Theory of everything

A theory of everything (TOE) is a theory of theoretical physics and mathematics that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena. Over time, the term stuck in popularizations of quantum physics to describe a theory that would unify or explain through a single model the theories of all fundamental interactions of nature.

There have been numerous theories of everything proposed by theoretical physicists over the last century, but as yet none have been able to stand up to experimental scrutiny or there is tremendous difficulty in getting the theories to produce even experimentally testable results. The primary problem in producing a TOE is that the accepted theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity propose radically different descriptions of the universe, and straightforward ways of combining the two lead quickly to the renormalization problem in which the theory does not give finite results for experimentally testable quantities.

Mainstream physics

Albert Einstein was the first well-known scientist who spent most of his life trying to find a TOE; he believed that the only task was to unify general relativity and electromagnetism.

Current mainstream physics concepts require a TOE to unify all the fundamental interactions of nature, which are usually considered to be four in number: gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force; it should also explain the spectrum of elementary particles. There has been progress toward a TOE in unifying electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force in an electroweak unified field theory and in unifying all of the forces except for gravity (which in the present theory of general relativity is not a force) in the grand unification theory. One missing piece in a theory of everything involves combining quantum mechanics and general relativity into a theory of quantum gravity.

The only mainstream candidate for a theory of everything at the moment is superstring theory / M-theory; current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a TOE, but that is not its primary aim. These theories attempt to deal with the renormalization problem by setting up some lower bound on the length scales possible. Also, early 21st century theories of everything tend to suppose that the universe actually has more dimensions than the easily observed three of space and one of time. The motivation behind this approach began with the Kaluza-Klein theory in which it was noted that adding one dimension to general relativity would produce the electromagnetic Maxwell's equations. This has led to efforts to work with theories with large number of dimensions in the hopes that this would produce equations which are similar to known laws of physics. The notion of extra dimensions also helps to resolve the hierarchy problem which is the question of why gravity is so much weaker than any other force. The common answer involves gravity leaking into the extra dimensions in ways that the other forces do not. One major criticism to the addition of numerous extra dimensions in the mathematically complex String Theory is that the parameters of this theory can be bent far enough to encompass almost any observation predictable by other current theories, and thus cannot make useful (as in original, falsifiable, and verifiable with current technology) predictions. In this view, String Theory would be pseudoscience similar to the creationism, where an unfalsifiable theory is constantly adapted to fit the experimental results.

In the late 1990s, it was noted that one problem with several of the candidates for theories of everything was that they did not constrain the characteristics of the predicted universe. For example, many theories of quantum gravity can create universes with arbitrary numbers of dimensions or with arbitrary cosmological constants. One bit of speculation is that there may indeed be a huge number of universes, but that only a small number of them are habitable, and hence the fundamental constants of the universe are ultimately the result of the anthropic principle rather than a consequence of the theory of everything. Max Tegmark has taken this principle to its logical conclusion with his "Ultimate Ensemble", whose only postulate is that "all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically". In this theory, certain mathematical structures are complex enough to contain self aware substructures, who subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically real world.

There is also a philosophical debate within the physics community as to whether or not a "theory of everything" should be seen as the fundamental law of the universe. One view is the hard reductionist view that the TOE is the fundamental law of the universe and that all other theories of the universe are a consequence of the TOE. Another view is that there are laws which Steven Weinberg calls free floating laws which govern the behavior of complex systems, and while these laws are related to the theory of everything, they cannot be seen as less fundamental than the TOE. Some argue that this explanation would violate Occam's Razor if a completely valid TOE were formulated.

Other possibilities which may frustrate the explanatory capacity of a TOE may include sensitivity to the boundary conditions of the universe, or the existence of mathematical chaos in its solutions, making its predictions precise, but useless.

There have been several attempts to advance the general theory of relativity as a theory of everything. As mentioned above, Einstein was responsible for one of these: in collaboration with Rosen he attempted to model particles as tiny wormholes, hence the term Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Wormholes have also been proposed at various times (for instance, by Shimony and by Durand to explain Bell violations not as superluminal influences but influences that take a shortcut through a wormhole. Such theories face a number of hurdles: the creation of wormholes changes the topology of spacetime by creating a new "handle" which implies violations of causality (see Hadley Gravitational singularity by theorems of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. A recent effort to surmount this hurdle notes that the equivalence principle can be applied along curves rather than at a single point (Iliev ^*)," target="_blank" >which would imply that time dilation of $(1-v^2)^{-1/2}$ is indistinguishable locally (along the curve) from a relative velocity $v$ and the unbounded time dilation observed as an event horizon emerges at the center of a collapsing star implies that the center is in reality as well as appearance receding at a velocity approaching the speed of light, producing a bubble-like local inflation of the star's interior (Monroe ^*)," target="_blank" >in which colliding gravitational waves create virtual particle pairs in the form of wormholes (Griffiths [http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~majbg/jbg/book/contents.pdf), and the interference pattern in the two-slit experiment is caused by interference between gravitational wavefronts.

Other efforts

Theory vs. Conjecture

This section includes published and tested scientific theories with quantifiable and/or falsifiable predictions. Throughout time philosophers, scientists, artists, and many others have offered conjecture, untested ideas, relating to the origins and inner workings of the universe and will not be found here.

Burkhard Heim and quantised general relativity

Some supporters of the so-called Heim theory characterize this as a successful quantization of general relativity or even as a theory of everything, but neither of these claims are accepted in mainstream theoretical physics. In recent years it has been slowly emerging from obscurity. One sign of this was the award of a prize by the AIAA for a paper by Hauser & Droscher on Aerospace applications in 2005, although some have questioned whether an aerospace engineering prize is a reliable guide to the validity of the underlying theoretical physics. Its supporters claim that Heim theory has accurately predicted features such as particle masses and coupling constants. Critics contend that these claims are invalid and that work on Heim theory is flawed in a variety of ways.

Burkhard Heim's intent was to create a unified framework to model quantitative and qualitative aspects of our reality. He regarded himself largely successful, however his works are very inaccessible even to experts in the field of theoretical physics due their native complexity. He himself once said that the mass formula is simple in contrast to the syntrometic method, a mathematical framework he created in order to quantitatively and qualitatively describe any phenomenon within the realm of reality such as thoughts and consciousness (qualitative) in the presence of neural networks (quantitative).

Eino Kaila

The prolific Finnish philosopher Eino Kaila attempted to construct a theory of everything based on the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics in the 1950s. His attempt did not get much attention outside Finland, and he only managed to write the first part of what he planned on making an extensive study on the subject. "Terminalkausalität als die Grundlage eines unitarischen Naturbegriffs" ("terminal causality as the foundation of a unitarian notion of nature"), published in 1956, formulated a new type of causality and was meant to be followed by similar works on psychology and biology.

Expansion Theory

Expansion theory is described in the book ‘The Final Theory’ by Mark McCutcheon, Published in 2002 ^*. He attempts to explain all physical observations, such as gravity, electricity and magnetism, light and atomic forces by expansion of matter.

He claims that classical mechanics, special relativity, general relativity and quantum mechanics are not consistent with facts, each other, their own conservation laws or common sense. It is regarded as pseudoscience by professional physicists, as many of the claims made in 'The Final Theory' which are offered as debunkings or refutations of more orthodox approaches, demonstrate only a complete misunderstanding on the part of the author of the concepts concerned. For example, he claims that the reason no light can leave a black hole is because the 'burnt-out' suns that create black holes no longer shine. This is clearly a gross misunderstanding of black holes, because even light emitted from other sources which passes the event horizon cannot escape. The book is riddled with similar errors and distortions of fact, and should not be read as being of scientific value.

Different unfinished attempts at unifying General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

In the Electron-positron pair lattice (Epola) theory proposed by Menahem Simhony, the electron-positron pair at zero energy level (below ground energy level) is considered the fundamental brick of the Universe, gravity and inertia are explained as an exchange of energy with the vacuum through De Broglie waves conversion, and both weak and strong interactions are explained as electromagnetic in nature. A somewhat similar theory that supposes the existence of null and even negative energy levels, and of a Universe-encompassing Bose-Einstein Condensate blocking existing matter from dropping into null-energy level, has been developped by Don Hotson, but it is considered pseudoscience since it is further used as a scientific justification for astrology.

Other radical TOE attempts depart from the conventional view of four fundamental interactions. Instead of explaining gravity as a quantized field and unifying it with other fields, they explain it as a pseudoforce, like centrifugal acceleration, stemming from expansion and/or contraction of both the 3-dimensional space and a 3-dimensional time, as in the scriptural physics devised by Brian Fraser.

References

The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe is an unauthorized 2002 book taken from lectures recorded by Stephen Hawking (ISBN 1893224791)
Hans Wehrli: Metaphysik - Chiralität als Grundprinzip der Physik, 2006, ISBN 3-033-00791-0

External links

Theory of Everything - key difficulties - an analysis of the interplay of the origin of gravity and of gravitational and inertial mass.
The Elegant Universe-Nova online- a 3 hour PBS show about the search for the Theory of everything and string theory.
Gravity Probe B, the Large Hadron Collider and The Theory of Everything What future experiments may tell us about the Theory Of Everything.
The nth Dimension - a look into the foundations of the string theory, exploring the flaws with today's conventional physics, and the unifying theory of everything.
Journal of Space Mixing Free online journal about the development of a unified theory of physical interactions with links to many related physics sites and tutorials.

Theoretical physics | Theories of gravitation

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