Here is the history of quantum mechanics in one minute.
Before 1687, before Newton, we observed and described gravity, but we described falling objects and celestial motion as separate things. Newton’s brilliance was unifying gravity as a universal force governing both apples and planets. He gave us precise math that let us land on the Moon. These descriptions appeared so complete, we still call them laws today.
In 1916, Einstein came along and did the impossible, he broke Newton’s laws. He replaced Newton’s force with a property of space itself. Gravity is the curvature of space-time and everywhere all at once and changes do not reach across the universe instantly, they travel at the speed of light. If the Sun vanished, we would feel and see it about 8 minutes later.
In the 1920s, quantum mechanics emerged to describe small-scale stuff. We started confirming observations, but could not explain them well. In the 1930s, Heisenberg and Bohr noted inconsistencies between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The kicker? To this day, no one can reconcile these inconsistencies. The quantum mechanics era of physics is filled with speculation. How long will it take for us to explain it all well? Einstein tried and failed. He passed in 1955. Countless others tried too. Is the next Einstein even born yet?
I have no doubt we will unify our descriptions. Afterall, they are only descriptions, not reality itself. We are simply looking for a way to describe and predict all observations. I’m confident we can come up with a unified description. A model that may be more like an analogy, but it will describe and predict all our scientific observations.
