The road to truth is rugged and far away... Countless smart people and countless geniuses have fallen on this issue.
As a result, in the minds of many people, there is a strange mentality that a "grand unified theory" does not exist.
There is of course a reason for this idea, which stems from another great theorem: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem!
The famous mathematician Gödel once proposed a very important milestone in the history of modern logic: He proved that any formal system, as long as it includes a simple description of elementary number theory and is self-consistent, must contain some of the allowed rules in the system.
The method can neither prove true nor falsify propositions.
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem is a theorem that goes against common sense. It tells mankind: truth and provability are two concepts. What is provable must be true, but what is true may not be provable.
In a sense, the shadow of paradox will always be with us. No wonder the great mathematician Weyl sighed: "God exists because mathematics is undoubtedly consistent; the devil also exists because we cannot prove it.
This compatibility."
What does that mean?
If you extend the concept to the entire universe and treat the operating laws of the universe as a system, then there will always be some inexplicable things that do exist.
People may be able to discover them, but these things cannot be classified into existing systems, they just exist inexplicably.
Perhaps, "gravity" is such an inexplicable thing that a "grand unified theory" may not exist.
The road to seeking truth is always so long and arduous. Maybe humans can find a grand unified theory, or maybe humans will never find it...
It may also be that the system of relativity and quantum mechanics are inherently separated from each other. Who knows?
Is the universe knowable?
The theme of compulsory education and materialism tells us: the universe is knowable.
However, due to the uncertainty principle of microscopic particles and Gödel's incompleteness theorem, the foundation of knowability has been shaken.
The universe is not necessarily knowable.
Man cannot break into God, he can only attack the darkness surrounding divinity. He throws the fire into the cold night, and the night retreats, but only retreats. Through the efforts of generations, man spends countless efforts to reduce the surrounding darkness.
Destroyed bit by bit.
When people complacently thought that they were about to face the light, the building of classical physics suddenly collapsed, and the two dark clouds became bigger and bigger. People unexpectedly discovered that beyond the darkness, there was a greater, almost infinite darkness...
In this case, should we spend our whole life exploring mysteries that may never be solved?
Humans are very strange animals. They sometimes abandon their interests and fight purely for their beliefs...
Gravity has become a complex and difficult to solve mystery in almost all models.
At present, the most promising method to describe the entire universe is called "string theory." String theory, including the subsequently developed M theory, can not only solve the contradiction between quantum mechanics and general relativity, but also one of the solutions to quantum gravity. It is very
It may become the ultimate theory of the universe.
"String theory" proposes that the universe originally had eleven dimensions, and then an explosion occurred, causing some of the dimensions to shrink into the space of elementary particles.
But so far, string theory is only a rough framework, with many, equally possible solutions. There are as many different model solutions as there are mosquitoes in the grass, and with current technology, they cannot be tested
, cannot be falsified, cannot be used to predict...
People have only explored its edges, and there are large stretches of blank space in the middle.
Therefore, string theory is just an empty shell, and there is no way to clarify whether it is right or wrong. For scientists, if they want to perfect string theory, they can only say it is a series in their lifetime... It is simply not something that current scientific theories can do.
Experts on string theory, these smartest minds, always show a blank expression, making them look dull. However, please don’t laugh at them, they are spending their lifetimes fighting against the infinite mysteries of the universe...
They know that this problem may be difficult to solve in their own lifetime, but they still continue to study it firmly... Because if they don't take this road, no one in the world will take it. This road that may lead to the ultimate truth may
It was broken.
There are many divergent roads, how can we be safe now? When will we be able to overcome the wind and break the waves?
The road has to be taken step by step. In the end, the ultimate string theory will be out of business for a while, and scientists will not be discouraged. They will start to look for other more pragmatic theories.
Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20th century, once had the idea of "one field theory". He wanted to integrate electromagnetic force into the gravitational framework of general relativity, trying to complete the unification of the four basic forces. (If realized, it can be
Use electromagnetic force to create gravity.)
So much so that Einstein struggled for the rest of his life, but in the end more than 30 years of scientific efforts seemed to yield nothing...
Mr. Einstein said that it wasn’t that he didn’t work hard, it was just that it was too difficult, and it was as meaningless as a mess of yarn. There was really nothing he could do, and he could only leave this problem to future generations...
Subsequently, people proposed the concept of "grand unified energy scale". Many scientists have always believed that at very high energy levels, the basic interactions of the microscopic world: the strong interaction and the electroweak interaction can be unified into a single specification.
Under the group.
But what is frustrating is that this belief has been refuted by experimental data, so that many scientists can't sleep at night, and they feel that their faith has collapsed.
However, the rise of supersymmetry theory gave them hope again, so that their belief in the "grand unified energy standard" changed into belief in the "supersymmetry theory"... As long as supersymmetry is correct, the grand unified energy standard still exists
hopefully.
Immediately afterwards, a new type of SU(5) theory predicted proton decay, and people gave hope for a unified theory, but it seemed to be rejected by experiments...
Needless to say, the simplest version of the supersymmetry theory, for which people had high hopes, was also experimentally eliminated at the beginning of the 21st century... Needless to say, there was another wave of collapse of faith, and people's disappointment and frustration.
So much so that people can’t even see the end ahead…
fail!
fail!
fail!
How bumpy the road to truth is!
Such a theory cannot be completed in just a few hours by just drawing and writing. Instead, it takes years or decades to revise and perfect it.
How does it feel when you have studied something for a lifetime and spent your life believing in and seeking the truth, only to find out that it is all wrong and meaningless?
Such a failure seems to deny the meaning of the researcher's life.
Just like the great Einstein, he struggled for thirty years, but in the eyes of modern people, the methods and concepts he used were wrong. So in the last thirty years, it seemed that he had achieved nothing, and no research on modern physics had been achieved.
A result worth mentioning.
His last 30 years of research are considered to be meaningless. Without the great achievements in the past, Einstein would have been forgotten only by relying on the next 30 years.
People will only remember successes, not failures.
Time is the cruelest thing. Countless losers who pursue the truth and countless great figures are gradually drifting away and fading away from their dreams of reunification. They are gradually far away from people and slowly disappear in the ruthless years of history...
Those who are lucky will study the Standard Model and win the Nobel Prize; those who are unlucky will only be forgotten. Their names will gradually fade away from people's sight.
Life is short, only a hundred years, so why should we pursue it so hard on this rugged road?
Who knows?
Perhaps compared to ordinary people, the top and smartest humans have two different ways of thinking.
Looking at it this way, the new human civilization and the previous human civilization are also two different civilizations...