ORALS

One of the most important objectives of science is to find a unified theory of physics. At present, the most basic level is occupied by the Standard Model, finalised about 1973, which describes 4 fundamental forces and 12 fundamental particles (6 quarks, each in 3 colours, and 6 leptons). A suggested route towards unity, proposed almost as early as the Standard Model, was the idea of Grand Unification, in which the three gauge forces (electric, strong and weak) approach each other at higher energies, finally unifying at an energy close to the Planck mass, a scale associated with the fourth force, gravity. Though earlier indications looked promising, problems quickly arose and solutions have not been found. There is, however, another option which has been little explored but which has not been ruled out by experiment. That is, to use the original coloured quark theory of 1965, an idea which has acquired new meaning with the 1983 discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect. When this is used as the source of the electroweak combination, the result appears to be exact unification at the Planck mass, without further assumptions.