The journey of light (A Possible Hypothesis)

[CraigD]

When I buy into an idea I find it very difficult to give up on the idea when people start shooting darts at it, but if enough darts hit the target I will drop it. Is it possible that we're like that about the standard model? The model is what, 40, 50 years old? We just keep tinkering with it hoping that it will work. Granted that it answers 99% of all the questions but if it's the truth it should answer all.

I don’t think, and don’t think many people who have studied physics think, that the standard model is “the truth” in any profound sense. I, and practically everybody with whom I’ve discussed the standard model, consider it accurate, but too empirical and ad-hock. Something more fundamental must underlie it.

 

There are a lot of theories contending to describe what that more fundament stuff is: preon theory, string theory, etc.

 

Once you get that deep, you begin to run into the problem of many very different theories making identical experimentally testable predictions. Deciding which is “true”, or even what “true” means when applied to such theories, is more of a seemingly unsolvable philosophical question than a scientific one. “Truth” and “beauty” start to get inextricably intertwined (IMHO :lol:).

 

My personal feeling – “what I believe but cannot prove” – is that “the ultimate theory of everything” is a breathtakingly uncomplicated, but complex program of arithmetic operations performed on a single large integer, requiring a much deeper understanding of number theory than we currently have.

[snoopy]

I don’t think, and don’t think many people who have studied physics think, that the standard model is “the truth” in any profound sense. I, and practically everybody with whom I’ve discussed the standard model, consider it accurate, but too empirical and ad-hock. Something more fundamental must under

 

My personal feeling – “what I believe but cannot prove” – is that “the ultimate theory of everything” is a breathtakingly uncomplicated, but complex program of arithmetic operations performed on a single large integer, requiring a much deeper understanding of number theory than we currently have.

 

Yes I think that we need a deeper understanding of number theory too I like the ancient greek idea that the ultimate theory is an object. A mathematical object of course you rotate it one way you get the strong nuclear force rotate it another way you get the gravitational force etc. It would be nice if it were true it would have to be a multi-dimensional object but hopefully just not too many dimensions !!