ADVERTISMENT
 
 
22 May 2008

The Theory of Everything

- 6 Jan 2001
By Michio Kaku   
Page 2 of 5
Sun
SOHO
The colossal power of a coronal mass ejection from our sun

The other three forces can be described by the quantum theory. The quantum theory has a tortured history. Back in the 1950s, when scores of strange new "fundamental" particles were flooding out of our atom smashers, J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) was so frustrated that he declared, "the Nobel Prize in physics shall go to the physicist who does NOT discover a new particle that year." There were so many particles, each given strange Greek names, that Enrico Fermi said, "if I had known there would be so many particles, I would have become a botanist rather than a physicist."

But after decades of wandering in the wilderness (and spending billions of tax payers dollars) physicists have unified these three quantum forces into what is called the Standard Model, based on a zoo of bizarre particles, called quarks, leptons, Higgs bosons, Yang-Mills particles, gluons, W-bosons and more. Remarkably, all known physical phenomenon can, in principle, be described by these two great theories, relativity and the quantum theory.

image
CERN
A segment of the largest tunnel in the world: the LEP particle accelerator

Although these two great theories represent the two pillars upon which ALL physical knowledge is based, the fundamental mystery is why these two theories are so different in almost every way. The first theory is based on the curvature of smooth surfaces, which describes the world of the very large.

The second theory is based on tiny discrete packets of energy (called "quanta") and explains the world of the very small, such as atoms and nuclei.

But why should nature, at the most fundamental level, create two totally dissimilar theories? Sadly, every attempt to merge these two theories has failed. Some of the greatest minds of the century have tackled this problem, only to be unsuccessful.

As physicist Freeman Dyson has pointed out, the road to the unified field theory is "littered with the corpses". Neils Bohr once attended a meeting when Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli was presenting his version of the unified field theory. Bohr stood up and said, "Mr. Pauli, we in the back are all convinced that your theory is crazy. But what divides us is whether your theory is crazy enough!"

This is perhaps the greatest challenge of all time, to unite all four fundamental forces into a consistent, coherent picture. At present, the sole candidate for the theory of everything is superstring theory.

 
Have your say
 
Regarding the previous comment - yes, there could have been more than one Big Bang in the past where other universes were created in a string of Big Bangs preceding ours. BUT only if they had specific conditions which ensured that they contracted back in on themselves. As well, some theorists believe it possible that the centre of a super-dense black hole can warp space to such an extent that it 'breaks through' to a '10 dimensional hyperspace' and then may create a new Big Bang in another part of this hyperspace, thus producing a new universe. Regarding anti-matter, these particles do exist in nature - but with nowhere near the frequency of 'normal' matter. Each type of common particle has an equivalent 'anti-particle'. (eg. protons and anti-protons) Both matter and anti-matter were formed in the Big Bang. Cosmologists believe that they annihilated each other and that there was a remaining amount of 'normal' matter which formed the universe we see today.
Posted by: Editor - 2008-01-16 - 20:16 GMT

Do you think its possible that there has been more than one big bang, that its a re-occuring super-event? Also i was wondering about antimatter do you think its possible that maybe it lies in the center of everything? Like the universe, planets, or maybe even us?
Posted by: bjohnson89 - 2008-01-16 - 19:54 GMT

One thing troubles me,that if every thing began at time t0, then how do we account for the difference in age of galaxies, stars etc.?
Posted by: gopalanand - 2008-01-11 - 17:25 GMT

Post new comment
Please copy the 5 symbols from this security code image into the box below to submit comment.

I agree to terms and conditions       
 
FirstScience.com

About | Privacy policy | Terms & conditions
© 1995-2008 All rights reserved

Download Science TV about Big Theories
Related articles
Extreme Maths: Infinity - The Art of the Infinite
The true mysteries of mathematics lie at the limits of our...
A Brief History of Infinity
The paradoxical twists and turns of infinity have baffled many...
Related video
Try these books...
Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (Canto)
$23.99
$18.95
>More Info
THEORIES OF EVERYTHING: THE QUEST FOR ULTIMATE EXPLANATION.
>More Info
Latest News
> Find 1000s more science gadgets & gizmos