In response to Mike Kramer's posting:

>>Not even sure I can explain away my last >>sentence, I was just hoping that some bright >>spark could change the maths of gravity, and
>>prehaps bring in anti-matter,(or dark matter as >>its called) into the unified-field equations.

Some bright spark maybe, but unfortunately, it hasn't happened yet.
At the classical level, you are bound by the Einstein equations, which work, and have been tested.
And the new dark matter evidence can be incorporated into Einstein's equations, but unfortunately that doesn't help unification.

>>'Cause I hate these curled-up membrane theorys
>>(dont understand 'em either).
>>They are only employed to be able to unite >>gravity with the quantum theory of particle spin.

Not always. I personally am not happy withthem either, at the moment, because they are opaque to any experimental probing (again, at least for the time being). But who knows,in time to come they will become more transparent to probing.

>>So why not change the maths?
>>Since the maths for unification dos'nt work out, >>then prehaps there is more to gravitational force >>than Newton realised?

Sure there may be.That is what everybody is hoping.But there is no experimental evidence for that yet. You will be surprised how very little experimental work is done for testing ideas in theoretical gravitation. Of course, there is the mountain of data comming from astrophysics, but astrophysicist are not exactly theoretical physicists, and unfortunately, very few theorists "bother" with experiment.

>>Newtons Law says-Two bodies are attracted to each >>other in direct proportion the the product of >>their two masses, and inversely proportional to >>the square of the distance between them.
>>That works fine, for our immediate universe. But >>as far as I am aware it does not work for the >>macro universe of atomic particles.

I am afraid I don't quite understand what you are trying to say.What exactly do you mean by the macro universe of atomic particles?And why is it that Newton's law doesn't work?Could you elaborate more?

>>So we give different particles (of the same mass?)
>>different spins, which we measure in quantum >>units, like 1/2, 3/2, 5/2 and so on, and invoke >>electrostatic forces to account for our 3 >>dimensions of space time (should I say 4) to kid >>ourselves it works.

Again, I am confused. Can you be more explicit?Because the electrostatic forces do not account, as you say, for the dimensions of spacetime. And spin is a measurable quantity, and has normal units of angular momentum if you work in the international system of units (i.e. not (h/2pi)=c=1).So please elaborate more.

>>Anyway, there is no mention of the gravitational >>interaction of two particles. (as far as I am >>aware) Why?

Because of two major reasons.First, the electromagnetic interaction is much stronger than the gravitational interaction, by orders of magnitude.So excluding gravitational effect is a natural approximation.And second, because the gravitational field in 4 dimensions cannot be quantized yet. There is no quantum theory of gravitation in 4 dimensions (and I am willingly excluding string models in 5,11, 26 or whatever other number of dimensions).

>>Is it because two, almost massless particles >>cannot possibly exude gravity, "relative to each >>other?"

Nope.There are other particles (if you refer to neutrinos), having a measurable mass, which generate gravitational fields. The reasons still remain the above.

>>We might not detect their infinitessimal gravity >>interactions, but that dos'nt mean its not there?

No, it's there.But it is just negligible compared to their electromagnetic interaction.

>>Also, prehaps all that missing mass, is >>quantitized as a part charge (attached) to the >>electron?

Again I am not sure what you mean.As strange as it seems, the charge is not quantized yet.In the sense that experimentally, we know it is quantized,but theoretically, there is no theory that explains in any way the electric charge discretness, why the charge of the electron is what it is and not else, why quarks are the only "subcharges" with that particular fraction of the electron charge,etc.

>>Anythings better than invoking eleven dimensions >>of Space time.

In a way, I agree with you.At least until we can "probe" the exotic dimensions of string theories.