kill231
Toucan
Joined: Jan 13, 2012
Age: 14
Posts: 289
Location: Anywhere in the quantum-verse
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 Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:06 pm Post subject: Theory of everything |
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What theories do you think are correct? If you have your own post the theory on here.
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iggy64
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Joined: Feb 23, 2012
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Location: East England
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| Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:41 pm Post subject: |
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Everything that can happen does happen. Parallel universes which are similar but each has a different decision at each point in time. It's described in the book flashforward (and several other books, I'm sure)
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ruveyn
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Age: 76
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Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 6:18 pm Post subject: |
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| iggy64 wrote: | | Everything that can happen does happen. Parallel universes which are similar but each has a different decision at each point in time. It's described in the book flashforward (and several other books, I'm sure) |
There is not an iota of empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. If there are other universes and time-lines to which we have no access then for all practical purposes they do not exist.
ruveyn |
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iggy64
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Joined: Feb 23, 2012
Posts: 410
Location: East England
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| Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:48 am Post subject: |
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I know. But gravity existed before it was discovered or proved, and nobody has disproved it yet.
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Knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are fruits. It takes wisdom to know not to put them in a fruit salad.
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ruveyn
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Age: 76
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Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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| iggy64 wrote: | | I know. But gravity existed before it was discovered or proved, and nobody has disproved it yet. |
Humans learned about gravitation by dropping stuff and getting skinned knees. That is plenty of evidence that massive bodies fall to earth.
ruveyn |
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AstroGeek
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Joined: Jan 29, 2011
Age: 19
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| Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm not qualified to make any statement on the various GUTs. However, as far as I know, none have made testable predictions just yet. So I'm not impressed with any of them. |
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ruveyn
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Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
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Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 5:55 pm Post subject: |
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| AstroGeek wrote: | | I'm not qualified to make any statement on the various GUTs. However, as far as I know, none have made testable predictions just yet. So I'm not impressed with any of them. |
Neither is Lee Smolin. Read his book -The Trouble With Physics-
He has given up on string theory and m-theory as lost causes.
See also "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit
ruveyn |
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Jono
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Joined: Jul 11, 2008
Age: 33
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Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
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| Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:37 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | AstroGeek wrote: | | I'm not qualified to make any statement on the various GUTs. However, as far as I know, none have made testable predictions just yet. So I'm not impressed with any of them. |
Neither is Lee Smolin. Read his book -The Trouble With Physics-
He has given up on string theory and m-theory as lost causes.
See also "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit
ruveyn |
I would be much more impressed by Lee Smolin's argument if it came from someone who did not support untested and possibly "unverifiable" theories himself. Since when has Loop Quantum Gravity ever made a testable prediction that has been confirmed by experiment? Just saying. |
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ruveyn
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| Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 9:01 am Post subject: |
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| Jono wrote: | | ruveyn wrote: | | AstroGeek wrote: | | I'm not qualified to make any statement on the various GUTs. However, as far as I know, none have made testable predictions just yet. So I'm not impressed with any of them. |
Neither is Lee Smolin. Read his book -The Trouble With Physics-
He has given up on string theory and m-theory as lost causes.
See also "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit
ruveyn |
I would be much more impressed by Lee Smolin's argument if it came from someone who did not support untested and possibly "unverifiable" theories himself. Since when has Loop Quantum Gravity ever made a testable prediction that has been confirmed by experiment? Just saying. |
It hasn't. But that does not void his criticism of string theory and M-theory.
It is all Witten's fault. His dazzling mathematics has blinded the physics community.
It has also produced a perversion, when physicists start to believe that mathematical beauty is a corroboration of their theories. Nonesense! Beauty is NOT truth! Beauty is Beauty. It is commonplace to find that an elegant theory fails to describe the data and, in the words of American physicist Richard Feynman, it doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, how smart you are or what your name is – if it doesn't agree with the data then it is wrong.
It is a question of disappointment. Neither string-theory nor M-theory has "delivered the goods". Time to go back to the drawing board.
ruveyn |
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AstroGeek
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Joined: Jan 29, 2011
Age: 19
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| Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | AstroGeek wrote: | | I'm not qualified to make any statement on the various GUTs. However, as far as I know, none have made testable predictions just yet. So I'm not impressed with any of them. |
Neither is Lee Smolin. Read his book -The Trouble With Physics-
He has given up on string theory and m-theory as lost causes.
See also "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit
ruveyn |
I have a copy of it kicking around somwhere--I just haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I got it after I saw him give a talk last summer. |
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joannaaleksandra
Toucan
Joined: Feb 01, 2012
Age: 14
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Location: Warsaw, Poland
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| Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 5:00 pm Post subject: |
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| I am not satisfied with any of the candidates to the 'theory of everything' label. When I was younger I tried to make my own basing on the quantum theory, but I came to a logical conclusion that I am not intelligent enough to try to do so. |
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Jono
Phoenix
Joined: Jul 11, 2008
Age: 33
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Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
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| Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | Jono wrote: | | ruveyn wrote: | | AstroGeek wrote: | | I'm not qualified to make any statement on the various GUTs. However, as far as I know, none have made testable predictions just yet. So I'm not impressed with any of them. |
Neither is Lee Smolin. Read his book -The Trouble With Physics-
He has given up on string theory and m-theory as lost causes.
See also "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit
ruveyn |
I would be much more impressed by Lee Smolin's argument if it came from someone who did not support untested and possibly "unverifiable" theories himself. Since when has Loop Quantum Gravity ever made a testable prediction that has been confirmed by experiment? Just saying. |
It hasn't. But that does not void his criticism of string theory and M-theory.
It is all Witten's fault. His dazzling mathematics has blinded the physics community.
It has also produced a perversion, when physicists start to believe that mathematical beauty is a corroboration of their theories. Nonesense! Beauty is NOT truth! Beauty is Beauty. It is commonplace to find that an elegant theory fails to describe the data and, in the words of American physicist Richard Feynman, it doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, how smart you are or what your name is – if it doesn't agree with the data then it is wrong.
It is a question of disappointment. Neither string-theory nor M-theory has "delivered the goods". Time to go back to the drawing board.
ruveyn |
Actually, that isn't true. I do not know of a single physicist, string theorists included. who believes that mathematical beauty is somehow a replacement for empirical evidence. However, the fact remains that general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible in each others domains and physics cannot progress beyond it's current state, one way or the other if we do not find a way to empirically test quantum gravity. I don't agree that we have to go back to the drawing board just yet because there has also never been any empirical data that I'm aware of that completely rules out string theory. Once we find such data, then I'm sure physicists will move on, same goes for alternative theories.
P.S. By the way, there actually is experimental evidence that gravity can show quantum effects. This was shown due to an experiment involving cold neutrons in gravitationally bound quantum states in the earths gravitational field:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v7/n6/full/nphys1970.html
Here are some other papers on experiments utilizing the same technique:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0703108
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0301145 |
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physicsnut42
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Age: 13
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| I agree with all of you people. I mean, string theory is so deeply entrenched in mathematics that it might as well be just one of those odd creations of the human mind... more an abstract painting than a realistic portrait. Is general relativity messed up, or just inapplicable at small distances? I'm not a trained physicist, sadly, so i don't know... anybody have a physicist uncle or something? |
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Kon
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Joined: Nov 15, 2010
Posts: 728
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not sure about this view but there are some who argue that information is more primitive than matter and may ultimately underpin the laws of physics so that everything arises out of information. This is Wheeler’s suggestion that “information” can’t be defined in terms of “matter” or “energy” and that it may therefore be as or more fundamental than either “matter” or “energy”? This is an interesting quote/paper:
| Quote: | | I think that the next level of unification (along the lines of the unification of other previously unrelated concepts in science, such as electricity and magnetism, light and electromagnetism, and energy and mass, to mention a few) will involve information and physics (and ultimately, as a consequence, computation and physics). |
Introducing the Computable Universe
http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1206.0376.pdf
Wheeler's older quote repeats this theme:
| Quote: | | It is not unreasonable to imagine that information sits at the core of physics, just as it sits at the core of a computer. It from bit. Otherwise put, every it—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits... ‘It from bit’ symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom–a very deep bottom, in most instances–an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes/no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe. |
I'm not sure I buy or understand this view. |
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Inventor
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 16, 2007
Posts: 5111
Location: New Orleans
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| Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 8:08 am Post subject: |
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My Theory is they are wrong, and I have been right so far.
Words of Art several hundred years old and an ape brain that only runs on yes/no, are not the tools needed to visualize a reality that may well not be based on the ape brain.
Math is good for defining patterns once you have a starting point, or just generating patterns based on nothing, but math. Landscapes can be generated, but lack reality.
Any question that the answer cannot be defined as yes/no, is in our blind spot.
Our blind spot is well documented, and our partial truths have not joined into a Theory of Everything. In fact, several working models work, but disagree with each other. Human language constructs supported human pattern math, which confounds the ape brain.
Is one right and the other wrong? Yes, Are both right? Yes. Are both right and wrong at the same time and some imperfect model of another pattern they percieve but fail to define? Yes.
Take a curve, there are two answers, one is from the top, which defines the line, the other from the bottom, which defines the line, and the line has no thickness. Both define the same thing, so both are right and wrong, and until we get steroview, we are just left out of the game.
We have this 1 and 0 thinking, where we should learn from DNA, and at least use +1 and +0 and -1 and -0 to be able to see both sides of the curve at once.
I doubt we are up to the task. |
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