Same here
God talks to Russell wilson
- Thread starter jecornel
- Start date
Same here
PurpleJ
New Fish
Why should there be such doubt—such confusion—about the existence of God? For thousands of years, people have debated whether God exists. Most conclude that it cannot be proven—one way or the other. It is surmised that the correct answer lies in the area of abstract philosophy and the metaphysical.
Others become agnostics, asserting that they “don’t know” if God exists. Those who do accept God’s existence often do so passively, merely because they were taught it from childhood. Some do not even care. Such people probably cannot be moved from their apathy.
Atheists have concluded that God does not exist. These people represent a special category that God describes as, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God” (Psa. 14:1). This scripture is repeated in Psalm 53:1. What follows will explain why God calls atheists “fools.”
Over 45 years ago, I learned of absolute proof that God exists. My studies lasted two-and-a-half years. I came to realize that I did not have to accept His existence “on faith.” Since that time, science has learned much more and the “case” for God’s existence has become far stronger than at any time in history.
This Personal presents numerous absolute, immutable proofs that God does exist. After reading it, you will never again doubt the answer to this greatest of questions! Some proofs will amaze you. Others will inspire you. Still others will surprise or even excite you. All of them will fascinate you with their simplicity. We will first examine some traditional proofs and then consider material that rests on the cutting edge of scientific understanding, before returning to established proofs. You will learn from biology, astronomy, chemistry and mathematics.
Creation or Evolution?
There is an all-important question that is inseparable from the question of God’s existence. The question of whether life on Earth exists, because of blind, dumb luck and chance, through evolution, or because of special creation by a Supreme Being, cannot be avoided in studying the existence of God.
Did all life on Earth evolve over millions of years, as evolutionists assert—or did an all-powerful God author it at Creation? Most people assume evolution is true, just as those who believe in God assume His existence. I also studied this question—evolution vs. Creation—in depth, during the same period that I sought to prove God’s existence.
I learned that it takes far more “faith” to believe in the intellectually chic and fashionable evolutionary myth than it does to believe in the existence of God. In fact, I learned that evolution is based entirely on faith because no facts or proof have ever been found to support it! (We have prepared a thorough and most inspiring magazine-sized brochure Evolution – Facts, Fallacies and Implications. Those who read this powerful publication will never again doubt the scientific case for Creation!)
Faith and Proof
Faith does play a role in the life of a Christian. For the person who truly wants to seek God and learn to please Him, notice: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him…” (Heb. 11:6).
Faith is vital to a Christian. In fact, without it, no one can please God. Notice that this verse says that those seeking God “must believe that He is.” A deep belief in God, who “rewards” all who “diligently seek Him,” requires proof of His existence. After proof has been established, then—and only then—can one have faith—absolute confidence—that what he does is being recorded in God’s mind, to be remembered when he receives his reward. If you are uncertain that God exists because proof of that existence has not been firmly established, then, under fire, your faith will wane or disappear.
But Which God?
The apostle Paul wrote, “For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things…howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge…” (I Cor. 8:5-7).
The religions of this world have created many gods of wood, stone and other material. Others exist only in the minds of men. The ancient Greeks alone served 30,000 gods and modern Hindus worship 5 million gods! Truly, there are, and have always been, “gods many, and lords many.” Yet, the God of the Bible created all the materials that men use to design their own gods. But, as Paul said, “there is not in every man that knowledge.”
Such unnecessary ignorance and confusion!
The God of the Bible has shown the way to peace, happiness and abundant life for all people willing to study His Instruction Book. Doing this would rid mankind of the confusion and evils that encompass this world. But it is not our purpose here to prove that the God of the Bible is the one true God of Creation. (To learn more, read my booklet Bible Authority...Can It Be Proven?)
What Science Tells Us
Be willing to examine science. As we reason, do not suppose or hope. Stand on indisputable facts. We will see facts from a broad array of different kinds of science. They will demonstrate that an all-powerful Supreme Being, of infinite intelligence, carefully provided more than sufficient proof to remove all doubt that He exists.
The Bible is God’s instruction to mankind. He expects all who are willing to read it to, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (I Thes. 5:21). Surely this God would not then expect us to assume His existence while instructing us to prove everything else from His Word!
Before beginning this study, remember, assumptions do not count! Neither do superstitious myths or traditions based on ignorance! What can be known from science? Only accept facts. Think rationally and clearly. Then accept what can be proven!
The Most Perfect Clock
You probably have a watch. Without it, you would be lost in a world that demands that people “be on time.”
Some watches are more accurate than others. How accurate is yours? How long before it loses a second? When this happens, you adjust it by reckoning from a more accurate source. That source, whatever it is, is also imperfect and has to be regularly updated, though not as often, to be in accord with the Master Clock of the United States at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
For many years, until 1967, Naval Observatory astronomers “observed” the motion of the earth, in relation to the heavens, to accurately measure time. All clocks in this country were set in relation to these very precise measurements. It was God who made this Master Clock of the Universe! He set the heavens in motion and mankind learned how to use its wonderful accuracy. As marvelous as this Master Clock is, the story does not end here.
In 1967, scientists built an “Atomic Clock.” It uses Cesium 133 atoms because they oscillate (vibrate) at the rate of 9,192,631,770 times per second. This produces accuracy within one second every 30 million years! Wouldn’t you love a watch that accurate? Cesium 133 atoms never vary a single vibration. They are steady—constant—reliable—and cannot be an accident of nature that just “happens” to always turn out exactly the same. God had to design the complexity and reliability of these atoms. No honest mind can believe otherwise. Men merely learned how to capture what God designed, for use in time measurement. Again, the story continues.
Doubters, consider this!
Scientists in Boulder, Colorado, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, built an optical clock that is even more accurate. How? By measuring time with light. Time is now measured in what are called femtoseconds—or a million-billionth of a second. These clocks use mercury ions at their “heart” to count the number of times they vibrate in a second.
Optical frequencies regularly oscillate at one million-billion (1,000,000,000,000,000—one quadrillion) times per second. By using lasers and “cooled down” mercury ions, scientists have harnessed God’s precision to better measure time. Optical clocks only slip by one second every 30 BILLION years! This is 1,000 times more accurate than atomic clocks!
All human watchmakers use extraordinary precision in their work. Quartz watches measure time by counting the exact number of oscillations of a quartz crystal through use of a digital counter. Digital clocks use the oscillations of quartz crystals or power lines (60 cycles per second in the United States), but may also count through use of digital counters. Grandfather clocks use the swing of a pendulum, once every second and recorded by metal gears inside the clock, to keep time.
As with the movement of the heavens, men have learned to capture the reliability of Cesium 133 atoms and the movement of cooled mercury ions to count time. Their number of oscillations per second never varies. Could this perfect order be the product of an accident?
In summary, only with great time and effort, the finest watchmakers in the world can, at best, devise several kinds of relatively imprecise clocks. Can any honest, fair-minded person then believe that the three highly precise clocks—the heavens, atomic and optical clocks—came about by accident? In other words, are we to believe that while very sophisticated, humanly devised watches required the effort and ingenuity of skilled, intelligent men to create them, clocks of far greater sophistication, precision and design developed on their own? How utterly ridiculous!
You have seen absolute proof that only the “Greatest Watchmaker” could have devised these “greatest watches.”
Others become agnostics, asserting that they “don’t know” if God exists. Those who do accept God’s existence often do so passively, merely because they were taught it from childhood. Some do not even care. Such people probably cannot be moved from their apathy.
Atheists have concluded that God does not exist. These people represent a special category that God describes as, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God” (Psa. 14:1). This scripture is repeated in Psalm 53:1. What follows will explain why God calls atheists “fools.”
Over 45 years ago, I learned of absolute proof that God exists. My studies lasted two-and-a-half years. I came to realize that I did not have to accept His existence “on faith.” Since that time, science has learned much more and the “case” for God’s existence has become far stronger than at any time in history.
This Personal presents numerous absolute, immutable proofs that God does exist. After reading it, you will never again doubt the answer to this greatest of questions! Some proofs will amaze you. Others will inspire you. Still others will surprise or even excite you. All of them will fascinate you with their simplicity. We will first examine some traditional proofs and then consider material that rests on the cutting edge of scientific understanding, before returning to established proofs. You will learn from biology, astronomy, chemistry and mathematics.
Creation or Evolution?
There is an all-important question that is inseparable from the question of God’s existence. The question of whether life on Earth exists, because of blind, dumb luck and chance, through evolution, or because of special creation by a Supreme Being, cannot be avoided in studying the existence of God.
Did all life on Earth evolve over millions of years, as evolutionists assert—or did an all-powerful God author it at Creation? Most people assume evolution is true, just as those who believe in God assume His existence. I also studied this question—evolution vs. Creation—in depth, during the same period that I sought to prove God’s existence.
I learned that it takes far more “faith” to believe in the intellectually chic and fashionable evolutionary myth than it does to believe in the existence of God. In fact, I learned that evolution is based entirely on faith because no facts or proof have ever been found to support it! (We have prepared a thorough and most inspiring magazine-sized brochure Evolution – Facts, Fallacies and Implications. Those who read this powerful publication will never again doubt the scientific case for Creation!)
Faith and Proof
Faith does play a role in the life of a Christian. For the person who truly wants to seek God and learn to please Him, notice: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him…” (Heb. 11:6).
Faith is vital to a Christian. In fact, without it, no one can please God. Notice that this verse says that those seeking God “must believe that He is.” A deep belief in God, who “rewards” all who “diligently seek Him,” requires proof of His existence. After proof has been established, then—and only then—can one have faith—absolute confidence—that what he does is being recorded in God’s mind, to be remembered when he receives his reward. If you are uncertain that God exists because proof of that existence has not been firmly established, then, under fire, your faith will wane or disappear.
But Which God?
The apostle Paul wrote, “For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things…howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge…” (I Cor. 8:5-7).
The religions of this world have created many gods of wood, stone and other material. Others exist only in the minds of men. The ancient Greeks alone served 30,000 gods and modern Hindus worship 5 million gods! Truly, there are, and have always been, “gods many, and lords many.” Yet, the God of the Bible created all the materials that men use to design their own gods. But, as Paul said, “there is not in every man that knowledge.”
Such unnecessary ignorance and confusion!
The God of the Bible has shown the way to peace, happiness and abundant life for all people willing to study His Instruction Book. Doing this would rid mankind of the confusion and evils that encompass this world. But it is not our purpose here to prove that the God of the Bible is the one true God of Creation. (To learn more, read my booklet Bible Authority...Can It Be Proven?)
What Science Tells Us
Be willing to examine science. As we reason, do not suppose or hope. Stand on indisputable facts. We will see facts from a broad array of different kinds of science. They will demonstrate that an all-powerful Supreme Being, of infinite intelligence, carefully provided more than sufficient proof to remove all doubt that He exists.
The Bible is God’s instruction to mankind. He expects all who are willing to read it to, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (I Thes. 5:21). Surely this God would not then expect us to assume His existence while instructing us to prove everything else from His Word!
Before beginning this study, remember, assumptions do not count! Neither do superstitious myths or traditions based on ignorance! What can be known from science? Only accept facts. Think rationally and clearly. Then accept what can be proven!
The Most Perfect Clock
You probably have a watch. Without it, you would be lost in a world that demands that people “be on time.”
Some watches are more accurate than others. How accurate is yours? How long before it loses a second? When this happens, you adjust it by reckoning from a more accurate source. That source, whatever it is, is also imperfect and has to be regularly updated, though not as often, to be in accord with the Master Clock of the United States at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
For many years, until 1967, Naval Observatory astronomers “observed” the motion of the earth, in relation to the heavens, to accurately measure time. All clocks in this country were set in relation to these very precise measurements. It was God who made this Master Clock of the Universe! He set the heavens in motion and mankind learned how to use its wonderful accuracy. As marvelous as this Master Clock is, the story does not end here.
In 1967, scientists built an “Atomic Clock.” It uses Cesium 133 atoms because they oscillate (vibrate) at the rate of 9,192,631,770 times per second. This produces accuracy within one second every 30 million years! Wouldn’t you love a watch that accurate? Cesium 133 atoms never vary a single vibration. They are steady—constant—reliable—and cannot be an accident of nature that just “happens” to always turn out exactly the same. God had to design the complexity and reliability of these atoms. No honest mind can believe otherwise. Men merely learned how to capture what God designed, for use in time measurement. Again, the story continues.
Doubters, consider this!
Scientists in Boulder, Colorado, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, built an optical clock that is even more accurate. How? By measuring time with light. Time is now measured in what are called femtoseconds—or a million-billionth of a second. These clocks use mercury ions at their “heart” to count the number of times they vibrate in a second.
Optical frequencies regularly oscillate at one million-billion (1,000,000,000,000,000—one quadrillion) times per second. By using lasers and “cooled down” mercury ions, scientists have harnessed God’s precision to better measure time. Optical clocks only slip by one second every 30 BILLION years! This is 1,000 times more accurate than atomic clocks!
All human watchmakers use extraordinary precision in their work. Quartz watches measure time by counting the exact number of oscillations of a quartz crystal through use of a digital counter. Digital clocks use the oscillations of quartz crystals or power lines (60 cycles per second in the United States), but may also count through use of digital counters. Grandfather clocks use the swing of a pendulum, once every second and recorded by metal gears inside the clock, to keep time.
As with the movement of the heavens, men have learned to capture the reliability of Cesium 133 atoms and the movement of cooled mercury ions to count time. Their number of oscillations per second never varies. Could this perfect order be the product of an accident?
In summary, only with great time and effort, the finest watchmakers in the world can, at best, devise several kinds of relatively imprecise clocks. Can any honest, fair-minded person then believe that the three highly precise clocks—the heavens, atomic and optical clocks—came about by accident? In other words, are we to believe that while very sophisticated, humanly devised watches required the effort and ingenuity of skilled, intelligent men to create them, clocks of far greater sophistication, precision and design developed on their own? How utterly ridiculous!
You have seen absolute proof that only the “Greatest Watchmaker” could have devised these “greatest watches.”
PurpleJ
New Fish
First Law of Thermodynamics
What is the truth of modern science regarding the origin of all matter in the universe? Do scientists tell us that it has always existed? Or have they determined that there was a moment in time in which all matter came into existence? The answer to the second question is, yes! But what is the proof that this is true?
The First Law of Thermodynamics is stated as follows: matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. There are no natural processes that can alter either matter or energy in this way. This means that there is no new matter or energy coming into existence and there is no new matter or energy passing out of existence. All who state that the universe came into existence from nothing violate the first law of thermodynamics, which was established by the very scientific community who now seem willing to ignore it. In summary, this law plainly demonstrates that the universe, and all matter and energy within it, must have had a divine origin—a specific moment in which it was created by someone who was all-powerful.
With the coming of the Atomic Age, beginning with the discovery of radium in 1898 by Madame Curie, came the knowledge that all radioactive elements continually give off radiation. Consider! Uranium has an atomic weight of 238.0. As it decomposes, it releases a helium atom three times. Each helium atom has a weight of 4. With the new weight of 226.0, uranium becomes radium. Radium continues to give off additional atoms until eventually the end product becomes the heavy inert element called lead. This takes a tremendous amount of time. While the process of uranium turning into radium is very long, the radium turns into lead in 1,590 years.
What are we saying? There was a point in time when the uranium could not have existed, because it always breaks down in a highly systematic, controlled way. It is not stable like lead or other elements. It breaks down. This means there was a specific moment in time when all radioactive elements came into existence. Remember, all of them—uranium, radium, thorium, radon, polonium, francium, protactinium and others—have not existed forever. This represents absolute proof that matter came into existence or, in other words, matter has not always existed!
This flies directly in the face of evolutionary thought—that everything gradually evolved into something else. Here is the problem. You cannot have something slowly come into existence from nothing! Matter could not have come into existence by itself. No rational person could believe that the entire universe—including all of the radioactive elements that prove there was a specific time of beginning—gradually came into existence BY ITSELF!
Through your own efforts, try to build something—anything—from nothing. Even with your creative power engaged in the effort, you would never be able to do it. You would not be able—in a hundred lifetimes of trying—to produce a single thing from nothing!
Can any doubter believe that everything in the entirety of the universe, in all of its exquisite detail, came into existence completely by itself? Be honest. Accept facts. This is proof that the existing natural realm demands the existence of a Great Creator!
Second Law of Thermodynamics
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is best summarized by saying that everything moves toward disorder—or a condition known as entropy. This bears some explanation and we will consider several examples.
Remember that evolutionists teach that everything is constantly evolving into a higher and more complex order. In other words, they believe things continue to get better and better instead of worse and worse.
If water being heated on a stove is at 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and the burner is turned off, the temperature will drop instead of rise. It will move toward colder rather than hotter. If a ball is placed on a hill, it will always roll downhill and not uphill. Energy used to perform any particular task changes from usable energy to unusable in the performing of that task. It will always go from a higher energy level to a lower energy level—where less and less energy is available for use.
When applied to the universe, the second law of thermodynamics indicates that the universe is winding down—moving toward disorder or entropy—not winding up or moving toward more perfect order and structure. In short, the entire universe is winding down!
Even evolutionists admit that the theory of evolution and the second law of thermodynamics are completely incompatible with each other. Consider: “Regarding the second law of thermodynamics [universally accepted scientific law which states that all things left to themselves will tend to run down] or the law of entropy, it is observed, ‘It would hardly be possible to conceive of two more completely opposite principles than this principle of entropy increase and the principle of evolution. Each is precisely the converse of the other. As [Aldous] Huxley defined it, evolution involves a continual increase of order, of organization, of size, of complexity…It seems axiomatic that both cannot possibly be true. But there is no question whatever that the second law of thermodynamics is true’” (The Twilight of Evolution).
Like a top or a yo-yo, the universe must have been “wound up.” Since the universe is constantly winding down, the second law of thermodynamics looms before us in the form of a great question: who wound it up? The only plausible answer is God!
Theory Debunked
We have established that Creation demands a Creator. Where does this leave evolution?
The theory of evolution is shot full of inconsistencies. Evolutionists have seized on many theories, within the overall theory of evolution, in an attempt to explain the origins of plants, animals, the heavens, and the Earth.
Over and over, these “theorists” try to explain how life evolved from inanimate material into more complex life forms until it reached the pinnacle—human beings.
Yet, as one geologist wrote, “It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as [a] student…have been debunked” (The Nature of the Fossil Record, Proceedings of the Geological Association).
Perhaps the biggest reason that so many theories within the overall theory of evolution collapse is because they contain terrible logic requiring great leaps in faith to believe. Here is one example of a “debunked” theory: “Many evolutionists have tried to argue that humans are 99% similar chemically to apes and blood precipitation tests do indicate that the chimpanzee is people’s closest relative. Yet regarding this we must observe the following: ‘Milk chemistry indicates that the donkey is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Cholesterol level tests indicate that the garter snake is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Tear enzyme chemistry indicates that the chicken is man’s closest relative.’ ‘On the basis of another type of blood chemistry test, the butter bean is man’s closest relative’” (The Twilight of Evolution).
Complexity of Life
Everyone has witnessed explosions. Have you ever seen one that was orderly? Or one that created a watch or a clock? Or one that produced a single thing of exquisite design—instead of the certain result of chaos and destruction? If you threw a million hand grenades, you would see them produce chaos and destruction a million times! There would never be an exception.
Consider the following quotes, involving the likelihood of an explosion creating the entire natural realm of life all around us on Earth—let alone the beautiful magnificence and order seen no matter how far one looks out into space.
Dr. B.G. Ranganathan said, “…the probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop” (Origins?). And this only speaks to the likelihood of any life at all, rather than the most highly complex forms such as large animals or human beings—let alone all the different kinds of life that exist today.
In this Personal, we have explained just a tiny fraction of all there is to know about this subject.
For more undeniable proof of the existence of God, be sure to read my booklet Does God Exist?
What is the truth of modern science regarding the origin of all matter in the universe? Do scientists tell us that it has always existed? Or have they determined that there was a moment in time in which all matter came into existence? The answer to the second question is, yes! But what is the proof that this is true?
The First Law of Thermodynamics is stated as follows: matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. There are no natural processes that can alter either matter or energy in this way. This means that there is no new matter or energy coming into existence and there is no new matter or energy passing out of existence. All who state that the universe came into existence from nothing violate the first law of thermodynamics, which was established by the very scientific community who now seem willing to ignore it. In summary, this law plainly demonstrates that the universe, and all matter and energy within it, must have had a divine origin—a specific moment in which it was created by someone who was all-powerful.
With the coming of the Atomic Age, beginning with the discovery of radium in 1898 by Madame Curie, came the knowledge that all radioactive elements continually give off radiation. Consider! Uranium has an atomic weight of 238.0. As it decomposes, it releases a helium atom three times. Each helium atom has a weight of 4. With the new weight of 226.0, uranium becomes radium. Radium continues to give off additional atoms until eventually the end product becomes the heavy inert element called lead. This takes a tremendous amount of time. While the process of uranium turning into radium is very long, the radium turns into lead in 1,590 years.
What are we saying? There was a point in time when the uranium could not have existed, because it always breaks down in a highly systematic, controlled way. It is not stable like lead or other elements. It breaks down. This means there was a specific moment in time when all radioactive elements came into existence. Remember, all of them—uranium, radium, thorium, radon, polonium, francium, protactinium and others—have not existed forever. This represents absolute proof that matter came into existence or, in other words, matter has not always existed!
This flies directly in the face of evolutionary thought—that everything gradually evolved into something else. Here is the problem. You cannot have something slowly come into existence from nothing! Matter could not have come into existence by itself. No rational person could believe that the entire universe—including all of the radioactive elements that prove there was a specific time of beginning—gradually came into existence BY ITSELF!
Through your own efforts, try to build something—anything—from nothing. Even with your creative power engaged in the effort, you would never be able to do it. You would not be able—in a hundred lifetimes of trying—to produce a single thing from nothing!
Can any doubter believe that everything in the entirety of the universe, in all of its exquisite detail, came into existence completely by itself? Be honest. Accept facts. This is proof that the existing natural realm demands the existence of a Great Creator!
Second Law of Thermodynamics
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is best summarized by saying that everything moves toward disorder—or a condition known as entropy. This bears some explanation and we will consider several examples.
Remember that evolutionists teach that everything is constantly evolving into a higher and more complex order. In other words, they believe things continue to get better and better instead of worse and worse.
If water being heated on a stove is at 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and the burner is turned off, the temperature will drop instead of rise. It will move toward colder rather than hotter. If a ball is placed on a hill, it will always roll downhill and not uphill. Energy used to perform any particular task changes from usable energy to unusable in the performing of that task. It will always go from a higher energy level to a lower energy level—where less and less energy is available for use.
When applied to the universe, the second law of thermodynamics indicates that the universe is winding down—moving toward disorder or entropy—not winding up or moving toward more perfect order and structure. In short, the entire universe is winding down!
Even evolutionists admit that the theory of evolution and the second law of thermodynamics are completely incompatible with each other. Consider: “Regarding the second law of thermodynamics [universally accepted scientific law which states that all things left to themselves will tend to run down] or the law of entropy, it is observed, ‘It would hardly be possible to conceive of two more completely opposite principles than this principle of entropy increase and the principle of evolution. Each is precisely the converse of the other. As [Aldous] Huxley defined it, evolution involves a continual increase of order, of organization, of size, of complexity…It seems axiomatic that both cannot possibly be true. But there is no question whatever that the second law of thermodynamics is true’” (The Twilight of Evolution).
Like a top or a yo-yo, the universe must have been “wound up.” Since the universe is constantly winding down, the second law of thermodynamics looms before us in the form of a great question: who wound it up? The only plausible answer is God!
Theory Debunked
We have established that Creation demands a Creator. Where does this leave evolution?
The theory of evolution is shot full of inconsistencies. Evolutionists have seized on many theories, within the overall theory of evolution, in an attempt to explain the origins of plants, animals, the heavens, and the Earth.
Over and over, these “theorists” try to explain how life evolved from inanimate material into more complex life forms until it reached the pinnacle—human beings.
Yet, as one geologist wrote, “It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as [a] student…have been debunked” (The Nature of the Fossil Record, Proceedings of the Geological Association).
Perhaps the biggest reason that so many theories within the overall theory of evolution collapse is because they contain terrible logic requiring great leaps in faith to believe. Here is one example of a “debunked” theory: “Many evolutionists have tried to argue that humans are 99% similar chemically to apes and blood precipitation tests do indicate that the chimpanzee is people’s closest relative. Yet regarding this we must observe the following: ‘Milk chemistry indicates that the donkey is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Cholesterol level tests indicate that the garter snake is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Tear enzyme chemistry indicates that the chicken is man’s closest relative.’ ‘On the basis of another type of blood chemistry test, the butter bean is man’s closest relative’” (The Twilight of Evolution).
Complexity of Life
Everyone has witnessed explosions. Have you ever seen one that was orderly? Or one that created a watch or a clock? Or one that produced a single thing of exquisite design—instead of the certain result of chaos and destruction? If you threw a million hand grenades, you would see them produce chaos and destruction a million times! There would never be an exception.
Consider the following quotes, involving the likelihood of an explosion creating the entire natural realm of life all around us on Earth—let alone the beautiful magnificence and order seen no matter how far one looks out into space.
Dr. B.G. Ranganathan said, “…the probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop” (Origins?). And this only speaks to the likelihood of any life at all, rather than the most highly complex forms such as large animals or human beings—let alone all the different kinds of life that exist today.
In this Personal, we have explained just a tiny fraction of all there is to know about this subject.
For more undeniable proof of the existence of God, be sure to read my booklet Does God Exist?
GrundleStiltzkin
New Fish
The hookers-n-blows, pink tutus, just win crowd getting vaginitis over a guy who generally wins but likes to go to church is funny as he**.
Regardless, the twelthfie tumult is delicious as always.
Regardless, the twelthfie tumult is delicious as always.
sarktastic
New Fish
Poast this shit on the recruiting bored that parents read... that's free of profanity and Peterman will have a full class of smart kids committed in a week
Jesus_H_Christ
New Fish
Jesus_H_Christ
New Fish
For the record, I told Russell to pork her brains out the way I did to Mary Magdalene as written in the book of Joseph. As you are well aware, the book of Joseph did not make the cut when putting the bible together. And it had pics. FYFMFE
You know how Bruce Almighty was able to make Jennifer Anniston orgasm in another room. It was like that, but better
You know how Bruce Almighty was able to make Jennifer Anniston orgasm in another room. It was like that, but better
Did somebody say that the Seahawks should get rid of him or trade him for Jameis Winston or Ben Roethlisberger? NOGAF that RW is Christian either. A lot of players are. But when you talk about speaking to God, and that he is using you, you come off as looney. Some would consider hearing voices to be a sign of mental illness, but I guess it's different when that voice is God.
I guess Christians will consider this a prime example of being criticized for being open about faith, but that's not reality. If he just talked about being thankful to God and praising him for giving him his talent and these opportunities, very few would have any issue.
The twelthfie tumult will end in another division title and contending for a SuperBowl, followed by the same thing the next year.
sarktastic
New Fish
I always enjoy it when somebody with no faith (the minority) thinks somebody with faith (the majority) is loony rather than just shrug it off and move along.
jecornel
New Fish
An all perfect and all knowing being would have never written a book so poorly as the bible. Also read dueteronomy as the all loving god is brutal mass murderer.. these two points make it pretty clear that "this god" does not exist.
Any hoo,
Russell is just over the top on this one. He is putting himself on quite the pedestal.
Christians will just devour this stuff, but for me I prefer to watch his god given talents on the field than hearing about how hard it is not to have sex before marriage.
But then again I can't wait to hear about his wedding night! Should be juicy!
Any hoo,
Russell is just over the top on this one. He is putting himself on quite the pedestal.
Christians will just devour this stuff, but for me I prefer to watch his god given talents on the field than hearing about how hard it is not to have sex before marriage.
But then again I can't wait to hear about his wedding night! Should be juicy!
He needs to keep trolling Jimmy
Jesus_H_Christ
New Fish
sarktastic
New Fish
PPV?
Kaepsknee
New Fish
Truth.
But he'll be making at least $30 MM dnc bucks per year, I'm hearing.
The real truth will come in a couple of years when the glue guys on D have to be let go and He will be relied upon to win games more than 2 or 3 times per year, as is now.
Aaron Rodgers hasn't beat Russel Wilson. But how many non-hooks think that RW could even carry AR's jock?
The difference is that Wilson has a great defense and Rodgers is mediocre at best.
Let them switch teams and see what happens.
Cue the but.... but.... Seattle's receivers suck in ..... 3......2........
A theory of everything (ToE) or final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe.[1]:6 Finding a ToE is one of the major unsolved problems in physics. Over the past few centuries, two theoretical frameworks have been developed that, as a whole, most closely resemble a ToE. The two theories upon which all modern physics rests are general relativity (GR) and quantum field theory (QFT). GR is a theoretical framework that only focuses on the force of gravity for understanding the universe in regions of both large-scale and high-mass: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc. On the other hand, QFT is a theoretical framework that only focuses on three non-gravitational forces for understanding the universe in regions of both small scale and low mass: sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, etc. QFT successfully implemented the Standard Model and unified the interactions (so-called Grand Unified Theory) between the three non-gravitational forces: weak, strong, and electromagnetic force.[2]:122
Through years of research, physicists have experimentally confirmed with tremendous accuracy virtually every prediction made by these two theories when in their appropriate domains of applicability. In accordance with their findings, scientists also learned that GR and QFT, as they are currently formulated, are mutually incompatible - they cannot both be right. Since the usual domains of applicability of GR and QFT are so different, most situations require that only one of the two theories be used.[3][4]:842–844 As it turns out, this incompatibility between GR and QFT is only an apparent issue in regions of extremely small-scale and high-mass, such as those that exist within a black hole or during the beginning stages of the universe (i.e., the moment immediately following the Big Bang). To resolve this conflict, a theoretical framework revealing a deeper underlying reality, unifying gravity with the other three interactions, must be discovered to harmoniously integrate the realms of GR and QFT into a seamless whole: a single theory that, in principle, is capable of describing all phenomena. In pursuit of this goal, quantum gravity has recently become an area of active research.
Over the past few decades, a single explanatory framework, called "string theory", has emerged that may turn out to be the ultimate theory of the universe. Many physicists believe that, at the beginning of the universe (up to 10−43 seconds after the Big Bang), the four fundamental forces were once a single fundamental force. Unlike most (if not all) other theories, string theory may be on its way to successfully incorporating each of the four fundamental forces into a unified whole. According to string theory, every particle in the universe, at its most microscopic level (Planck length), consists of varying combinations of vibrating strings (or strands) with preferred patterns of vibration. String theory claims that it is through these specific oscillatory patterns of strings that a particle of unique mass and force charge is created (that is to say, the electron is a type of string that vibrates one way, while the up-quark is a type of string vibrating another way, and so forth).
Initially, the term theory of everything was used with an ironic connotation to refer to various overgeneralized theories. For example, a grandfather of Ijon Tichy — a character from a cycle of Stanisław Lem's science fiction stories of the 1960s — was known to work on the "General Theory of Everything". Physicist John Ellis[5] claims to have introduced the term into the technical literature in an article in Nature in 1986.[6] Over time, the term stuck in popularizations of theoretical physics research.
Contents [hide]
1 Historical antecedents
1.1 From ancient Greece to Einstein
1.2 Twentieth century and the nuclear interactions
2 Modern physics
2.1 Conventional sequence of theories
2.2 String theory and M-theory
2.3 Loop quantum gravity
2.4 Other attempts
2.5 Present status
3 Theory of everything and philosophy
4 Arguments against a theory of everything
4.1 Gödel's incompleteness theorem
4.2 Fundamental limits in accuracy
4.3 Lack of fundamental laws
4.4 Impossibility of being "of everything"
4.5 Infinite number of onion layers
4.6 Impossibility of calculation
5 See also
6 References
6.1 Footnotes
6.2 Bibliography
7 External links
Historical antecedents[edit]
From ancient Greece to Einstein[edit]
Archimedes was possibly the first scientist known to have described nature with axioms (or principles) and then deduce new results from them.[7] He thus tried to describe "everything" starting from a few axioms. Any "theory of everything" is similarly expected to be based on axioms and to deduce all observable phenomena from them.[8]:340
The concept of 'atom', introduced by Democritus, unified all phenomena observed in nature as the motion of atoms. In ancient Greek times philosophers speculated that the apparent diversity of observed phenomena was due to a single type of interaction, namely the collisions of atoms. Following atomism, the mechanical philosophy of the 17th century posited that all forces could be ultimately reduced to contact forces between the atoms, then imagined as tiny solid particles.[9]:184[10]
In the late 17th century, Isaac Newton's description of the long-distance force of gravity implied that not all forces in nature result from things coming into contact. Newton's work in his Principia dealt with this in a further example of unification, in this case unifying Galileo's work on terrestrial gravity, Kepler's laws of planetary motion and the phenomenon of tides by explaining these apparent actions at a distance under one single law: the law of universal gravitation.[11]
In 1814, building on these results, Laplace famously suggested that a sufficiently powerful intellect could, if it knew the position and velocity of every particle at a given time, along with the laws of nature, calculate the position of any particle at any other time:[12]:ch 7
An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
—Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, Introduction. 1814
Laplace thus envisaged a combination of gravitation and mechanics as a theory of everything. Modern quantum mechanics implies that uncertainty is inescapable, and thus that Laplace's vision has to be amended: a theory of everything must include gravitation and quantum mechanics.
In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted discovered a connection between electricity and magnetism, triggering decades of work that culminated in 1865, in James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, it gradually became apparent that many common examples of forces – contact forces, elasticity, viscosity, friction, and pressure – result from electrical interactions between the smallest particles of matter.
In his experiments of 1849–50, Michael Faraday was the first to search for a unification of gravity with electricity and magnetism.[13] However, he found no connection.
In 1900, David Hilbert published a famous list of mathematical problems. In Hilbert's sixth problem, he challenged researchers to find an axiomatic basis to all of physics. In this problem he thus asked for what today would be called a theory of everything.[14]
In the late 1920s, the new quantum mechanics showed that the chemical bonds between atoms were examples of (quantum) electrical forces, justifying Dirac's boast that "the underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known".[15]
After 1915, when Albert Einstein published the theory of gravity (general relativity), the search for a unified field theory combining gravity with electromagnetism began with a renewed interest. In Einstein's day, the strong and the weak forces had not yet been discovered, yet, he found the potential existence of two other distinct forces -gravity and electromagnetism- far more alluring. This launched his thirty-year voyage in search of the so-called "unified field theory" that he hoped would show that these two forces are really manifestations of one grand underlying principle. During these last few decades of his life, this quixotic quest isolated Einstein from the mainstream of physics. Understandably, the mainstream was instead far more excited about the newly emerging framework of quantum mechanics. Einstein wrote to a friend in the early 1940s, "I have become a lonely old chap who is mainly known because he doesn't wear socks and who is exhibited as a curiosity on special occasions." Prominent contributors were Gunnar Nordström, Hermann Weyl, Arthur Eddington, Theodor Kaluza, Oskar Klein, and most notably, Albert Einstein and his collaborators. Einstein intensely searched for, but ultimately failed to find, a unifying theory.[16]:ch 17 (But see:Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations.) More than a half a century later, Einstein's dream of discovering a unified theory has become the Holy Grail of modern physics.
Twentieth century and the nuclear interactions[edit]
In the twentieth century, the search for a unifying theory was interrupted by the discovery of the strong and weak nuclear forces (or interactions), which differ both from gravity and from electromagnetism. A further hurdle was the acceptance that in a ToE, quantum mechanics had to be incorporated from the start, rather than emerging as a consequence of a deterministic unified theory, as Einstein had hoped.
Gravity and electromagnetism could always peacefully coexist as entries in a list of classical forces, but for many years it seemed that gravity could not even be incorporated into the quantum framework, let alone unified with the other fundamental forces. For this reason, work on unification, for much of the twentieth century, focused on understanding the three "quantum" forces: electromagnetism and the weak and strong forces. The first two were combined in 1967–68 by Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and Abdus Salam into the "electroweak" force.[17] Electroweak unification is a broken symmetry: the electromagnetic and weak forces appear distinct at low energies because the particles carrying the weak force, the W and Z bosons, have non-zero masses of 80.4 GeV/c2 and 91.2 GeV/c2, whereas the photon, which carries the electromagnetic force, is massless. At higher energies Ws and Zs can be created easily and the unified nature of the force becomes apparent.
While the strong and electroweak forces peacefully coexist in the Standard Model of particle physics, they remain distinct. So far, the quest for a theory of everything is thus unsuccessful on two points: neither a unification of the strong and electroweak forces – which Laplace would have called 'contact forces' – has been achieved, nor has a unification of these forces with gravitation been achieved.
Modern physics[edit]
Conventional sequence of theories[edit]
A Theory of Everything would unify all the fundamental interactions of nature: gravitation, strong interaction, weak interaction, and electromagnetism. Because the weak interaction can transform elementary particles from one kind into another, the ToE should also yield a deep understanding of the various different kinds of possible particles. The usual assumed path of theories is given in the following graph, where each unification step leads one level up:
Theory of everything
Quantum gravity
Space Curvature
Electronuclear force (GUT)
Standard model of cosmology
Standard model of particle physics
Strong interaction
SU(3)
Electroweak interaction
SU(2) x U(1)Y
Weak interaction
Electromagnetism
U(1)EM
Electricity
Magnetism
In this graph, electroweak unification occurs at around 100 GeV, grand unification is predicted to occur at 1016 GeV, and unification of the GUT force with gravity is expected at the Planck energy, roughly 1019 GeV.
Several Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) have been proposed to unify electromagnetism and the weak and strong forces. Grand unification would imply the existence of an electronuclear force; it is expected to set in at energies of the order of 1016 GeV, far greater than could be reached by any possible Earth-based particle accelerator. Although the simplest GUTs have been experimentally ruled out, the general idea, especially when linked with supersymmetry, remains a favorite candidate in the theoretical physics community. Supersymmetric GUTs seem plausible not only for their theoretical "beauty", but because they naturally produce large quantities of dark matter, and because the inflationary force may be related to GUT physics (although it does not seem to form an inevitable part of the theory). Yet GUTs are clearly not the final answer; both the current standard model and all proposed GUTs are quantum field theories which require the problematic technique of renormalization to yield sensible answers. This is usually regarded as a sign that these are only effective field theories, omitting crucial phenomena relevant only at very high energies.[3]
The final step in the graph requires resolving the separation between quantum mechanics and gravitation, often equated with general relativity. Numerous researchers concentrate their efforts on this specific step; nevertheless, no accepted theory of quantum gravity – and thus no accepted theory of everything – has emerged yet. It is usually assumed that the ToE will also solve the remaining problems of GUTs.
In addition to explaining the forces listed in the graph, a ToE may also explain the status of at least two candidate forces suggested by modern cosmology: an inflationary force and dark energy. Furthermore, cosmological experiments also suggest the existence of dark matter, supposedly composed of fundamental particles outside the scheme of the standard model. However, the existence of these forces and particles has not been proven yet.
String theory and M-theory[edit]
Through years of research, physicists have experimentally confirmed with tremendous accuracy virtually every prediction made by these two theories when in their appropriate domains of applicability. In accordance with their findings, scientists also learned that GR and QFT, as they are currently formulated, are mutually incompatible - they cannot both be right. Since the usual domains of applicability of GR and QFT are so different, most situations require that only one of the two theories be used.[3][4]:842–844 As it turns out, this incompatibility between GR and QFT is only an apparent issue in regions of extremely small-scale and high-mass, such as those that exist within a black hole or during the beginning stages of the universe (i.e., the moment immediately following the Big Bang). To resolve this conflict, a theoretical framework revealing a deeper underlying reality, unifying gravity with the other three interactions, must be discovered to harmoniously integrate the realms of GR and QFT into a seamless whole: a single theory that, in principle, is capable of describing all phenomena. In pursuit of this goal, quantum gravity has recently become an area of active research.
Over the past few decades, a single explanatory framework, called "string theory", has emerged that may turn out to be the ultimate theory of the universe. Many physicists believe that, at the beginning of the universe (up to 10−43 seconds after the Big Bang), the four fundamental forces were once a single fundamental force. Unlike most (if not all) other theories, string theory may be on its way to successfully incorporating each of the four fundamental forces into a unified whole. According to string theory, every particle in the universe, at its most microscopic level (Planck length), consists of varying combinations of vibrating strings (or strands) with preferred patterns of vibration. String theory claims that it is through these specific oscillatory patterns of strings that a particle of unique mass and force charge is created (that is to say, the electron is a type of string that vibrates one way, while the up-quark is a type of string vibrating another way, and so forth).
Initially, the term theory of everything was used with an ironic connotation to refer to various overgeneralized theories. For example, a grandfather of Ijon Tichy — a character from a cycle of Stanisław Lem's science fiction stories of the 1960s — was known to work on the "General Theory of Everything". Physicist John Ellis[5] claims to have introduced the term into the technical literature in an article in Nature in 1986.[6] Over time, the term stuck in popularizations of theoretical physics research.
Contents [hide]
1 Historical antecedents
1.1 From ancient Greece to Einstein
1.2 Twentieth century and the nuclear interactions
2 Modern physics
2.1 Conventional sequence of theories
2.2 String theory and M-theory
2.3 Loop quantum gravity
2.4 Other attempts
2.5 Present status
3 Theory of everything and philosophy
4 Arguments against a theory of everything
4.1 Gödel's incompleteness theorem
4.2 Fundamental limits in accuracy
4.3 Lack of fundamental laws
4.4 Impossibility of being "of everything"
4.5 Infinite number of onion layers
4.6 Impossibility of calculation
5 See also
6 References
6.1 Footnotes
6.2 Bibliography
7 External links
Historical antecedents[edit]
From ancient Greece to Einstein[edit]
Archimedes was possibly the first scientist known to have described nature with axioms (or principles) and then deduce new results from them.[7] He thus tried to describe "everything" starting from a few axioms. Any "theory of everything" is similarly expected to be based on axioms and to deduce all observable phenomena from them.[8]:340
The concept of 'atom', introduced by Democritus, unified all phenomena observed in nature as the motion of atoms. In ancient Greek times philosophers speculated that the apparent diversity of observed phenomena was due to a single type of interaction, namely the collisions of atoms. Following atomism, the mechanical philosophy of the 17th century posited that all forces could be ultimately reduced to contact forces between the atoms, then imagined as tiny solid particles.[9]:184[10]
In the late 17th century, Isaac Newton's description of the long-distance force of gravity implied that not all forces in nature result from things coming into contact. Newton's work in his Principia dealt with this in a further example of unification, in this case unifying Galileo's work on terrestrial gravity, Kepler's laws of planetary motion and the phenomenon of tides by explaining these apparent actions at a distance under one single law: the law of universal gravitation.[11]
In 1814, building on these results, Laplace famously suggested that a sufficiently powerful intellect could, if it knew the position and velocity of every particle at a given time, along with the laws of nature, calculate the position of any particle at any other time:[12]:ch 7
An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
—Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, Introduction. 1814
Laplace thus envisaged a combination of gravitation and mechanics as a theory of everything. Modern quantum mechanics implies that uncertainty is inescapable, and thus that Laplace's vision has to be amended: a theory of everything must include gravitation and quantum mechanics.
In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted discovered a connection between electricity and magnetism, triggering decades of work that culminated in 1865, in James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, it gradually became apparent that many common examples of forces – contact forces, elasticity, viscosity, friction, and pressure – result from electrical interactions between the smallest particles of matter.
In his experiments of 1849–50, Michael Faraday was the first to search for a unification of gravity with electricity and magnetism.[13] However, he found no connection.
In 1900, David Hilbert published a famous list of mathematical problems. In Hilbert's sixth problem, he challenged researchers to find an axiomatic basis to all of physics. In this problem he thus asked for what today would be called a theory of everything.[14]
In the late 1920s, the new quantum mechanics showed that the chemical bonds between atoms were examples of (quantum) electrical forces, justifying Dirac's boast that "the underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known".[15]
After 1915, when Albert Einstein published the theory of gravity (general relativity), the search for a unified field theory combining gravity with electromagnetism began with a renewed interest. In Einstein's day, the strong and the weak forces had not yet been discovered, yet, he found the potential existence of two other distinct forces -gravity and electromagnetism- far more alluring. This launched his thirty-year voyage in search of the so-called "unified field theory" that he hoped would show that these two forces are really manifestations of one grand underlying principle. During these last few decades of his life, this quixotic quest isolated Einstein from the mainstream of physics. Understandably, the mainstream was instead far more excited about the newly emerging framework of quantum mechanics. Einstein wrote to a friend in the early 1940s, "I have become a lonely old chap who is mainly known because he doesn't wear socks and who is exhibited as a curiosity on special occasions." Prominent contributors were Gunnar Nordström, Hermann Weyl, Arthur Eddington, Theodor Kaluza, Oskar Klein, and most notably, Albert Einstein and his collaborators. Einstein intensely searched for, but ultimately failed to find, a unifying theory.[16]:ch 17 (But see:Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations.) More than a half a century later, Einstein's dream of discovering a unified theory has become the Holy Grail of modern physics.
Twentieth century and the nuclear interactions[edit]
In the twentieth century, the search for a unifying theory was interrupted by the discovery of the strong and weak nuclear forces (or interactions), which differ both from gravity and from electromagnetism. A further hurdle was the acceptance that in a ToE, quantum mechanics had to be incorporated from the start, rather than emerging as a consequence of a deterministic unified theory, as Einstein had hoped.
Gravity and electromagnetism could always peacefully coexist as entries in a list of classical forces, but for many years it seemed that gravity could not even be incorporated into the quantum framework, let alone unified with the other fundamental forces. For this reason, work on unification, for much of the twentieth century, focused on understanding the three "quantum" forces: electromagnetism and the weak and strong forces. The first two were combined in 1967–68 by Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and Abdus Salam into the "electroweak" force.[17] Electroweak unification is a broken symmetry: the electromagnetic and weak forces appear distinct at low energies because the particles carrying the weak force, the W and Z bosons, have non-zero masses of 80.4 GeV/c2 and 91.2 GeV/c2, whereas the photon, which carries the electromagnetic force, is massless. At higher energies Ws and Zs can be created easily and the unified nature of the force becomes apparent.
While the strong and electroweak forces peacefully coexist in the Standard Model of particle physics, they remain distinct. So far, the quest for a theory of everything is thus unsuccessful on two points: neither a unification of the strong and electroweak forces – which Laplace would have called 'contact forces' – has been achieved, nor has a unification of these forces with gravitation been achieved.
Modern physics[edit]
Conventional sequence of theories[edit]
A Theory of Everything would unify all the fundamental interactions of nature: gravitation, strong interaction, weak interaction, and electromagnetism. Because the weak interaction can transform elementary particles from one kind into another, the ToE should also yield a deep understanding of the various different kinds of possible particles. The usual assumed path of theories is given in the following graph, where each unification step leads one level up:
Theory of everything
Quantum gravity
Space Curvature
Electronuclear force (GUT)
Standard model of cosmology
Standard model of particle physics
Strong interaction
SU(3)
Electroweak interaction
SU(2) x U(1)Y
Weak interaction
Electromagnetism
U(1)EM
Electricity
Magnetism
In this graph, electroweak unification occurs at around 100 GeV, grand unification is predicted to occur at 1016 GeV, and unification of the GUT force with gravity is expected at the Planck energy, roughly 1019 GeV.
Several Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) have been proposed to unify electromagnetism and the weak and strong forces. Grand unification would imply the existence of an electronuclear force; it is expected to set in at energies of the order of 1016 GeV, far greater than could be reached by any possible Earth-based particle accelerator. Although the simplest GUTs have been experimentally ruled out, the general idea, especially when linked with supersymmetry, remains a favorite candidate in the theoretical physics community. Supersymmetric GUTs seem plausible not only for their theoretical "beauty", but because they naturally produce large quantities of dark matter, and because the inflationary force may be related to GUT physics (although it does not seem to form an inevitable part of the theory). Yet GUTs are clearly not the final answer; both the current standard model and all proposed GUTs are quantum field theories which require the problematic technique of renormalization to yield sensible answers. This is usually regarded as a sign that these are only effective field theories, omitting crucial phenomena relevant only at very high energies.[3]
The final step in the graph requires resolving the separation between quantum mechanics and gravitation, often equated with general relativity. Numerous researchers concentrate their efforts on this specific step; nevertheless, no accepted theory of quantum gravity – and thus no accepted theory of everything – has emerged yet. It is usually assumed that the ToE will also solve the remaining problems of GUTs.
In addition to explaining the forces listed in the graph, a ToE may also explain the status of at least two candidate forces suggested by modern cosmology: an inflationary force and dark energy. Furthermore, cosmological experiments also suggest the existence of dark matter, supposedly composed of fundamental particles outside the scheme of the standard model. However, the existence of these forces and particles has not been proven yet.
String theory and M-theory[edit]
Since the 1990s, many physicists[citation needed] believe that 11-dimensional M-theory, which is described in some limits by one of the five perturbative superstring theories, and in another by the maximally-supersymmetric 11-dimensional supergravity, is the theory of everything. However, there is no widespread consensus on this issue.
A surprising property of string/M-theory is that extra dimensions are required for the theory's consistency. In this regard, string theory can be seen as building on the insights of the Kaluza–Klein theory, in which it was realized that applying general relativity to a five-dimensional universe (with one of them small and curled up) looks from the four-dimensional perspective like the usual general relativity together with Maxwell's electrodynamics. This lent credence to the idea of unifying gauge and gravity interactions, and to extra dimensions, but didn't address the detailed experimental requirements. Another important property of string theory is its supersymmetry, which together with extra dimensions are the two main proposals for resolving the hierarchy problem of the standard model, which is (roughly) the question of why gravity is so much weaker than any other force. The extra-dimensional solution involves allowing gravity to propagate into the other dimensions while keeping other forces confined to a four-dimensional spacetime, an idea that has been realized with explicit stringy mechanisms.[18]
Research into string theory has been encouraged by a variety of theoretical and experimental factors. On the experimental side, the particle content of the standard model supplemented with neutrino masses fits into a spinor representation of SO(10), a subgroup of E8 that routinely emerges in string theory, such as in heterotic string theory[19] or (sometimes equivalently) in F-theory.[20][21] String theory has mechanisms that may explain why fermions come in three hierarchical generations, and explain the mixing rates between quark generations.[22] On the theoretical side, it has begun to address some of the key questions in quantum gravity, such as resolving the black hole information paradox, counting the correct entropy of black holes[23][24] and allowing for topology-changing processes.[25][26][27] It has also led to many insights in pure mathematics and in ordinary, strongly-coupled gauge theory due to the Gauge/String duality.
In the late 1990s, it was noted that one major hurdle in this endeavor is that the number of possible four-dimensional universes is incredibly large. The small, "curled up" extra dimensions can be compactified in an enormous number of different ways (one estimate is 10500 ) each of which leads to different properties for the low-energy particles and forces. This array of models is known as the string theory landscape.[8]:347
One proposed solution is that many or all of these possibilities are realised in one or another of 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 dictated by theory. This has led to criticism of string theory,[28] arguing that it cannot make useful (i.e., original, falsifiable, and verifiable) predictions and regarding it as a pseudoscience. Others disagree,[29] and string theory remains an extremely active topic of investigation in theoretical physics.
Loop quantum gravity[edit]
Current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a ToE, but that is not its primary aim.[30] Also loop quantum gravity introduces a lower bound on the possible length scales.
There have been recent claims that loop quantum gravity may be able to reproduce features resembling the Standard Model. So far only the first generation of fermions (leptons and quarks) with correct parity properties have been modelled by Sundance Bilson-Thompson using preons constituted of braids of spacetime as the building blocks.[31] However, there is no derivation of the Lagrangian that would describe the interactions of such particles, nor is it possible to show that such particles are fermions, nor that the gauge groups or interactions of the Standard Model are realised. Utilization of quantum computing concepts made it possible to demonstrate that the particles are able to survive quantum fluctuations.[32]
This model leads to an interpretation of electric and colour charge as topological quantities (electric as number and chirality of twists carried on the individual ribbons and colour as variants of such twisting for fixed electric charge).
Bilson-Thompson's original paper suggested that the higher-generation fermions could be represented by more complicated braidings, although explicit constructions of these structures were not given. The electric charge, colour, and parity properties of such fermions would arise in the same way as for the first generation. The model was expressly generalized for an infinite number of generations and for the weak force bosons (but not for photons or gluons) in a 2008 paper by Bilson-Thompson, Hackett, Kauffman and Smolin.[33]
Other attempts[edit]
A recent development is the theory of causal fermion systems,[34] giving all three current physical theories (quantum mechanics, general relativity and quantum field theory) as limiting cases.
A recent and very prolific attempt is called Causal Sets. As some of the approaches mentioned above, its direct goal isn't necessarily to achieve a ToE but primarily a working theory of quantum gravity, which might eventually include the standard model and become a candidate for a ToE. Its founding principle is that spacetime is fundamentally discrete and that the spacetime events are related by a partial order. This partial order has the physical meaning of the causality relations between relative past and future distinguishing spacetime events.
Outside the previously mentioned attempts there is Garrett Lisi's E8 proposal. This theory provides an attempt of identifying general relativity and the standard model within the Lie group E8. The theory doesn't provide a novel quantization procedure and the author suggests its quantization might follow the Loop Quantum Gravity approach above mentioned.[35]
Christoph Schiller's Strand Model attempts to account for the gauge symmetry of the Standard Model of particle physics, U(1)×SU(2)×SU(3), with the three Reidemeister moves of knot theory by equating each elementary particle to a different tangle of one, two, or three strands (selectively a long prime knot or unknotted curve, a rational tangle, or a braided tangle respectively).
Present status[edit]
At present, there is no candidate theory of everything that includes the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. For example, no candidate theory is able to calculate the fine structure constant or the mass of the electron. Most particle physicists expect that the outcome of the ongoing experiments – the search for new particles at the large particle accelerators and for dark matter – are needed in order to provide further input for a ToE.
Theory of everything and philosophy[edit]
Main article: Theory of everything (philosophy)
The philosophical implications of a physical ToE are frequently debated. For example, if philosophical physicalism is true, a physical ToE will coincide with a philosophical theory of everything.
The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer all the important questions in a coherent way, providing a complete picture of the world. Plato and Aristotle could be said to have created early examples of comprehensive systems. In the early modern period (17th and 18th centuries), the system-building scope of philosophy is often linked to the rationalist method of philosophy, which is the technique of deducing the nature of the world by pure a priori reason. Examples from the early modern period include the Leibniz's Monadology, Descarte's Dualism, and Spinoza's Monism. Hegel's Absolute idealism and Whitehead's Process philosophy were later systems.
Arguments against a theory of everything[edit]
In parallel to the intense search for a ToE, various scholars have seriously debated the possibility of its discovery.
Gödel's incompleteness theorem[edit]
A number of scholars claim that Gödel's incompleteness theorem suggests that any attempt to construct a ToE is bound to fail. Gödel's theorem, informally stated, asserts that any formal theory expressive enough for elementary arithmetical facts to be expressed and strong enough for them to be proved is either inconsistent (both a statement and its denial can be derived from its axioms) or incomplete, in the sense that there is a true statement that can't be derived in the formal theory.
Stanley Jaki, in his 1966 book The Relevance of Physics, pointed out that, because any "theory of everything" will certainly be a consistent non-trivial mathematical theory, it must be incomplete. He claims that this dooms searches for a deterministic theory of everything.[36] In a later reflection, Jaki states that it is wrong to say that a final theory is impossible, but rather that "when it is on hand one cannot know rigorously that it is a final theory."[37]
Freeman Dyson has stated that
“ Gödel's theorem implies that pure mathematics is inexhaustible. No matter how many problems we solve, there will always be other problems that cannot be solved within the existing rules. [...] Because of Gödel's theorem, physics is inexhaustible too. The laws of physics are a finite set of rules, and include the rules for doing mathematics, so that Gödel's theorem applies to them. ”
—NYRB, May 13, 2004
Stephen Hawking was originally a believer in the Theory of Everything but, after considering Gödel's Theorem, concluded that one was not obtainable.
“ Some people will be very disappointed if there is not an ultimate theory, that can be formulated as a finite number of principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind. ”
—Gödel and the end of physics, July 20, 2002
Jürgen Schmidhuber (1997) has argued against this view; he points out that Gödel's theorems are irrelevant for computable physics.[38] In 2000, Schmidhuber explicitly constructed limit-computable, deterministic universes whose pseudo-randomness based on undecidable, Gödel-like halting problems is extremely hard to detect but does not at all prevent formal ToEs describable by very few bits of information.[39]
Related critique was offered by Solomon Feferman,[40] among others. Douglas S. Robertson offers Conway's game of life as an example:[41] The underlying rules are simple and complete, but there are formally undecidable questions about the game's behaviors. Analogously, it may (or may not) be possible to completely state the underlying rules of physics with a finite number of well-defined laws, but there is little doubt that there are questions about the behavior of physical systems which are formally undecidable on the basis of those underlying laws.
Since most physicists would consider the statement of the underlying rules to suffice as the definition of a "theory of everything", most physicists argue that Gödel's Theorem does not mean that a ToE cannot exist. On the other hand, the scholars invoking Gödel's Theorem appear, at least in some cases, to be referring not to the underlying rules, but to the understandability of the behavior of all physical systems, as when Hawking mentions arranging blocks into rectangles, turning the computation of prime numbers into a physical question.[42] This definitional discrepancy may explain some of the disagreement among researchers.
Fundamental limits in accuracy[edit]
No physical theory to date is believed to be precisely accurate. Instead, physics has proceeded by a series of "successive approximations" allowing more and more accurate predictions over a wider and wider range of phenomena. Some physicists believe that it is therefore a mistake to confuse theoretical models with the true nature of reality, and hold that the series of approximations will never terminate in the "truth". Einstein himself expressed this view on occasions.[43] Following this view, we may reasonably hope for a theory of everything which self-consistently incorporates all currently known forces, but we should not expect it to be the final answer.
On the other hand it is often claimed that, despite the apparently ever-increasing complexity of the mathematics of each new theory, in a deep sense associated with their underlying gauge symmetry and the number of fundamental physical constants, the theories are becoming simpler. If this is the case, the process of simplification cannot continue indefinitely.
Lack of fundamental laws[edit]
There is a philosophical debate within the physics community as to whether a theory of everything deserves to be called the fundamental law of the universe.[44] One view is the hard reductionist position that the ToE is the fundamental law and that all other theories that apply within the universe are a consequence of the ToE. Another view is that emergent laws, which govern the behavior of complex systems, should be seen as equally fundamental. Examples of emergent laws are the second law of thermodynamics and the theory of natural selection. The advocates of emergence argue that emergent laws, especially those describing complex or living systems are independent of the low-level, microscopic laws. In this view, emergent laws are as fundamental as a ToE.
A surprising property of string/M-theory is that extra dimensions are required for the theory's consistency. In this regard, string theory can be seen as building on the insights of the Kaluza–Klein theory, in which it was realized that applying general relativity to a five-dimensional universe (with one of them small and curled up) looks from the four-dimensional perspective like the usual general relativity together with Maxwell's electrodynamics. This lent credence to the idea of unifying gauge and gravity interactions, and to extra dimensions, but didn't address the detailed experimental requirements. Another important property of string theory is its supersymmetry, which together with extra dimensions are the two main proposals for resolving the hierarchy problem of the standard model, which is (roughly) the question of why gravity is so much weaker than any other force. The extra-dimensional solution involves allowing gravity to propagate into the other dimensions while keeping other forces confined to a four-dimensional spacetime, an idea that has been realized with explicit stringy mechanisms.[18]
Research into string theory has been encouraged by a variety of theoretical and experimental factors. On the experimental side, the particle content of the standard model supplemented with neutrino masses fits into a spinor representation of SO(10), a subgroup of E8 that routinely emerges in string theory, such as in heterotic string theory[19] or (sometimes equivalently) in F-theory.[20][21] String theory has mechanisms that may explain why fermions come in three hierarchical generations, and explain the mixing rates between quark generations.[22] On the theoretical side, it has begun to address some of the key questions in quantum gravity, such as resolving the black hole information paradox, counting the correct entropy of black holes[23][24] and allowing for topology-changing processes.[25][26][27] It has also led to many insights in pure mathematics and in ordinary, strongly-coupled gauge theory due to the Gauge/String duality.
In the late 1990s, it was noted that one major hurdle in this endeavor is that the number of possible four-dimensional universes is incredibly large. The small, "curled up" extra dimensions can be compactified in an enormous number of different ways (one estimate is 10500 ) each of which leads to different properties for the low-energy particles and forces. This array of models is known as the string theory landscape.[8]:347
One proposed solution is that many or all of these possibilities are realised in one or another of 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 dictated by theory. This has led to criticism of string theory,[28] arguing that it cannot make useful (i.e., original, falsifiable, and verifiable) predictions and regarding it as a pseudoscience. Others disagree,[29] and string theory remains an extremely active topic of investigation in theoretical physics.
Loop quantum gravity[edit]
Current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a ToE, but that is not its primary aim.[30] Also loop quantum gravity introduces a lower bound on the possible length scales.
There have been recent claims that loop quantum gravity may be able to reproduce features resembling the Standard Model. So far only the first generation of fermions (leptons and quarks) with correct parity properties have been modelled by Sundance Bilson-Thompson using preons constituted of braids of spacetime as the building blocks.[31] However, there is no derivation of the Lagrangian that would describe the interactions of such particles, nor is it possible to show that such particles are fermions, nor that the gauge groups or interactions of the Standard Model are realised. Utilization of quantum computing concepts made it possible to demonstrate that the particles are able to survive quantum fluctuations.[32]
This model leads to an interpretation of electric and colour charge as topological quantities (electric as number and chirality of twists carried on the individual ribbons and colour as variants of such twisting for fixed electric charge).
Bilson-Thompson's original paper suggested that the higher-generation fermions could be represented by more complicated braidings, although explicit constructions of these structures were not given. The electric charge, colour, and parity properties of such fermions would arise in the same way as for the first generation. The model was expressly generalized for an infinite number of generations and for the weak force bosons (but not for photons or gluons) in a 2008 paper by Bilson-Thompson, Hackett, Kauffman and Smolin.[33]
Other attempts[edit]
A recent development is the theory of causal fermion systems,[34] giving all three current physical theories (quantum mechanics, general relativity and quantum field theory) as limiting cases.
A recent and very prolific attempt is called Causal Sets. As some of the approaches mentioned above, its direct goal isn't necessarily to achieve a ToE but primarily a working theory of quantum gravity, which might eventually include the standard model and become a candidate for a ToE. Its founding principle is that spacetime is fundamentally discrete and that the spacetime events are related by a partial order. This partial order has the physical meaning of the causality relations between relative past and future distinguishing spacetime events.
Outside the previously mentioned attempts there is Garrett Lisi's E8 proposal. This theory provides an attempt of identifying general relativity and the standard model within the Lie group E8. The theory doesn't provide a novel quantization procedure and the author suggests its quantization might follow the Loop Quantum Gravity approach above mentioned.[35]
Christoph Schiller's Strand Model attempts to account for the gauge symmetry of the Standard Model of particle physics, U(1)×SU(2)×SU(3), with the three Reidemeister moves of knot theory by equating each elementary particle to a different tangle of one, two, or three strands (selectively a long prime knot or unknotted curve, a rational tangle, or a braided tangle respectively).
Present status[edit]
At present, there is no candidate theory of everything that includes the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. For example, no candidate theory is able to calculate the fine structure constant or the mass of the electron. Most particle physicists expect that the outcome of the ongoing experiments – the search for new particles at the large particle accelerators and for dark matter – are needed in order to provide further input for a ToE.
Theory of everything and philosophy[edit]
Main article: Theory of everything (philosophy)
The philosophical implications of a physical ToE are frequently debated. For example, if philosophical physicalism is true, a physical ToE will coincide with a philosophical theory of everything.
The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer all the important questions in a coherent way, providing a complete picture of the world. Plato and Aristotle could be said to have created early examples of comprehensive systems. In the early modern period (17th and 18th centuries), the system-building scope of philosophy is often linked to the rationalist method of philosophy, which is the technique of deducing the nature of the world by pure a priori reason. Examples from the early modern period include the Leibniz's Monadology, Descarte's Dualism, and Spinoza's Monism. Hegel's Absolute idealism and Whitehead's Process philosophy were later systems.
Arguments against a theory of everything[edit]
In parallel to the intense search for a ToE, various scholars have seriously debated the possibility of its discovery.
Gödel's incompleteness theorem[edit]
A number of scholars claim that Gödel's incompleteness theorem suggests that any attempt to construct a ToE is bound to fail. Gödel's theorem, informally stated, asserts that any formal theory expressive enough for elementary arithmetical facts to be expressed and strong enough for them to be proved is either inconsistent (both a statement and its denial can be derived from its axioms) or incomplete, in the sense that there is a true statement that can't be derived in the formal theory.
Stanley Jaki, in his 1966 book The Relevance of Physics, pointed out that, because any "theory of everything" will certainly be a consistent non-trivial mathematical theory, it must be incomplete. He claims that this dooms searches for a deterministic theory of everything.[36] In a later reflection, Jaki states that it is wrong to say that a final theory is impossible, but rather that "when it is on hand one cannot know rigorously that it is a final theory."[37]
Freeman Dyson has stated that
“ Gödel's theorem implies that pure mathematics is inexhaustible. No matter how many problems we solve, there will always be other problems that cannot be solved within the existing rules. [...] Because of Gödel's theorem, physics is inexhaustible too. The laws of physics are a finite set of rules, and include the rules for doing mathematics, so that Gödel's theorem applies to them. ”
—NYRB, May 13, 2004
Stephen Hawking was originally a believer in the Theory of Everything but, after considering Gödel's Theorem, concluded that one was not obtainable.
“ Some people will be very disappointed if there is not an ultimate theory, that can be formulated as a finite number of principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind. ”
—Gödel and the end of physics, July 20, 2002
Jürgen Schmidhuber (1997) has argued against this view; he points out that Gödel's theorems are irrelevant for computable physics.[38] In 2000, Schmidhuber explicitly constructed limit-computable, deterministic universes whose pseudo-randomness based on undecidable, Gödel-like halting problems is extremely hard to detect but does not at all prevent formal ToEs describable by very few bits of information.[39]
Related critique was offered by Solomon Feferman,[40] among others. Douglas S. Robertson offers Conway's game of life as an example:[41] The underlying rules are simple and complete, but there are formally undecidable questions about the game's behaviors. Analogously, it may (or may not) be possible to completely state the underlying rules of physics with a finite number of well-defined laws, but there is little doubt that there are questions about the behavior of physical systems which are formally undecidable on the basis of those underlying laws.
Since most physicists would consider the statement of the underlying rules to suffice as the definition of a "theory of everything", most physicists argue that Gödel's Theorem does not mean that a ToE cannot exist. On the other hand, the scholars invoking Gödel's Theorem appear, at least in some cases, to be referring not to the underlying rules, but to the understandability of the behavior of all physical systems, as when Hawking mentions arranging blocks into rectangles, turning the computation of prime numbers into a physical question.[42] This definitional discrepancy may explain some of the disagreement among researchers.
Fundamental limits in accuracy[edit]
No physical theory to date is believed to be precisely accurate. Instead, physics has proceeded by a series of "successive approximations" allowing more and more accurate predictions over a wider and wider range of phenomena. Some physicists believe that it is therefore a mistake to confuse theoretical models with the true nature of reality, and hold that the series of approximations will never terminate in the "truth". Einstein himself expressed this view on occasions.[43] Following this view, we may reasonably hope for a theory of everything which self-consistently incorporates all currently known forces, but we should not expect it to be the final answer.
On the other hand it is often claimed that, despite the apparently ever-increasing complexity of the mathematics of each new theory, in a deep sense associated with their underlying gauge symmetry and the number of fundamental physical constants, the theories are becoming simpler. If this is the case, the process of simplification cannot continue indefinitely.
Lack of fundamental laws[edit]
There is a philosophical debate within the physics community as to whether a theory of everything deserves to be called the fundamental law of the universe.[44] One view is the hard reductionist position that the ToE is the fundamental law and that all other theories that apply within the universe are a consequence of the ToE. Another view is that emergent laws, which govern the behavior of complex systems, should be seen as equally fundamental. Examples of emergent laws are the second law of thermodynamics and the theory of natural selection. The advocates of emergence argue that emergent laws, especially those describing complex or living systems are independent of the low-level, microscopic laws. In this view, emergent laws are as fundamental as a ToE.
The debates do not make the point at issue clear. Possibly the only issue at stake is the right to apply the high-status term "fundamental" to the respective subjects of research. A well-known one took place between Steven Weinberg and Philip Anderson[citation needed]
Impossibility of being "of everything"[edit]
Although the name "theory of everything" suggests the determinism of Laplace's quotation, this gives a very misleading impression. Determinism is frustrated by the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical predictions, by the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions that leads to mathematical chaos, by the limitations due to event horizons, and by the extreme mathematical difficulty of applying the theory. Thus, although the current standard model of particle physics "in principle" predicts almost all known non-gravitational phenomena, in practice only a few quantitative results have been derived from the full theory (e.g., the masses of some of the simplest hadrons), and these results (especially the particle masses which are most relevant for low-energy physics) are less accurate than existing experimental measurements. The ToE would almost certainly be even harder to apply for the prediction of experimental results, and thus might be of limited use.
A motive for seeking a ToE,[citation needed] apart from the pure intellectual satisfaction of completing a centuries-long quest, is that prior examples of unification have predicted new phenomena, some of which (e.g., electrical generators) have proved of great practical importance. And like in these prior examples of unification, the ToE would probably allow us to confidently define the domain of validity and residual error of low-energy approximations to the full theory.
Infinite number of onion layers[edit]
Lee Smolin regularly argues that the layers of nature may be like the layers of an onion, and that the number of layers might be infinite.[citation needed] This would imply an infinite sequence of physical theories.
The argument is not universally accepted, because it is not obvious that infinity is a concept that applies to the foundations of nature.
Impossibility of calculation[edit]
Weinberg[45] points out that calculating the precise motion of an actual projectile in the Earth's atmosphere is impossible. So how can we know we have an adequate theory for describing the motion of projectiles? Weinberg suggests that we know principles (Newton's laws of motion and gravitation) that work "well enough" for simple examples, like the motion of planets in empty space. These principles have worked so well on simple examples that we can be reasonably confident they will work for more complex examples. For example, although general relativity includes equations that do not have exact solutions, it is widely accepted as a valid theory because all of its equations with exact solutions have been experimentally verified. Likewise, a ToE must work for a wide range of simple examples in such a way that we can be reasonably confident it will work for every situation in physics.
Impossibility of being "of everything"[edit]
Although the name "theory of everything" suggests the determinism of Laplace's quotation, this gives a very misleading impression. Determinism is frustrated by the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical predictions, by the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions that leads to mathematical chaos, by the limitations due to event horizons, and by the extreme mathematical difficulty of applying the theory. Thus, although the current standard model of particle physics "in principle" predicts almost all known non-gravitational phenomena, in practice only a few quantitative results have been derived from the full theory (e.g., the masses of some of the simplest hadrons), and these results (especially the particle masses which are most relevant for low-energy physics) are less accurate than existing experimental measurements. The ToE would almost certainly be even harder to apply for the prediction of experimental results, and thus might be of limited use.
A motive for seeking a ToE,[citation needed] apart from the pure intellectual satisfaction of completing a centuries-long quest, is that prior examples of unification have predicted new phenomena, some of which (e.g., electrical generators) have proved of great practical importance. And like in these prior examples of unification, the ToE would probably allow us to confidently define the domain of validity and residual error of low-energy approximations to the full theory.
Infinite number of onion layers[edit]
Lee Smolin regularly argues that the layers of nature may be like the layers of an onion, and that the number of layers might be infinite.[citation needed] This would imply an infinite sequence of physical theories.
The argument is not universally accepted, because it is not obvious that infinity is a concept that applies to the foundations of nature.
Impossibility of calculation[edit]
Weinberg[45] points out that calculating the precise motion of an actual projectile in the Earth's atmosphere is impossible. So how can we know we have an adequate theory for describing the motion of projectiles? Weinberg suggests that we know principles (Newton's laws of motion and gravitation) that work "well enough" for simple examples, like the motion of planets in empty space. These principles have worked so well on simple examples that we can be reasonably confident they will work for more complex examples. For example, although general relativity includes equations that do not have exact solutions, it is widely accepted as a valid theory because all of its equations with exact solutions have been experimentally verified. Likewise, a ToE must work for a wide range of simple examples in such a way that we can be reasonably confident it will work for every situation in physics.