Consequences of unifying Gravity with the other forces?

[Ghost117]

When humanity unified electricity and magnetism, that ushered in a massive technological evolution for our species, perhaps only equalled by the advent of QM and modern electronics. Is it even possible to imagine the consequences of unifying Gravity with EM?

Is it possible that we will actually be able to 'control' gravity using eletromagnetism? Or perhaps generate electricity using gravitation? Or will it be more like Electro-Weak Theory and Chromodynamics, i.e. without the cascading technological consequences for our species?

 

[friend]

The issue will be can we generate the energy need to significantly change the local gravitational field. I think we will still be talking about very massive objects. This is simply due to the fact that gravity is 40 orders of magnitude weaker than the other forces.

 

[Ghost117]

hmm, good point

 

[nikkkom]

When humanity unified electricity and magnetism, that ushered in a massive technological evolution for our species, perhaps only equalled by the advent of QM and modern electronics. Is it even possible to imagine the consequences of unifying Gravity with EM?

Is it possible that we will actually be able to 'control' gravity using eletromagnetism? Or perhaps generate electricity using gravitation? Or will it be more like Electro-Weak Theory and Chromodynamics, i.e. without the cascading technological consequences for our species?

It's impossible to say until the theory is developed.

Lately, new developments in particle physics did not find immediate technological use - the last "big one" was nuclear weapons and reactors, and it was ~70 years ago.

An example of a thing which came close but did not play out is muon catalyzed fusion - alas, muon lifetime is just a few percent too short for that to work!

However, maybe that's a good thing. Considering the nature of things particle physics researches today, I definitely do not want them to find things which allow creation of e.g. chain proton decay bombs! So far we live on only one planet, and I prefer to keep it intact! :)