system
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human
String theory question...

I was trying to figure out what string theory is so I wiki'ed it and the first sentence says "..attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity."

Does this mean that these two studies aren't fundamentally connected yet?  That there are currently contradictions between g.r. and q.m. ?  Why aren't they connected?  As it stands now are we most likely gonna find the magical bridge which makes all the equations and laws come together?  Or is there a chance we're totally off on all this physics stuff and someday we might have to start back from (sorta) square one someday?
gpt
In fact, general relativity and quantum mechanics, as they stand, are not compatible with each other.  (Special relativity and quantum mechanics merge quite nicely.)  Each theory within its own realm has survived very detailed tests; the arena in which we would need to combine them is on a distance scale of something like 10^-35 meters, which is extraordinarily tiny, and thus outside our experimental reach.  

What this indicates is not that we'll have to throw out GR and/or QM and start from scratch, but that when we get into a realm in which we need both, we will require a new theory that will swallow GR and QM alive, so to speak.

Just as general relativity did not cause us to throw out Newtonian gravity, but simply recognize that it was a limiting case of GR, or just as QM doesn't cause us to throw out classical physics, but simply to recognize that it is a limiting case of QM, we fully expect that the theory that combines gravity and quantum mechanics all under one roof will reproduce GR and QM in the respective limits corresponding to the realms in which they work.