eli5- what is Einstein’s unified field theory?
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An idea that all fundamental forces can actually be expressed as different aspects of the same force, a single formula system, a “theory of everything”.
So far it wasn’t solved, we could unify 3 of the 4 forces, but the last one (gravity) is being very difficult and defies all attempts. A bunch of modern theorethical physics is working towards that goal, all the string theories, supergravity and M-theory try to solve that.
Whats stopping us is basically quantum physics, we found that to truly understand electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear force we have to view them through the lense of quantum theory wich says that everything can only change as discrete energy packages, and that each particle has wave properties. The math to do that simply fails when you try to apply it to gravity, we found no way to quantify it yet, so we have no clue what happens if quantum effects and gravity matter at the same time (for example inside black holes)
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