Stephen Wolfram Battles the Theory of Everything | Physics - Medium

~ a surprisingly coherent path toward understanding the Universe ~

I can feel your reservations regarding Wolfram’s recent claim of a new way to find a fundamental, all-encompassing theory of physics writes Anthony Repetto, Easily distracted mathematician. 

Photo: Science in HD on Unsplash

We hear that a lot. And, Wolfram’s track-record for verbose grandeur, mentioning the foundational work of others only as an aside, has been a valid lingering criticism. Yet, he has been doing a different kind of scientific experiment, using computer simulations of numerous sorts of universes, and the appearance of new kinds of looking are precisely when people discover revolutionary new things. Is that what Wolfram found? Not precisely, but we can cover the gist of his team’s work, and see what might grow from his unique approach.

Universal Rules

Physicists keep looking for the most fundamental laws. Some small set of rules that combine to generate space, time, energy, mass, gravity, magnetism, etc. No scientist expects that, upon finding those rules, we would then be able to ‘simulate everything’ or ‘predict the future’ or ‘know all truths’. Nope. They’re just looking for the most basic instructions that create a cosmos like ours. Like knowing the general way in which electrons are zipping where in a computer, instead of knowing what the software is about to do. That’s all...

Yet, our universe has many particularities — the interactions between particles of each universe-rule are radically distinct from each other. If we find a universe that makes quarks and electrons behave as they do here, then we’re probably done.

Read more... 

Source: Medium