Monday, October 10, 2011

Dreams of a Final Theory by Steven Weinberg

6:50 AM | Posted by Free Game Zone | Edit Post



Humans are the task of unifying all of physics? Steven Weinberg believes that the final theory is there - like the North Pole - but it is never

Our next book club title is the Republic Pluto by Peter Medawar, Tim will review Friday, August 19

contemplation is a science smart, slow and deep by a man who knows whereof he speaks. Barb that last is true only in a very limited sense. In all others, Steven Weinberg is the perfect guide: he is a Nobel laureate, woke up in publishing for over 30 years with an impressive introduction to modern cosmology, called the first three minutes, was a driving force behind what became the most extravagant experiences of the world. and he explains with a fabulous command of the language

also wrote Dreams of a Final Theory almost 20 years. High-energy physics is a rapidly evolving field (the term seems to be less stupid and more relevant when it comes to particle accelerators), but the world is waiting to see what could be the last theory, assuming always that people are smart enough to recognize that when they see it, and assuming that there is a definitive theory.

First, the problem. It comes down to this: is there an explanation that does not need any other explanation for this? Is there an equation theory or model that is why the light has a fixed rate and others do not, why and how a photon can become a grain of something solid, why matter is what it is and not otherwise why the particles become atoms and molecules of atoms becomes, why a single photon can pass through both slits at the same time, and why space provides the material and do not go down

physicists have a handle on the various mysteries, such as special and general relativity, and electromagnetic and nuclear forces, and conducted experiments to confirm that sufficient - however odd results - the work of quantum mechanics. But none of these separately explains why the world is as it is, with the space expands in all directions, and the clock is ticking inexorably in one direction, and cascading light through the universe, galaxies and palpable solid made of atoms linked by invisible, intangible bundles of dough. What exactly happened at the very beginning of space and time makes it inevitable that this universe was the way he did?

is an old question: Weinberg contemporaries at CERN has started talking about the great unified theory in the sixties and later introduced the term theory of everything. Stephen Hawking proposed in 1988 physicists famous one day "know the mind of God." Leon Lederman wrote a book about the mysterious entity that is currently underway at CERN and has been called "the God particle." And then, as part of the defensive apparatus of Superconducting Supercollider incredibly ambitious, then slowly takes shape in the limestone of Texas, Weinberg gave this book in 1992. It is many things: a reflection on the nature of science, a brief history of research on the ultimate nature of matter, a lesson in the mysteries of mathematical physics exquisite, a simple defense, but with the button on the Big Science - big billion dollar scale - and a little talk frankly about what science is not likely to be on the mind of God. Not a very informative essay on what physicists mean when they equate with truth and beauty expert, but not necessarily just to run the philosophers of science.

What is surprising is that the book does not feel the least to date. Since its first publication, the physicists have demonstrated quantum entanglement and teleportation of experience, who built the fifth state once a theoretical question, the Bose-Einstein, who used this technology to slow a beam first light speed of the bike, then stopped, have stopped talking about cosmic strings and branes least once introduced, they have extended the idea of ??a multiverse, and identified a new feature called dark energy representing three-quarters of the cosmos detectable. Why his book is still a good reading material?

There are three reasons. The first is that Weinberg writes with clarity and meaning to the old proper sentence (in the preface, and not by chance falls the name of Tacitus, Edward Gibbon and Samuel Eliot Morison, as the historians who have read the pleasure). The second is that it is to rethink a question that was on papyrus or on paper at least three thousand years: why the world is as it is and who or what made this way? Timeless and universal questions are universal and timeless appeal. The third is obvious: the book remains fully up to date, because 20 years later, no one came anywhere near to finding a final theory
  • Whatever the answer - if there is an answer - is based on the evidence of facts that could have happened in the first billionth of a billionth of a second of time, and leisure needs a massive accelerator. South-South cooperation was brutally ended by mid-year, leaving a large hole in the base of Texas. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, has only half the energy of conception which were planned for the South-South cooperation, and because of technical problems from the start, the LHC is still in running at half power.
And even before the launch, there was no evidence that the responses of the LHC may not be enough: two of the CERN Council and the community of theoretical physics in the United States have a If an even larger machine, called the Linear Collider. This suggests that experimental physicists do not expect a final theory in a hurry.

And anyway, says Weinberg, a final theory, once found, not the end of science is the culmination of a particular kind of science. It makes clear that he thinks he should be there, as the North Pole, but he never reached.

The possibility that there might be just smart enough to know when we see it ("You can train dogs to do all sorts of clever things, but I doubt anyone ever trained a dog using quantum mechanics to calculate the levels of atomic energy. ") and worry more about how our dreams can contract for as long as the search comes to an end. Weinberg is the man who once wrote famous "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless," and yes, he talks a little about how this phrase has haunted him for decades.

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