinking. 

GR is today viewed as a more fundamental theory of gravitation than the classical theory of Newtonian Mechanics NM, but for all practical purposes NM is still the theory being used and so with an amazing success. GR is reserved for certain imagined extreme cases such as merger of black holes believed to be outside NM. And NM is fully compatible with QM, which suggest the following resolution of the crisis of modern physics:

• Form a UFT = NM + QM which covers all cases of practical interest. 
• Keep GR as an esoteric variant of NM as a model of some very extreme cases.

This would mean a step back from the novelty brought by modern physics, as only a fashion with little lasting value. This would be a relief for both physicists, students of physics, users of physics, and laymen confused by GR. Moreover GR could be kept as a fetish of modernity as a source for imagination. 

A step back into classical physics can be made also for QM in the form of RealQM as a model of atomic physics formulated within classical physics. 

It is thus possible to form a UFT as NM + RealQM as a fully compatible model of both macro and micro-physics within a setting of classical continuum mechanics/physics. This would be an expansion of classical macroscopic physics into the microscopics of atoms using the mathematics of classical continuum mechanics in the form of partial differential equations of the same form for macro- and micro-physics in terms of fields as functions of 3d Euclidean space variables plus a time variable. 

The conceptual form of such UFT would be the same on all scales, which would open to an understanding of micro-physics in terms familiar from macro-physics. It would be a post-modern physics as a renaissance of classical continuum physics with now the continuum covering all scales for which purpose it is ideally suited. This form of UFT would be computable since the scaling would be polynomial in resolution in space and time, and not exponential as standard QM. 

It would be interesting to hear what a professional modern physicist could have to say about the possibility of a UFT = NM + QM or more precisely UFT = NM + RealQM. Here is what chatGPT has to say:

• NM + QM covers all practical cases, so it functions like a UFT for the real-world problems most people deal with.

We know that there can be many different mathematical models of physical phenomena, like NM and GR for gravitation, and the usefulness may be what determines the choice of one model as the more fundamental. For example, it is possible to choose the Earth to be the center of the Universe around which everything evolves in circles upon circles like in a very complicated Aristotle model, but it has not shown to be very useful and so has been replaced by non-geocentric NM as being more fundamental because it has shown to be more useful. 

Thus fundamental can connect to usefulness. It is thus possible to view NM as a fundamental model covering everything which is not extreme, with GR as an extension into the extreme. Modern physics has concentrated on the extreme to single out from classical physics of the non-extreme. Modern physics thus  offers to make the extreme into new normality (GR for black holes), while post-modern physics could offer to capture new normality (QM) into classical normality.