Seven questions that keep physicists up at night

[pokerfan]

Why this universe?
What is everything made of?
How does complexity happen?
Will string theory ever be proved correct?
What is the singularity?
What is reality really?
How far can physics take us?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18041-seven-questions-that-keep-physicists-up-at-night.html

[Botany]

1. it all has to do w/ atoms

strong binding forces
weak binding forces
electromagnetism
gravity
can string theory link quantum physics to sting theory?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Liked the article about the 500 trillion or so parallel universes...

everybody can have their own. Less trouble that way.

[shireen]

3. question #8

Will there be enough grant money to continue that work?

[GeorgeGist]

4. 8

How much bullshit can NewScientist fake?

[phasma ex machina]

5. +1 LOL nt

[DavidDvorkin]

6. "Is it really turtles all the way down?"

[PavePusher]

7. Sit here in this large basket.

We'll lower you over the Edge for a good look...

:rofl:

kudos for the T.P. reference!

[DavidDvorkin]

8. It predates T.P.

But I can't remember where/when/with whom it originates.

[PavePusher]

9. I think it was one of the Hindu creation myth variants...

Or one of the regional sub-cultures.

'Course I may have got that completely wrong...

[DavidDvorkin]

10. Yes, but that phrase comes from an anecdote

That's what I was vaguely remembering. Here's Wikipedia on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

[PavePusher]

12. Ah, now I recall it too.

Got to go dig up my copy of ABHT and re-read it. Been too long...

Thanks! :toast:

[Lithos]

11. Far more questions keep astronomers up at night

Just depends on what is the best time to see what you want to see...

;)

[Dead_Parrot]

13. It's been a while, but if I remember correctly...

...the seven questions are:

What was that funny noise coming from the car tonight?
Will it be expensive to fix?
When will the phone company cut me off?
How the hell am I going to pay the rent?
What the hell happened to that grant application?
If I ask that cute girl from Biochem for a date, will she laugh at me?
Since I'm not brave enough to ask her anyway, who am I kidding?

[wroberts189]

14. Well here is my two pennies...

The reality is that there is no true "reality". At least in the sense that it is known. We are all living in some type of dream. You accept your dreams as reality as easily as you accept waking life.

Somehow out of absolute nothing I can sit here typing and I somehow know I exist. "I think therefore I am" ..famous quote.

But how can I exist ? Only absolute nothing should "exist" and it cannot really exist because it is absolute nothing. Space ..time .. candy... You are cast into this world/Universe without a clue why or what you came from.

But absolute nothing is still a "concept" .. at least from our perspective. But without our concept of it there would be no observer to label it.

Language becomes a big problem here.. bear with me. Time is also a problem... you get into beginnings and endings and once you go down that road you run into the old .... what "was" before everything "was"? But you see "time" is the key to understanding... you realize that it had to begin somehow ..yet how? You are forced to concede there was never a beginning and there will never be an end. Somehow we live outside times boundaries ..which makes sense as the only way to create time is to create a universe.

Because we do not really exist in the sense we think we do.

You either have to have absolute nothing ... or somehow, somewhere, at sometime.. something came into being and noticed itself. And since time did not exist it had to have been created somehow.

A flash of light .. the blink of an eye... A MOMENT POINT perhaps. And within that one single moment point stretches an endless infinity of realities sprung into existence with no beginning and no end.

So where did the moment point come from? Somehow out of absolute nothing it did ... but we are still stuck in time thinking like this. It happened outside these things that did not exist until "it" did.

The truth is we are all magical...life.. the universe ...nothing should really exist yet here we are talking about it.

The key I believe is consciousness itself. Without an observer ..just a single humming bird hovering out my window. The whole Universe ceases to exist. Of course ..particles could have a type of consciousness as well.

Truth is I do not think some of these questions will ever be answered. What was before all that is? It does not keep me up at night but it is a fascinating discussion.



knr