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A Meta-Law to Rule Them All: Physicists Devise a “Theory of Everything”
- pavlov 12y agoAccording to constructor theory, the most fundamental components of reality are entities—“constructors”—that perform particular tasks, accompanied by a set of laws that define which tasks are actually possible for a constructor to carry out. More generally, we could call these entities "objects", the tasks that they perform "methods" and the set of laws that define the available methods "interfaces". There, the grand unified theory of object-oriented software design and quantum gravity! Einstein would never have guessed that the universe is written in Enterprise Java.
- twic 12y agoSo, if i understand you correctly, what you're saying is that the arrow of time is defined as the direction in which Oracle licenses expire?
- comela 12y agoyes
- TeMPOraL 12y agoSo object-oriented programming really does match reality, just not at the level we thought it does. I guess it's time to redesign my code around quarks and quantum fields.
- whoisthemachine 12y agoAh so that's why my object's state changes when observed.
- thibauts 12y agoGod let an intern write code that mutates the Particle object state in a getter.
- islon 12y agoCan't wait to read physics papers about AbstractGravityFactoryFactory.
- eevilspock 12y agoIsn't this essentially the approach Einstein took? He basically added a new "constructor", "the relative speed of light is the same for all observers", to existing physics models and a new more encompassing physics emerged, whose amazing predictions were born out by experiments. He didn't add that new constructor because it made intuitive sense, but because prior experiments indicated it to be reality, no matter how counterintuitive it seems.
- ghkbrew 12y agoSo, not so much a new theory as a new language and set of rules (a calculus) for describing our old theories?
- spuz 12y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7802986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7802986
- joaorico 12y agoFeynman [1]: "Let us show you something interesting that we have recently discovered: All of the laws of physics can be contained in one equation. That equation is U = 0. What a simple equation! Of course, it is necessary to know what the symbol means. U is a physical quantity which we will call the “unworldliness” of the situation. And we have a formula for it. Here is how you calculate the unworldliness. You take all of the known physical laws and write them in a special form. For example, suppose you take the law of mechanics, F = ma , and rewrite it as F − ma = 0. Then you can call (F − ma) — which should, of course, be zero — the “mismatch” of mechanics. Next, you take the square of this mismatch and call it U_1 , which can be called the “unworldliness of mechanical effects.” In other words, you take U_1 = (F − ma)^2. [...] You continue to write U_3 , U_4 , and so on—one for every physical law there is. Finally you call the total unworldliness U of the world the sum of the various unworldlinesses U_i from all the subphenomena that are involved; that is, U = SUM (U_i). Then the great “law of nature” is U = 0. (25.32) This “law” means, of course, that the sum of the squares of all the individual mismatches is zero, and the only way the sum of a lot of squares can be zero is for each one of the terms to be zero. So the “beautifully simple” law in Eq. (25.32) is equivalent to the whole series of equations that you originally wrote down. It is therefore absolutely obvious that a simple notation that just hides the complexity in the definitions of symbols is not real simplicity. It is just a trick . The beauty that appears in Eq. (25.32)—just from the fact that several equations are hidden within it—is no more than a trick. When you unwrap the whole thing, you get back where you were before." [1] Feynman R, Leighton R, and Sands M. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Volume 2, chapter 25, page 10.
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- kam 12y agoThat's why they're all squared. Which is, of course, assuming that none of the equations involve imaginary numbers.
- joaorico 12y ago"Next, you take the square of this mismatch and call it U_1" Each U_i is a square, so it's a sum on non-negative quantities that equals zero so that each U_i = 0 must hold separately. That's the cool trick :)
- monochromatic 12y agoA "theory of everything" posted on the non-peer-reviewed arXiv? Color me skeptical.
- evanb 12y agoFirst, Deutsch is a serious field theorist and foundational quantum mechanist. Second, the arXiv is not, as you seem to intimate, for work that isn't good enough to pass peer review, but is, instead, a place to post work so that the physics community can digest it without a 6-month peer-review delay. Articles on the arXiv are almost always submitted to a journal within a few days of being posted. I should point out: that doesn't mean it's right! But it's not gobbledegook either.
- capkutay 12y agoThis reminds me of GEB where Hofstadter covers Godel's theory of incompleteness. My personal understanding was that there can be no definite theories that are true of everything in the universe...but that theory is a paradox in itself because it is attempting to make a definite rule that is true of everything in the universe
- wyager 12y agoNot quite. There is a lot of mysticism around the incompleteness theorems. The Incompleteness theorems say that you cannot construct a single higher-order logic capable of proving all true higher-order statements. This does not limit our ability to discover truths about the universe. The incompleteness theorem has little bearing on the discovery of universal physical laws.
- psychometry 12y agoWittgenstein turns over in his grave every time someone makes that comment. It's not correct. Unless the system you're talking about is an axiomatically consistent superset of Robinson Arithmetic, GFIT doesn't apply.
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- Eiriksmal 12y agoWait a second... I think this has been done before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Jones#The_Grand_Unification_Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Jones#The_Grand_...