Have We Really Found The Theory Of Everything?

Wolfgang powley was one of the most

brilliant physicists of his time but he

was also Savage in his criticism happy

to use his considerable witch to tear

apart ideas or theories he thought

lacking he took to signing off his

letters with the title D Gaisor goddess

German for the scourge of God but

perhaps most famously he once solemnly

responded to a young physicist's Earnest

paper with a simple but brutal epithet

that the offending work was not even

wrong

although not all ideas have a powerly to

puncture them most scientific theories

do end up dead and forgotten most

scientific theories

fail they may have had their day they

may have been widely believed the focus

of papers seminars and conferences only

to end up a footnote in the history

books

[Music]

once upon a time it was thought that

something called flow giston existed

residing inside objects it was released

when they were burned during the 18th

century the theory of logistan was one

of the foremost explanations for heat

and combustion professors taught it

students learned it and the chemists of

the day attempted to interpret their

results with it but the idea very simply

was wrong the flow just an account of

heat was a fantasy the truth as we now

know lay in chemistry and the

combination of different elements in

various chemical reactions somewhere at

some point in history the last believer

in the flo Justin theory of heat died

in the mid-20th century there were two

competing ideas for understanding the

origin of matter in the universe one was

the Big Bang Theory the idea that the

cosmos was once extremely small dense

and hot and then expanded into the vast

Cosmic structures we observed today but

there was also another competing Theory

the so-called steady state theory in

which Mata was constantly being created

to sustain the universe so that it

remained on large scales

eternally the same at one time the

steady state theory was one of the most

discussed ideas in astrophysics and

cosmology even Einstein had an interest

in it but over the years evidence piled

up in favor of the big bang and with the

discovery of hugely powerful quasars at

cosmological distances which dated from

the younger universe and have no

counterparts today gradually the lights

went out for steady state the last

Conference was held the last talks were

given and the last adherence of the idea

tired leaving only filing cabinets

packed with old yellowing notes

and so we arrive to the present day and

the ongoing quest for a fundamental

theory that explains everything within

our universe the quest to unite the two

pillars of general relativity and

quantum mechanics our current leading

Frameworks for quantum gravity are known

as string theory and M Theory ideas

which claim extra dimensions and Tiny

vibrating strings exist deep within

everything at the as yet unobserved

heart of nature or even vast

multi-dimensional brains stretched

across an imperceivable bulk many many

physicists and mathematicians are

working on these cutting-edge ideas

regular conferences are being held

packed with both young and old all

chasing the Holy Grail of physics a

unified theory that explains it all

will these theories last do they really

represent viable solutions to the

fundamental questions of the universe or

tragically misled Community lost in

elegant mathematics with no hope of

finding connections to the real world

let alone a shred of testable evidence

will one day string and M Theory too be

found as Dusty footnotes in fading tones

are they as Paulie wants mused

not even wrong

this year's Nobel Prize in physics was

awarded for Research into quantum

entanglement leading to deep questions

about whether our universe is even

locally real unfortunately for

controlling our devices our macroscopic

world does appear to have different

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what is meant by fundamental

push distances inwards start with us

bipedal members of Homo Sapien sapiens

normally standing a bit over one and a

half meters focus our view narrower and

narrower first the scale of insects

little creepy crawly objects one

centimeter across a factor of 100 next

head down to the size of cells the

powerhouses of human metabolism that

brings us down by another factor of ten

thousand reaching micrometers we go

again another scaling down by a factor

of a thousand brings us first to

molecules and then to atoms and the

quantum mechanical bonds of electrons in

orbitals that hold atoms together to

form the building blocks of life where

now distances slightly less than one

billionth of a meter where quantum

mechanics rules if we were to look

around in a little Cube one billionth of

a meter across then the number of such

cubes that would fit inside our body is

greater than the number of stars in the

observable universe and yet this is only

the start of our inwards journey at the

center of atoms lies the nucleus the

radius of the nucleus 100

000 times smaller than the size of the

atom itself the nuclear ball consists of

protons and neutrons little clumps of

quarks both held together by the strong

nuclear force and also attracted to each

other by the strong nuclear force we're

now at distances of one fentometer one

million billionth of a meter and

entering the realm of particle physics

particle colliders are our world's most

powerful microscopes using these and in

particular the Large Hadron Collider we

are able to probe inwards by an extra

factor of one thousand to picometers

but no more

the realm Beyond this is the realm of

theory

where we would continue to go in a

deeper and further until we reach the

scales on which our ordinary classical

Notions of space and time break down and

must be replaced by some quantum

mechanical replacement for the classical

theory of space-time described by

Einstein's theory of relativity

calculations suggest that this would

occur at a distance of 1 million

billionth of a picometer where quantum

gravity will take over and it is at this

distance scale we perhaps reach the

scale of strings

relativistic quantum mechanical strings

that some physicists say may be the most

fundamental building blocks of the

universe what everything is truly made

of

and yet surprisingly this idea String

Theory did not start off as a potential

fundamental theory of nature to climb

back up the ladder at distant scales of

around a femtometer only one million

billionth of a meter we are in the realm

of the strong force the strong force

which at one point many people believed

was actually a string Force

String Theory started its life in the

summer of 1968 as a possible theory of