ARTICLESSUPPORTERSFAQENGINEERINGCONTACT

NAVIGATION HOMEARTICLESTHEEVERYTHINGANDNOTHINGOFPHYSICS

MISSION

JOIN

The Everything and Nothing of Physics

03:20 04.08.2013 in Articles

Please,jointogetstarted,orloginwith yourexistingaccount. Email Password Login! Forgotyourpassword?

by Robert Sugar

On an everyday basis, I am not usually the aggressive type, but when it comes to science, I'm a firm believer that the best battles are hard fought. So I'm going to start this piece by throwing a few punches at contemporary models in physics. If this strikes the nerves of any physicists out there, please, don't hold back. My gloves are up and I'm ready for the blows.

Navigation

We don't know a right lot.

Physicists don't know anything for certain. The majority of data surrounding modern physics is based on frameworks: theoretical models that rationally explain bits of the universe. Whilst this is largely true at every level, it resonates hardest when we head on down to particle level. The subatomic world is much like a black box: we know the overall shape and we know there is a load of stuff in there, but we can't really see what's going on. So we try and guess, using a process called scattering. Scientific America came up with a metaphor to explain how we "see" things at subatomic level. "You might imagine being in a large dark room with an object whose shape you don't know. If you have a bucket of tennis balls, you can start to build up a picture of what the object looks like by tossing the balls at it." Well you can take that one step further and say that it's not tennis balls you're throwing at the unknown object, but more unknown objects, and all around the room there could be more unknown objects that you have absolutely no idea about, which could send the unknown objects you're throwing bouncing off in all sorts of crazy directions. Remarkably, despite the predicament that physicists are in, they have managed to come up with some models that attempt to explain the makeup of everything in the universe. Some of these seem to sort of work under a quick inspection, but do not be fooled. They're all guess work, and no matter how much we might want them to, none of the buggers really fit together. Quantum Mechanics Quantum Mechanics is perhaps the most bizarre thing mankind has ever devised, and whilst not being a complete physical theory in its own right, it has been hugely successful. One of the most significant findings that led to the development of quantum mechanics as a new branch of physics was the observation that particles do not always behave as "balls" as was previously believed, but as waves too. This curious phenomena was not explainable with the laws of classical mechanics, and saw the birth of quantum theories that raised all sorts of curious concepts. For instance, in the everyday world, it is natural to think of everything as having a definite position, a definite momentum, a definite energy, and a definite time of occurrence. Quantum Mechanics does not adhere to this line of thinking. Rather than pinpointing the exact values for these factors, quantum provides instead a range of probabilities that are applicable to a particle. Neil Bohr once said that, "anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it". Whilst it is easy to see where he is coming from, it is probably truer to say that no one understands quantum theory. A primary reason for this is that once we start to interact on a subatomic level, we disturb part of the data - a bit like reality television: people start to act differently when they know they're being watched - which makes getting to grips with anything rather difficult. There's also Quantum Entanglement, one of the strangest predictions of Quantum Mechanics. Entanglement refers to particles whose physical properties are entwined: undefined yet somehow correlated. You alter the state of one, the other changes too. Whilst the idea of two particles being connected in some way seems reasonable enough, it all gets rather odd when applied to particles that are huge distances apart. Their relationship stays the same, and what's more, the rate in which the particles react to a change on their entangled partner, is still "immediate", or at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light, according to research by Prof. Juan Yin and colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai. How does information pass from one particle to another faster than the speed of light? As if this all wasn't enough to force most physicists to throw their theories out of the laboratory window, on April 22nd, researchers - led by Xiao-song Ma of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the University of Vienna - stated in the journal Nature Physics that, "whether these two particles are entangled or separable has been

HOME SEARCH ARTICLES LOUNGE

decided after they have been measured". This paper essentially showed that future actions may influence events of the past. Incredibly, Quantum Mechanics, whilst not really giving a solid picture of the whole universe, does produce accurate predictions. The problem, however, is the subatomic level is where it stays. In most cases quantum is confined to the particle level, and refuses, so far, to translate to anything larger.It is only a partial model. The Standard Model The Standard Model of particle physics attempts to be a complete theory of everything, and, at this point, is the best theory we have. It's a collection of quantum theories that describes the charges, masses, and spins of the fundamental particles that make up matter, and the ways in which these particles interact. The model predicts twelve fundamental particles, all interacting via three forces; Electromagnetism (responsible for light, electricity, magnets) The strong nuclear force (responsible for holding everything together) The weak nuclear force (responsible for radioactivity) Despite all its success, the Standard Model falls apart when coming face to face with a fourth well known force: gravity. The Standard Model cannot account for it, and is completely incompatible, like other quantum theories, with the most successful theory of gravity to date: General Relativity. It also does not answer important questions such as what happened to all the antimatter after the big bang?'

CMS detector in a cavern 100 m underground at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Image credit: Cern.

Although we hear many physicists talk with great confidence about the Standard Model; quarks, the Higgs Boson etc, this is all really just a bit of a show. There is no specialparticle detector telling us "that's a quark" or "that's a photon", we just measure different properties of the stuff coming out of a collision of particles and reconstruct what happened the best we can. Even at CERN - a respected champion of the Standard Model - where billions of US dollars were spent on constructing its 27km stretch of machinery, the physicists still reconstruct huge amounts of data. But perhaps the biggest failing of the Standard Model is in its very makeup. It is basically a long equation that strives to account for (almost) everything, but the equation is far more complicated than it should be. John Von Neumann once said, With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." Well, in the Standard Model there are nineteen parameters, and, as proven with gravity, the model still doesn't work. So that neat black box we talked about in the opening? In the case of the Standard Model, it has bumps and lumps all over its surface. General Relativity Like the Standard Model, theories of relativity have been remarkably successful, and go some way to explaining the seeming mind melting chaos that exists in space. Special Relativity suggests that there is no constant point of reference against which to measure motion. Measurement of motion is never absolute, but relative to a given position in space and time. When we see a car, we might say that it's travelling at 100mph, but if we look at it through a telescope from a different planet, we see that it's moving 100mph across the surface of a rotating planet, which is itself moving around a sun, and this would all be witnessed by us on another planet which would be also moving. All motion is relative to the motion of other things. The laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and the speed of light within a vacuum is the same no matter the speed at which an observer travels. As a result, space and time are interwoven into a single continuum known as space-time. Events that occur at the same time for one observer could occur at different times for another. Space-time itself is further distorted by the massive objects. Imagine setting a large object in the centre of a trampoline. The object would press down into the fabric, causing it to dimple. A marble rolled around the edge would spiral inward toward the object, pulled in much the same way a planet's gravity pulls at rocks in space. Unfortunately, when applied to the subatomic level, general relativity becomes redundant, for at the subatomic level, gravitation is insignificant in comparison with other forces, and subatomic particles don't have a definite position, a definite momentum, a definite energy or a definite time of occurrence. Like quantum theories, theories of relativity are only partial models.

An experiment by Italian scientists using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft confirms Einstein's theory of general relativity. The researchers measured how much the Sun's gravity bent an electromagnetic beam, in this case the radio signal transmitted by the spacecraft and received by the ground stations. Image credit: NASA

And to make matters worse

There are countless other theories that physics has explored, and whilst each one serves - to a varying degree of success - to explain away a portion of the universe, they are all flawed, partially complete and incompatible with other theories. To make the situation even worse, there are also some factors that are simply inexplicable. Factors that do not fit into any of the theories out there and serve only to give physicists a massive headache. Black holes A black hole is a region in which the gravitational force is so strong that nothing, including light, can escape its pull. Our laws of physics break down' inside a black hole as the quantities used to measure the gravitational field become infinite.

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has captured these first, focused views of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy in high-energy X-ray light. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Dark Matter and Dark Energy Their names allure to some mystical power, but the reality is we don't have the faintest idea what they are, or if they even exist. Dark matter is used to explain away the large portion of the universe that can't be seen through telescopes. It - matter it' is - neither emits nor absorbs light, nor any other electromagnetic radiation, but yet still has a huge gravitational effect on visible matter, radiation and the large scale structure of the whole universe.

Left: Cosmic Evolution Survey - Visible (Baryonic) Matter; Right: Cosmic Evolution Survey - Dark Matter; Middle: Dark Matter Map in Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689; image credit: NASA

Dark energy is similarly hypothetical, and refers to the energy that physicists have inferred is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Additional Note: My personal hypotheses is that dark matter and dark energy aren't actual features of the universe, rather side effects of gravity, time and perhaps other phenomenons which we have yet to uncover.

So where does that leave us?

Black holes, Dark Matter and Dark Energy seem to account for most of the mass and events in the universe, and our current models crumble apart when we try and factor these into any of the aforementioned theories. How can our best theories fail to account for the majority of the universe? Perhaps this is because we are getting ahead of ourselves. All these theories use terms such as timeandenergy like they are a foregone conclusion, but I ask what actually are they? We haven't really got a clue, and the same can be said for gravity, radiation and motion. We're trying to explain away the whole universe using complex equations based on the idea of three dimensional space and one dimensional time, but we don't even understand these things in themselves. Recent observations suggest that the universe is more trick-some than we thought, and far more complex than the three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension (3+1 dimensions) with particle shaped matter, which was previously assumed. Even our own consciousness is a framework that might well mislead us by projecting reality into 3 + 1dimensions. Whilst we currently have no choice but to stick to framework theories, it's looking likely that we'll have to do away with old models and start from scratch.

Myself and others around the world have begun collating data; catagorising measurements we get from particle accelerators, telescopes and the like, in the hope of either letting the results produce models of their own or allowing upcoming models the necessary flexibility to solely fit the measurements rather than pander to old models and their predictions. But this all has a long way to go... Vision of the Future It seems that physics is being forced to leave behind its dogmatic approach, and go back a step to studying the fundamental terms; energy, space fabric, time, events, interaction and the exchange of information. As far as finding a single, unified theory, perhaps we shall see a new candidate emerge? Whilst little more than a maths game at this point, String Theory is producing some interesting predictions, and its successor; M Theory, carries various fresh concepts about spatial dimensions such as the universe being a symphony of vibrating strings in ten spacial dimensions, multiverses etc. Unfortunately M Theory still uses a single temporal dimension (10+1) which suggests that it's still failing to fully break free of the old models. We are at a point where physics needs to be questioning everything. We cannot afford assumed knowledge anymore. Take, for example, time. We assume it's one dimensional, yet general relativity forces us to believe there are actual multiple temporal dimensions, but this often gets ignored. Instead of closing our eyes to the issues and ploughing ahead, we should be looking over the facts and evaluating the possibility of multiple temporal dimensions. Even if it turns out to be incorrect, it is important we first find out. We have to know that the basics we work with are, themselves, accurate. There is a scattering of folk out there who have begun working on these things. Itzhak Bars, Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Southern California has already predicted four spatial and two temporal dimensions (4+2), whilst Joo Magueijo, professor in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London, is questioning whether the speed of light is actually constant. Some Russian scientists are even testing a model which considers the possibility that all dimensions are temporal, and that geometry and physics can be studied using no spatial dimensions whatsoever, just four temporal dimensions (0 + 4).

Whatever the future of physics holds its becoming clearer that what we have right now doesn't reflect the whole reality. The models of old are proving increasingly inadequate, and we will doubtless be seeing an increasing number of physicists disregarding these conventions. For it's seeming more and more like everywhere we turn, we've been forcing square shapes into holes more complex then we ever imagined. by Robert Sugar

ARTICLESSUPPORTERSCONTACTMISSIONJOIN CONTRIBUTETERMSOFSERVICE

32member(s)participateScienceProphet'scommunityfrom4country(s)

2013+CrocottaR&DLimited.Allrightsreserved. Copyrightinthiswebsite(including,withoutlimitation,text,images,videos,logos,icons,soundsrecordings,softwareandsourcecode)isownedorlicensedbyCrocottaR&DLimited. Copyrightinmaterialprovidedbyagencies,privateindividualsororganisationsmaybelongtothoseagencies,individualsororganisationsandarebeinglicensedbyCrocottaR&DLimited. CrocottaR&DLimited,acompanyincorporatedandregisteredinCambridge,Cambridgeshire,UnitedKingdom. Registeredoffice10WellingtonStreet,Cambridge,CambridgeshireCB11HW,UnitedKingdom. Registerednumber8451298. Taxnumber1458807354. Werecommendthatyouupgradetothelatestversionofanyofthefollowingbrowsers,andmakesureyouhavejavascriptturnedon.