system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What exactly is the problem preventing us from having a grand unified field theory?

Everyone knows how QM and GR are "not compatible", but what would it take to solve the problem and what implications would the discovery of the graviton have on quantum gravity? Suppose we ignore frameworks such as M theory, is a working model mathematically impossible to build or is a lack of data the issue here?
gpt
Sadly, just observing a graviton wouldn't tell you much about quantum gravity. Gravitons can show up in calculations done in the "semi-classical limit," where gravity is very weak. You just include quantum mechanics in the usual way, and out pop gravitons. Quantum gravity would become important when gravity is extremely *strong*, like near the center of a black hole.

To solve the problem, we need some way of experimentally probing physics at extremely high energies - or, alternatively, extremely short distances, strong gravitational fields, etc. These energies almost certainly can't be produced in a lab on Earth. So we'll either have to look to the skies (these energies did exist in the very early Universe), figure out new ways to do experiments on Earth, or else find some other way to be very, very clever.