“Like peeling an endless onion, the more you peel, the more peel.”
Galaxy Brain
Most physicists live under the assumption of a strict and unalterable set of laws that govern the universe — but not all of them.
Theoretical physicist Sankar Das Sarma wrote in the beginning The new column should be read in new world vertical. These laws of physics are intended to describe our shared reality, though they “evolve as our empirical knowledge of the universe improves”.
“Here’s the problem,” Sarma continues. “Although many scientists see it as their role to discover these ultimate laws, I simply do not believe that they exist.”
Before Albert Einstein’s revolutionary—and ultimately incomplete—attempts to create a The theory of everythingAnd all the leaps in fields like quantum mechanics that followed, the physicist argues, such a claim would not have seemed so far-fetched.
In fact, Sarma says he finds it “incredible” that humans “can understand certain aspects of the universe through the laws of physics.”
“As we discover more about nature,” he writes, “we can improve our descriptions of it, but it is endless.” “Like peeling an endless onion, the more you peel, the more peel.”
Multiverse madness
Referring to a concept multiverseor an infinite number of universes, Sarma asks how humans can have such pride that they imagine that the apparent rules that seem to govern our reality will apply to all universes.
Raising a theoretical argument, Sarma adds that even in the face of a fundamental theory like quantum mechanics, which he describes as “more like a set of rules we use to express our laws than a final law in and of itself.” There are still too many mysteries and variants to hold this so-called basic theory sacred.
“It’s hard to imagine that a thousand years from now physicists will still be using quantum mechanics as a fundamental description of nature,” he continues. “Something else must have replaced quantum mechanics by then, just as quantum mechanics itself has replaced Newtonian mechanics.”
What that alternative might be, Sarma refuses to speculate. Yet he sees no particular reason why our description of how the physical universe works should suddenly come to a head at the beginning of the 21st century and be forever stuck in quantum mechanics.
He adds, “That would be a really depressing idea!
More on physics: These headlines about scientists building a wormhole are complete nonsense, folks