Me Smart

Who would have ever thought that Stephen Hawking and I would be on the same page about, well, just about anything? Certainly not me. Dr. Hawking, who will be remembered in the same breath with Newton, Einstein, and Beeblebrox as one of the greatest minds in history recently stated that he has all but given up on his search for the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). This is the grail of physicists everywhere; the one equation that will reconcile relativity with quantum physics. Gravity seems to be the key. It is the weakest of forces, yet it binds the universe together in very predictable ways. Predictable, that is until you get very, very small. In the quantum world, down where quarks and bosons roam freely, and a millisecond is an eternity, gravity gets really, really weird. I can't pretend to understand the mathematics of it, but at the quantum level gravity just doesn't make sense. Many, many scientists feel that there must be a single equation that can explain it all, and I've always had a problem with that belief. I never thought that there couldn't be an all encompassing theory of life, the universe, and everything, but I also don't think that there must be one. And now Stephen Hawking agrees. In this month's Discover he states, "Up to now, most people have implicitly assumed that there is an ultimate theory that we will eventually discover. Indeed, in the past I myself have suggested we might find it quite soon. However, we have recently realized that the two leading candidates for the ultimate theory--supergravity and string theory--are just part of a larger structure known as M-theory. Despite the name, M-theory isn't a single theory. It is actually a network of theories, each of which works well in certain circumstances, but breaks down in others. ...This has now made me wonder whether it is possible to formulate a single theory of the universe, at least in a finite number of statements." {Discover magazine, Oct. 2005, Vol.26, No.10, pp. 64-65}

I have always found it quite amazing that the one group of people on Earth you would expect to have the most open minds would be scientists, but often the opposite is true. Frequently the greatest minds are also the ones who latch onto an idea, and strive to prove, rather than disprove it. A few years ago it seemed that every month some astronomer would assert, with absolute conviction, that the age of the universe was X. 10, 12, 14, 15 billion years old, the number fluctuated wildly. Finally, when it became apparent that the universe was somewhere between 8 and 13 billion years old, but there appeared to be stars that were 15 billion years old, astronomers admitted that there must be something we just don't know yet. And now physicists are following that path of the unknowing.

Anyone, be they scientist, philosopher, or theologian who claims to have all the answers is suspect in my eyes. We are a fledgling species, on the very fringes of our understanding of the universe in which we live, and if one of the greatest minds on Earth, Dr. Stephen Hawking, and one of the lesser minds, yours truly, can see that, then there is hope for us after all.

Oops, gotta go. Spongebob Squarpants is on.
;-)
Marius