I Dont Know if Illl Ever See Your Face Again Australia Eric Weinstein

If only we could gather it all together

(Image: NASA/ESA/CXC, University of Potsdam/JPL-Caltech/STScI)

Physicists have a problem, and they volition be the first to admit it. The two mathematical frameworks that govern modern physics, quantum mechanics and general relativity, just don't play nicely together despite decades of attempts at unification. Eric Weinstein, a consultant at a New York Urban center hedge fund with a background in mathematics and physics, says the solution is to observe beauty before seeking truth.

Weinstein hitting the headlines terminal calendar week afterward mathematician Marcus du Sautoy at the University of Oxford invited him to give a lecture detailing his new theory of the universe, dubbed Geometric Unity. Du Sautoy as well provided an overview of Weinstein'due south theory on the website of The Guardian newspaper to "promote, possibly, a new way of doing science".

For a number of reasons, few physicists attended Weinstein's initial lecture, and with no published equations to review, the highly public airing of his theory has generated heated controversy. Today, Weinstein attempted to rectify the situation by repeating his lecture at Oxford. This time a number of physicists were in the lecture hall. Most remain doubtful.

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Space in 14 dimensions

About physicists working on unification are trying to create a quantum version of general relativity, informed by the list of particles in the standard model of physics. Weinstein believes we should instead start with the basic geometric tools of general relativity and piece of work at extending the equations in mathematically natural ways, without worrying whether they fit with the observable universe. Once y'all have such equations in hand, you can endeavour to match them up with reality.

Weinstein says his approach follows in the footsteps of Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac and Chen Ning Yang, the physicists' whose equations he is attempting to unify. "The principal authors of all 3 of our about basic equations subscribe to the artful school, while the rest of the profession had chased the effect of dazzler with adherence to information," he says.

For example, Dirac predicted the existence of the positron based on the symmetries of his equation describing the electron. He was led past the beauty of the mathematics, non the data at the time, which said such a thing did not exist, says Weinstein.

Hello, "observerse"

At the heart of Weinstein'south theory is the "observerse", a 14-dimensional space that contains our familiar iv-dimensional earth (3 dimensions of space plus one of fourth dimension). The extra dimensions arise naturally by extending the mathematics of the original iv, which announced in general relativity as the diagonal entries in a iv-by-iv matrix, he says.

The mathematical symmetries of the resulting equations predict three families, or generations, of particles, simply every bit described by the standard model, though the 3rd generation belongs in a different framework in Weinstein's theory.

His work besides predicts new, every bit withal undiscovered particles, along with mirror images of all of these particles. This group of particles could account for dark thing, the mysterious stuff thought to brand up about 80 per cent of matter in the universe.

Tiny tweak

The trouble is that we should already have seen some of Weinstein's new particles, if they exist, says physicist Joseph Conlon of the Academy of Oxford. Properties of some of the predicted particles mean that they should exist linked to the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces and the 1 that binds protons and neutrons.

Experiments at the Big Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, take been neat particles together at high enough energies to overcome the potent forcefulness, creating a spray of other more elusive particles, such every bit the Higgs boson. Weinstein's new particles should therefore have been detected in the resulting particle shower.

In improver, any modification to the central equations of physics would accept to give results that are but a slight correction to existing theories – just as Einstein'south equations offer very similar answers to the approximations of Newton'south equations, says John March-Russell. Right at present, equations and experiments are agreeing to 1 part in x billion, so Weinstein'south theory would have to be a very minor tweak indeed, and he has yet to reveal its size.

Dorsum and forth

Mayhap more than primal yet, information technology should be possible to perform a calculation called anomaly counterfoil on Weinstein's equations, says Conlon. This checks whether a list of particles is a consequent extension of the standard model, much similar the digits of a credit card number can exist added in a sure style to confirm their validity. If the predicted particles fail the examination, the theory is wrong. "It would take an hour and a half," Conlon said to Weinstein at the lecture.

"Can I ask you to do that?" countered Weinstein, who admitted that he did non have answers to these and other questions raised by his talk, merely said he would like to discuss them further. He also has remained vague about when and where his equations volition appear in print.

In some sense, though, information technology is a happy resolution to the media tempest. Weinstein has found some physicists who are mayhap willing to listen and guide him, and his theory will face the scrutiny that should be applied to any skilful scientific idea. Geometric Unity could turn out to be a theory of everything – or simply a nice bit of mathematics.

More on these topics:

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Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23632-how-to-test-weinsteins-provocative-theory-of-everything/

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