It’s a major blow to Einstein’s theory of gravity and a step towards solving one of the greatest puzzles.

Physicists from the Aalto University in Finland have introduced a groundbreaking concept that could change everything we thought we knew about gravity and the universe.

Their work, published in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics, suggests that Albert Einstein’s famous theory of gravity might not be the full story — and they believe they’re closer than ever to solving one of science’s biggest mysteries: uniting gravity with quantum physics.

For over a century, physicists have struggled with a big issue: two of the most important theories in physics don’t work well together. Quantum mechanics explains how tiny particles behave, while general relativity (Einstein’s theory) describes gravity as the bending of space-time caused by mass. Both work great on their own — but when scientists try to combine them, the math falls apart.

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Many past attempts to solve this — like string theory — have introduced complex ideas, such as extra dimensions or unknown particles.

These ideas are interesting but haven’t been proven with real-world experiments.

The new theory takes a simpler route. Instead of imagining extra dimensions or unknown forces, Mikko Partanen and Jukka Tulkki, the authors of the new study, suggest that gravity works through four connected fields — similar to how other forces in nature (like electromagnetism) already work in quantum physics.

This new model, called "unified gravity," behaves like Einstein’s gravity on large scales but also fits neatly into the framework of quantum physics. That makes it easier to study and possibly test in the future.

According to the researchers, this new idea could finally help physicists build a true "theory of everything" — a single theory that explains all the forces in the universe.

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Right now, the theory is still just a proposal, the two told LiveScience. It passes some early mathematical checks, but it hasn’t yet been used to answer big questions like what happens inside black holes or at the beginning of the universe. And testing it in real experiments may take decades because gravity is so weak compared to other forces, making its quantum effects hard to measure.

Still, this theory offers a promising new path forward. It doesn’t rely on unproven ideas, and it could eventually lead to discoveries that reshape our understanding of space, time, and the universe itself.

In simple terms: scientists might have just taken a big step toward solving one of the universe’s greatest puzzles — and they did it by rethinking gravity from the ground up.