302
PHVSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
been accomplished simply by ignoring the incompleteness theorem,
that is, by postulating that recent work makes no self-referential statements.
In the same way it may be possible to construct a theory of everything that can explain every known experiment independent of the observer/observed dichotomy. If such a theory of everything can explain
everything from the origin of the big bang to the visible universe that
we see around us, then it becomes academic how we describe the interaction between the observer and observed. In fact, one criterion for
a theory of everything should be that its conclusions are totally independent of how we make the split between the observer and the observed.
Furthermore, nature may be inexhaustible and limitless, even if it
is based on a handful of principles. Consider a chess game. Ask an
alien from another planet to figure out the rules of chess simply by
watching the game. After a while the alien can figure out how pawns,
bishops, and kings move. The rules of the game are finite and simple.
But the number of possible games is truly astronomical. In the same
way the rules of nature may also be finite and simple, but the applications of those rules may be inexhaustible. Our goal is to find the rules
of physics.
In some sense we already have a complete theory of many phenomena. No one has ever seen a defect in Maxwell's equations for
light. The Standard Model is often called a "theory of almost everything." Assume for the moment that we can shut off gravity. Then the
Standard Model becomes a perfectly sound theory of all phenomena
besides gravity. The theory may be ugly, but it works. Even in the presence of the incompleteness theorem, we have a perfectly reasonable
theory of everything (besides gravity).
To me it is truly remarkable that on a single sheet of paper one can
write down the laws that govern all known physical phenomena, covering forty-three orders of magnitude, from the farthest reaches of the
cosmos over 10 billion light-years away to the microworld of quarks
and neutrinos. On that sheet of paper would be just two equations, Einstein's theory of gravity and the Standard Model. To me this reveals the
PHVSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
been accomplished simply by ignoring the incompleteness theorem,
that is, by postulating that recent work makes no self-referential statements.
In the same way it may be possible to construct a theory of everything that can explain every known experiment independent of the observer/observed dichotomy. If such a theory of everything can explain
everything from the origin of the big bang to the visible universe that
we see around us, then it becomes academic how we describe the interaction between the observer and observed. In fact, one criterion for
a theory of everything should be that its conclusions are totally independent of how we make the split between the observer and the observed.
Furthermore, nature may be inexhaustible and limitless, even if it
is based on a handful of principles. Consider a chess game. Ask an
alien from another planet to figure out the rules of chess simply by
watching the game. After a while the alien can figure out how pawns,
bishops, and kings move. The rules of the game are finite and simple.
But the number of possible games is truly astronomical. In the same
way the rules of nature may also be finite and simple, but the applications of those rules may be inexhaustible. Our goal is to find the rules
of physics.
In some sense we already have a complete theory of many phenomena. No one has ever seen a defect in Maxwell's equations for
light. The Standard Model is often called a "theory of almost everything." Assume for the moment that we can shut off gravity. Then the
Standard Model becomes a perfectly sound theory of all phenomena
besides gravity. The theory may be ugly, but it works. Even in the presence of the incompleteness theorem, we have a perfectly reasonable
theory of everything (besides gravity).
To me it is truly remarkable that on a single sheet of paper one can
write down the laws that govern all known physical phenomena, covering forty-three orders of magnitude, from the farthest reaches of the
cosmos over 10 billion light-years away to the microworld of quarks
and neutrinos. On that sheet of paper would be just two equations, Einstein's theory of gravity and the Standard Model. To me this reveals the