Solving the Theory of Everything
I have just started editing articles, officially called “Letters,” for a physics journal called Physical Review Letters. The assignments come to me not from the journal directly but from a firm that provides publishing services. In editing these Letters, I immediately became aware of how woefully descient [deficient in science education; no, heck, lacking totally in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) knowledge of any kind] I am.
Here’s the title of the Letter I am editing now: “Lifetime of Almost Strong Edge-Mode Operators in One-Dimensional, Interacting Symmetry Protected Topological Phases.” And here’s the first sentence from the abstract:
Almost strong edge-mode operators arising at the boundaries of certain interacting 1D protected topological phases with Z2 symmetry have infinite temperature lifetimes that are nonperturbatively long in the integrability breaking terms, making them promising as bits for quantum information processing.
Reading such things reminded me that, in much the same manner that alchemists searched for the philosopher’s stone, physicists have their own Holy Grail quest: the Theory of Everything (TOE). According to Space.com, the TOE is “a hypothetical framework explaining all known physical phenomena in the universe.” This desire to explain everything from quantum particles to spiral galaxies began with the advent of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity.
In their TOE search, physicists have come up with the Standard Model (SM), sometimes called “the theory of almost everything.” The SM, according to some, “answers this question: What is everything made of, and how does it hold together?” Others think string theory is the TOE. Still others think this is all bosh. Stephen Hawking, about whom the movie Theory of Everything was made, ended up believing “such a theory would be out of reach forever because human descriptions of reality are always incomplete.”
And from there things go so deep into the physics woods that I dare not venture further without risking the madness that attends contemplating things more complicated than how to turn a faucet on and off.
I do have a word of advice for all those physicists chasing their quantum tails: the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is…42. So sayeth Deep Thoughts, the supercomputer from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which took 7.5 million years to compute and check the answer. Deep Thoughts also tells us that the answer seems meaningless because the beings that instructed it never actually knew what the question was.
The creatures looking for the Ultimate Question and Answer turn out to be pan-dimensional creators assuming the form of white lab mice. After ten million years of effort, they decide to say screw it and go with Bob Dylan’s simple pronouncement: the answer is, of course, “blowin’ in the wind.”
I suggest that physicists writing papers for PRL go down that path as they seek to unravel all things physical. I can just see their title now: “Testing Whether the Theory of Everything Is Levitating Perpetually in the Natural Motion of Air Parallel to the Earth’s Surface.” I also can save them substantial brain ache and hasten Miller Time by just giving them the answer: It is.
(Published originally on RatBlurt™, May 20, 2020.)
