Will Physics Ever Explain Everything?

What is a "Theory of Everything" and how close are we to discovering it?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, Daniel, do you think physicists and scientists will ever
come up with some equation that just describes everything, the
whole thing, you know, like one line of one line
of symbols that just that sums up the entirety of
all of existence, the whole universe, on a T shirt.
I'm sort of two minds about it. Like one, I
would love for that to happen because it means it

(00:29):
would be a singular achievement in the human intellectual history.
You know, it's like, actually unravel all of the mysteries
of the universe, which part to come up with it
or to put it on a T shirt? Um, yeah,
to get down to the base layer of knowledge and
reveal like the source code of the universe, that would
be amazing. On the other hand, that would kind of
mean physics is over right, Like that's the fundamental goal

(00:50):
of physics. And if we get there and then we're done,
like what are we gonna do? So, you know, we
have a whole raft of physicists becoming cartoonists or something.
So be careful. So your fear is that you'll be unemployed,
that's right. Don't work too hard, you know, if you
get too productive then you know, you work yourself out
of a job. That's exactly the concern. Maybe you'll just
take a little bit extra time to figure it out.

(01:12):
That's right. I'll figure out the theory of everything, and
I'll just keep it in a drawer in my office. Right,
and then the day before you retire, you're like, boom,
Nobel prize. Please before I die quickly, Let's put Daniel
out of a job. Let's make this physicist unemployed. Hi,

(01:45):
I'm Ran and I'm Daniel, and this is our podcast
Daniel and Jorge explain the universe, where we take the
entire universe and we roll it up into a burrito
so you can eat it for lunch or put it
on your T shirt. That's right. Our goal is to
take everything in the universe and make us that you
can actually understand it. We're not eager to have you
feel like you're in the presence of a great scientist

(02:07):
hearing things you'll never really understand. We want to break
things down so you can really understand them, you know,
explain them to your grandma or that fat uncle or
family reunions. That's the goal of this podcast. Or show
off to your court, or is it the next water
cooler break, Yeah, or point out that they actually don't
understand what they're talking about, because you do, because you
listen to this awesome podcast. Today. On the podcast, we're

(02:29):
going to tackle the biggest question in human knowledge. Right,
that's right, the most fundamental, the deepest, the biggest question
in human intellectual history. What is that question? For him?
Is it possible for humans to know everything? Do you

(02:51):
mean to know everything? Like? Where is that sock I
lost in the eighth grade? Yeah? Everything, some formula that
tells you where that so, you know, know, a theory
of everything does not include location of all lost socks.
That's impossible, right, And then we could just end the
podcast right now, because that's just impossible. No, A theory
of everything tries to describe the way things work. Right,

(03:12):
They can't possibly explain to all the details of everything
that has happened because there's a lot of chaos there.
But you know, a theory of everything tries to say,
we understand the way everything works. We have a system
that explains it, even the things we don't see or
where we can't see. That's right. It would have to
be a theory of everything. It would have to be
something that describes the universe at the deepest level, you know,
sort of like the the end of our quest to

(03:34):
take the universe apart into its tiny little bits, to
understand it at every level. That's right. Yeah, to have
a theory which from which anything can be derived. Right,
all of physics and biology and chemistry and economics and
everything would just be the emergent phenomena that flow naturally
from this one fundamental theory, and then we'll know everything basically, right,

(03:57):
except for where those songs are. Yeah, So I went
out and I asked people, do you think it's possible,
given the fullness of time and a bunch of geniuses
in the future, that physics could eventually describe everything, explain
everything in a single formula that goes onto a T shirt.
Do you think there's a theory of everything? Here's what
people had to say. Yes, Yeah, with due time, I

(04:21):
think research will elucidate everything that we're looking for. Like,
I'm religious, I'm a Christian, so I believe that there
are some things that got made that just can't be
described by you know, sciences. So necess what I believed
that cool, I think it could happen. Gives you such
confidence it's math, and math in essence can describe everything.

(04:45):
So in theory, we can use math to describe everything.
I think eventually, um, that can happen, but it's going
to take a long time and lots of work. All right,
So some people felt pretty off in in physicist. I
know those people. I love those people. They also sort
of terrified me, you know, I really appreciate their like, well,

(05:07):
physics has figured a bunch of about so I'm sure
given enough time, they'll figure it out, you know, Like
and the guy who said, like math describes everything, so
of course that's kind of cool. But also it's a
lot of pressure. You know, like if you feel like, well,
physics can figure everything out, then all you have to
do is sit in your office with pencil and paper
and eventually all the answers in the universe will come

(05:27):
to you. You know. It's um, yeah, it's a it's
a lot of pressure. So I appreciate those people having
so much faith in us, but it's you know, if
we do figure out a theory everything, it's still a
lot of work. You want to leave a little bit
of room for like, hey, maybe we won't do it well,
I don't know, Um, and some people, some people definitely
felt like it's impossible, you know, there's a gap. There

(05:50):
are things that humanity can never understand, you know. And
there was the one guy who thought, well, God creates
some things that cannot be understood. And there's some people
who just thought humans are not smart enough, you know. Um,
and maybe we've been watching too many political tuctures or something,
which you know, I might be of the same opinion
if you watch enough of those things. So it's like
people generally had faith in physicists, but not in human

(06:12):
beings in general, that's right, Yeah, yeah, And maybe those
people don't realize that physics is just people, right, Physics
is just people thinking. Um, there's no like deep physics
that's absent of humanity, right. Everything we do in physics
is a model inside our head, our attempt to understand
the universe. But it's always going to be inherently human, right,

(06:33):
it's nothing extra human about it. Well, you don't think
people like Einstein had some sort of extra capacity than
most people. Oh no, I think Einstein was a super
duper human. But we're all human, right, and we think
about the universe in a certain way. We perceive it
in a certain way. Things make sense to us in
a certain way. I mean, imagine if we met alien scientists, right,

(06:54):
what fraction of our human physics would be understandable to them?
Skip over the part where we have to like develop
a common language and you know, agree not to kill
each other. And you know, you've got a bunch of
the best alien physicists in the room and a bunch
of the best human physicists in the room. Everybody's wearing
the same lab coat, and you know, start comparing notes.
How does that go? Well? I think that's a really

(07:14):
deep question. I think probably we would learn more about
the way the human mind works, like the human mind,
than the way the universe works, because I'm sure a
lot of the theories we've built reflect the way we
think and feel. Do you think it would be sort
of like if we got together with a bunch of
chimpanzees and we're like, hey, guys, let's talk physics. How
would that? You know? How that would go? They would

(07:35):
be trying to explain to them cut of physics, and
it just they just wouldn't be intellectually capable of grasping it, right,
even if you could speak to our language. Yeah, they
would probably just be throwing throwing poop at us while
we're talking about cloning physics, which you know, I think
I've had that experience in the classroom, you know, lecturing
to a bunch of people who just totally uninterested. Never
actually got to the throwing poop part of the equation.

(07:56):
But sometimes I do feel like people aren't interested. Did
you just call your students a inticence, None of my
current students, of course. No, They're all are all very
they're wonderful. No, it's not a question of whether the
aliens are smarter than us. I just think that the
theories we've come up with as humans are going to
be indelible human. You know, there are product of a

(08:18):
human mind, and they cannot be separated from that. So
I think it's until we meet alien physicists, until we
find another intelligence with different set of biases and perspective
and fundamental thoughts structure, that we can learn what about
the physics we've developed is just human and what of
it is actually fundamental and inescapable. It could be that
we're seeing everything in the wrong way totally. Yeah, absolutely,

(08:42):
everything we've learned is filtered through our experience, our consciousness. Right,
So we have these few senses. If you have a
different set of senses, you experience the universe differently, you
think very differently about the way the universe might be structured.
I mean there's a lot of deeply flawed sci fi
movies which touch on this really important issue, like Arrival, right,
you know, the Aliens and Arrival think about time differently,
and so I'm sure their physics is built in a

(09:03):
completely different way. Ours is built on our limited experience,
that's right, Yeah, absolutely, and a limited, very limited grant funding. Well,
let's bring it down. What does it actually mean to
have a theory of everything? Yeah? Does it mean an equation?
Does it mean a set of axioms you know, or statements?

(09:25):
Or does it mean like a little computer to which
you can input anything and will tell you what the
universe would do? Yeah? And it doesn't mean something which
will tell you where your lost socks are? Right? Um,
then what's the point and why are we even doing this? Man? Um?
You know, the entire physics enterprises just to help you
find lost socks. Um. In my view, a theory of
everything would be a set of equations that describe the

(09:49):
way the universe works at its most fundamental level, meaning
that from that anything else can be explained. You know,
take for example, our current understanding of chemistry, right, molecules interacting, etcetera.
Now can you use that to explain hurricanes, right, or
whether or you know, the solar system. Our current laws

(10:09):
of physics and chemistry can explain things that are larger
emergent phenomenon that arise from those more fundamental aspects. Right,
So that works. So when you say explain, you actually
mean like, we see something and then we can go
back to your magic formula, and your magic formula would say, oh, yeah,
I can see how that came to be. Or if
I run it then we get the same result. That's right.

(10:31):
Or you can encode those rules into a simulation and
predict exactly what's going to happen. Or you can be
super smart and do it in pencil and paper and say,
these equations predict that hurricanes will happen, or these equations
predict that planets will orbit the Sun. In this way,
all these things that we see that we experience, these
are emergent phenomenon. Right. There are higher level events that

(10:53):
arise out of deeper, lower level rules. Right. So there
was actually happening. You know, when example, you throw a baseball,
is all those particles are moving in tandem, and there's
all this quantum field theory that's happening um while that happens,
and you know, you can describe the way baseball moves
using a very simple parabolic formula. That parabolic formula can

(11:13):
be derived from the lower level set of rules. So
it's sort of like an onion. You know, we think
about theories of the universe in layers. It's like the
equations to describe the way things work in the macroscopic level,
you know, baseballs. Then there's equations that describe how things
work at the atomic level, and then there's equations to
describe the way things work at the cork level or
the the electron level. Right, And so the idea is

(11:36):
a theory of everything would be the lowest level would
be one from which everything else could be derived. In principle,
it's like the rules at the very very very very
center of the onion exactly. Uh, if the universe is
a simulation, right, then this would be like the source
code of that simulation would be the basic rules for
which everything results. It's like you can have a rule

(11:58):
about economics Magrican makes you know, people respond to their
best interests where they go for the lowest price. That's
a good theory, and it describes this complex phenomenon, but
it doesn't actually tell you the most basic thing that's
going on. That's right, and the most basic dance going
on is, you know, a bunch of particles are slashing
around inside their head, you know, and you can describe

(12:18):
at different levels. You can describe at the particle level,
which is very cumbersome because there's so many particles that
doing these kind of calculations would be almost impossible. Or
you can describe it at the biochemical level. You know, Uh,
these dopamine and this sort of neurotransmitter and all these
things are happening. A lot of these things. You can
describe at lots of different levels, and you pick the
level that's most appropriate. Right, you want to solve a

(12:38):
problem involving a baseball, You're gonna do a simple parabolic calculation.
You're not going to go with a heavy hitting quantum
field theory calculation. Right, But the theory of everything in
principle could derive anything else. Right, You can derive those
laws of parabolic motion, from the deepest level, from that
the core of the onion. So that's the goal of
the theory everything describe everything that happens in terms of

(13:01):
the smallest, most fundamental units. Well, I think an even
bigger question is, how do you even know such a
thing is possible? Like, how do you know that everything
can be described by one equation or two equations or
three equations? Right? Like, what makes you think it's possible
to even understand everything? I know? It seems like hubrists right,

(13:21):
Like somebody eat a bunch of mushrooms and had a
vision and now they're like, yes, I saw it, man,
Like the universe makes sense man um Right, So it's
either a weed field dream or enormous hubrists um. What
makes us think it's possible is that we're making steady progress,
you know. Um. I think about the way the world
used to be a total mystery to people, you know,

(13:42):
thousands of years ago, so much about everyday life as
a mystery. And you know, we've cracked a lot of
those nuts. You know, everything that we thought was strange
or mysterious so we had to attribute to some bizarre
god with you know, unknown motives. We've understood in terms
of natural phenomenon that which follow rules. So for some
rea sas and we don't understand, it appears that the

(14:02):
universe follows a set of rules. And those rules are
fairly constant, and so we can discover them by experimenting
and tinkering and trying stuff. And humans seem to have
the capability, the mathematical, the logical, the scientific capability to
reveal these rules and then you know, use them for
good or evil. Right, So you're saying you have faith

(14:23):
in physicists and humans. I have some faith. I mean,
look at what look at what we have accomplished, and
I look upon my great arts, look upon my works,
he mighty and despair. Now I love that poem Asymandias
because it's both positive and negative. Right, be jealous of
what I've accomplished, because you are so small, Or if
you think you're so great, remember that I was ones

(14:45):
great and have now fallen into dust. Um. Yes, So
maybe that future physics looks at us and and says
they accomplished nothing. But I would say, what makes us
think it's possible is that we're making steady progress. I mean,
the kind of things we understand about the universe now
are incredible compared to what we understood a hundred years ago,
five years ago, five thousand years ago. But is there

(15:07):
maybe a limit? And let's get into it. But first
let's take a quick break. So my favorite thing about
the theory of everything is it's acronym, its initials T

(15:28):
O E. So really, when you're talking about the theory
of the universe, you're talking about the universe? Is big
toe right? Right? Such a grand idea humbled by its acronym? Yeah? Yeah,
not not a great pr move there by physicists. Now
we have to find that secret circle of scientists who
are in charge of naming this stuff, because they got

(15:49):
some real work to do. I mean, I got notes,
let me tell you. I mean, the particles got ridiculous names.
The theory of everything is a silly name. I don't
even know what the history of it is. Like. Who
was the first person to say theory of every Yeah?
I know that Einstein was one of the first people
would like, seriously go after it. Of course he didn't
make much progress. Why not the everything theory? Right? Better

(16:09):
everything theory? Yeah? I like that? All right, Um, you
should file a trademark for that. You'll get one penny
every time somebody says it. We talked about what it
means to say the theory of everything and what it
could be, and what we think when is possible? So
what do we know? Like, why isn't what we know
now a good theory of everything? What makes us think
that we don't have it yet? Right? Well, we do

(16:32):
know a lot. We've learned a lot about the universe.
And one thing that persuades us that things might be understandable,
that it might be a simple theory of everything is
that we're making a lot of progresses have been saying.
But it's more than that. Every time we peel back
a layer of reality and see what's underneath the description
that beneath it is simpler, right, Think, the level of
complexity required to describe the universe keeps getting simpler and simpler.

(16:55):
Like you know, for example, think about the objects in
the universe. You want to describe everything in the universe.
So there's like an infinite number of kinds of things. Right,
there's gas and stars and hamsters and ice cream and
lamas and cartoonists and all this stuff. And you can
explain all of that using a hundred basic building blocks.
Periodic table. You can explain the periodic table everything that's
in that using just quirks and leptons. Right, you can

(17:18):
build any atom out of out of just quirks and leptons.
So the number of pieces you need to describe basically
everything we've encountered keeps getting smaller. So so to me,
that's progress. You're asking earlier, like why do we think
it's this is possible? How do we know we get there?
So we're making this progress, and I feel like, how
will we know we get there when we get to
the simplest possible theory, You know, a theory that has

(17:41):
the smallest number of bits and the smallest number of parameters,
and has no hanging questions, no room to say, well
why this and not that, or why these two different
things instead of just one thing. So when you can
simplify it no longer, that's how you know you got there.
So it's kind of about the number of ingredients that
we think things are made out of. Kind of, right,
we went from a hundred elements in the periodic table

(18:03):
of elements to like an electron and small particles. You're
saying that maybe one day will get to one particle. Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like, if you go from
infinity to a hundred to three, the next step is
just two and one, right, right? That when the goal
is to get to one. Right, And the deepest goal
in particle physics is to simplify the universe and explain
it in terms of just one thing. And I've just

(18:25):
had like a sort of personal epiphany, which is I
realized that one of the reasons that physics appeals to
me so much is this attempt to simplify. Like in
my life, I'm always trying to simplify everything, Like, can
I get this simplify? Can I explain all these two
different things in terms of just one thing? Can I
just send one email to everybody? Is there a rule
that you know it kind of tells me how to
live my whole life? How do I respond to a

(18:46):
party invite? Or you know, is there a strategy for
making small talk and that works in any situation? And
I love that what you mean, You're you're always trying
to look for the underlying rules something. Yeah, I want
the theory of every conversation, right, I want to know
how to handle how to navogate a party conversation, no
matter what happens. That would be a fantastic theory. Hopefully

(19:07):
you'll figure it out before you start a podcast or
something a conversational too late. Is there a basic building
block of the universe out of which everything is built,
because right now we have twelve basic building blocks, so
we're definitely not there. Right we have six quarks and

(19:29):
six leftons. Only three of those twelve particles are ever
used to make atoms, and those twelve particles don't even
describe like the dark matter and everything else that's out
there in the universe. So not only do we know
there are other particles that we haven't discovered, but we
also have questions about these particles, like why are there
so many? It would be great to narrow that down.
So you're saying that we think there might be a

(19:50):
theory of everything because there's plenty of still stuff still
left to explain, basically, right, like, we're not there yet
because there's a lot we haven't explained. That's right, we're
not there yet, and we've been making steady progress and
at every stage things get simpler, and so we suspect
that if we keep cracking the nut, then we'll get
simpler and simpler nuts. Until eventually maybe we'll get down

(20:11):
to the one thing that it built everything else is
built out of, and that would explain everything the peanut
of the universe. God, if we find that particle and
so many names at peanut, I'm gonna blame you for
that horrid that's right, it's because then there's going to
be the anti peanut, you know, um peanut on I um,
you know bound states of peanuts and oh man, it's

(20:34):
gonna be a disaster. But you know that's not the
whole story. Right. There's particles, but there's then there's also forces.
So what do you think a theory of everything would
look like? Like, Like, it'd be like everything is made
out of the peanut, and the peanut can be form
an electron if it stacks up this way, or it
can form a cork if it stacks up this other way.
Basically like the idea of the peanut and how it

(20:55):
stacks up and how it gives rise to everything we
see around this. That would be sort of like the
theory of everything. Yeah. Well, the current form what we
use for to describe the deepest level of nature that
we currently know is quantum field theory and quantum field
theory works by describing the fields and the way the
fields interact with each other. So the fields give us
the particles, because particles are excited states of these fields.

(21:18):
And then the way the fields interact with us give
us forces. And so currently you can describe everything we
know about particle physics just by describing these fields and
how they interact with each other, and so that we
can write down in a single equation it's called the Lagrangin,
and from that lagrange and we can derive all the
rules of how everything works, how everything interacts with each other,
and from that you get electrons and quirks and atoms.

(21:39):
That everything comes from this one equation, the Lagrangin. But
of course their problems with it. As we said earlier,
there's a bunch of different kinds of fields, you know,
which generate all these different particles, and not everything is
described by this lagrangin. So that's what it would look like,
I think if it turns out that quantum fields are
the fundamental building block of the universe. But you know,
we don't nobody he believe that. But aren't aren't we

(22:01):
saying that maybe there's just one field that maybe results
in these other multiple fields, that's right, or like these
these other fields are just combinations of maybe one fundamental
field exactly. If quantum field theory is the right way
to think about the universe, then a theory of everything
as a quantum field theory would be a single field. Yeah,
and it could interact with itself, and that could give

(22:23):
all sorts of interesting stuff. In coming up with quantum
field theories, we've made a lot of progress and bringing
together lots of different kinds of things to describe them
in terms of just one thing. You know. For example,
we used to think of electricity and magnetism is completely
different things. You know. Electricity was like zapping stuff, and
magnetism was these weird rocks that pushed away each other

(22:44):
or attracted each other. Until people figured out, oh, actually
electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin.
They go hand in hand. They're like the same field. Yeah,
they're just two parts of that. There are two manifestations
of the same field. Right, So they go us to
it down to like a theory with one field. It's
called the peanut field. And alright, alright, alright, I'm on

(23:10):
board with the peanut field. Let's do it let's describe
the universe into So we got the peanut and we
got the toe. We got the mixed metaphors forhead the
universe a peanut or is it a toe? Maybe you
can eat peanuts with your toes and then you wouldn't
eat slocks. So hey, that solves all of our problems.
Let's leave folks with that visual and then take a

(23:32):
quick break while you think about eating peanuts with your toes. Alright,
So we were talking about the theory of everything, and
currently we have quantum fields, and we were saying that

(23:53):
the theory of everything, if it was described using quantum fields,
would be a single field, and that field would generate
all the particles because they would be excited states of
that field, and it would describe the way those particles
interact with each other and and form other sorts of
bound states, which would be more complex things like electrons,
and everything would be made out of these one fundamental
particle which came from this field, the peanut, the peanut

(24:15):
field exactly. Yes, what's interesting is that you're saying that
even if we have LATA in the future twenty years
from now, um, you know, I discovered the peanut field
and it describes the other all the other fields that
we know about. Right now, you're saying, we still wouldn't
know if that was it, if that was like the
ultimate theory. Well, it's hard to know for sure when

(24:35):
you're done, something is the ultimate theory, right, I mean,
say we have the peanut field, and it solves all
the open problems in physics and Jorgego's and collects like
five Nobel Prizes for discovering this thing. Right. It unifies
quantum mechanics and gravity, and it explains everything we know
and dark matter and all that stuff. It tells what's
what happened at the Big Bang, right exactly whether we're
in a multiverse, right, and this is totally possible. Right.

(24:58):
But then you have that theory you write on a
piece of paper, and you're gonna have questions about that theory, right,
Like say, for example, the theory has a number in it,
you know, because all of all of our theories currently
have numbers in it, you know, like speed of light,
or there's basic physical units, but there's also sometimes just
numbers like one or four or two or pie or whatever,

(25:18):
and you have to wonder, like what do those numbers mean?
Do those numbers reveal something deep about the universe, right, Like,
if your peanut theory has the number you know, five
in it, then that tells you that the universe is
fundamentally like five ish in some way. And what does
that mean? And that's a question, right, like why does
the theory of the everything have the number five in it? Yeah,

(25:38):
doesn't have to have a number. What if my theory
is so pure and amazing and abstract that it just
doesn't have any numbers in it, right, exactly, So your
peanut theory has the number five in it. And then
a few years later some cleroscientists comes along with her
theory that has no arbitrary numbers in it, right, and
she's like, actually, my theory is simpler than professor Jorges theory,
and so um, he's got to deliver me all of

(26:00):
his Nobel prizes. And so you know, that's how we
judge theories. We judge them by their simplicity. And that's
sort of what I was talking about earlier, Like it's
our human desire to explain the universe in terms of
a simple set of rules. Right. Maybe aliens think about
things differently and they don't look for one single equation
to describe everything, or a simplest equation, or maybe what

(26:20):
they what they think is beautiful is a huge chaotic
mess of an equation and for some reason that really
satisfies their itch to understand the universe. Right, I think
there must be something deeply human about this whole process,
and it's a bias we can't see because we've only
ever talked to humans about it. Interesting, like maybe aliens
are happy with this crazy theory that explains where socks

(26:43):
are and you know, do you know what I mean?
Like it's not reductive, it's maybe just like super complicated
because its all the little things exactly that could be
It could very well be, and they could be like,
you guys are totally wasting your time. I don't even
know why you care. Right, And you know, there's another
stability and we haven't even talked about, which is that
there is no deepest level. Right. It could be that

(27:04):
it goes on forever. Things just get smaller and smaller,
and like particle A is made out a little bits
of B and and then you can make bees out
a little bit of C, and C is made a
little bit of D and Okay, so I shouldn't be
on the Particle Physics pr name and Committee obviously because
I can't come up with clever stuff on the top
of my head. But it could just go on forever,
then wouldn't it stop at P for peanut? Absolutely? What

(27:26):
I mean is what could be smaller than the unit one?
You know what I mean? Like, what could be more
fundamental at one than one field and one particle? You
can't split one. Right. If you discover at some level
that everything the universe could be described in terms of
one field, that's great. But where does that field come from? Right?
Is that field the fundamental thing in the university? Was

(27:47):
like the first thing made and first thing coded in
the simulation? Or is it itself an emergent phenomena from
something simpler. Just because there's only one kind of particle
doesn't mean it's not made out of little bits of
another kind of particle, Right, It could be made out
of two halves or something else. Yeah, exactly, you know
two units of sub peanuts, you know, um that come

(28:08):
together to make the glorious peanut. Or you're saying it
could be sort of infinitely divisible, you mean, like you know,
like peanut butter, like maybe the universe doesn't have a
peanut in the middle. It's just this continuous, yummy smooth.
I think in the future you should have lunch before
we record these podcasts. Um. Yeah, it could be right,

(28:31):
It certainly could be. Although it seems so far everything
we understand about the universe is that it seems to
be quantized. You know that it's the smallest level. Everything
is quantized. So we think that particles or quantized excitations
of quantum fields um ruled the day. But you know,
it couldn't be that as you get deeper that you
get some sort of scale invariant matter that looks the

(28:53):
same no matter how close you get up to it, right,
that it doesn't resolve into tiny little bits. It's just
infinitely smooth. Yeah, that could totally be a post ability. Well,
you're going to do an interesting idea a little bit before,
which is, why do we even want the theory of everything?
Is it really going to help us cure cancer or
is it really going to solve global warming? If we
figure out these super quantum fields, what's motivating us as

(29:15):
a species to look for these simplifications. I can't believe
that an artist, a cartoonist is demanding practical, immediate benefits
for my for my profession. And excuse me, you didn't
even mention the possibility that there could be like a
deep human need to understand. You know that it adds
the experience of being human to reveal mysteries of the universe. Right,

(29:37):
It doesn't need to necessarily give you a better widget, right,
or cure cancer. It's just for me at least. It's
a deep desire to understand the world around me. I mean,
I don't know if it comes out of evolutionary desires
to understand how things work so I can like better
protect myself from a saber tooth tier or something. But
humans have a deep desire to understand the way things work,
to reveal the rules and manipulate them. And so I

(29:59):
just really want to understand. And you know, of course
along the way, like funding for basic research has always
yielded tremendous technological advancements. I mean, we wouldn't be recorded
as podcast if it wasn't for funding for basic research.
So I can sing the praises of basic research um
for decades because of all the spinoff it's generated incidentally accidentally, right,

(30:20):
not intentionally, but fundamentally. The reason we want to do
is just because we have this deep desire to know right,
to understand the way the universe works. I mean, if
somebody told you, hey, Jorree, I have the theory of everything,
do you want to know it? You wouldn't be like
past off, I'm I'm busy making a peanut butter sandwich. Right,
that would be an important moment, that would be like
a deep thing to understand. So we've made a lot

(30:45):
of progress and understand the theory of everything. You know, Um,
we have boiled down matter into twelve particles. We have
described all the forces in terms of just a few.
You know, we unified electricity and magnetism, and then we
also unified that with the weak nuclear force. We have
one force is called the electro weak force that describes
electricity and magnetism and the weak force. We still have

(31:08):
the strong nuclear force, which we haven't understood how to
put together with the other ones, right, and then we
still have gravity, which is a whole other mystery. We
can talk about a whole other podcast, which resists all
efforts to give it a quantum description and unify it
with everything. And even Einstein was not able to bring
gravity to heal um. And then of course there's lots
of things in the universe we don't understand which are

(31:29):
not described by these bits. So we made a lot
of progress in understanding, but we still have a lot
to go. So your basic message is keep physicists employed.
Is that the kind of that's right funding into physics, Yes, exactly,
it's worthwhile. People got a long way to go. People
think that we scientists have everything figured out, you know,
we can know these amazing phones and amazing technologies and

(31:53):
airplanes and rockets. You know, people sort of assumed that
why why do we need more physics, but there could
be a whole lot of amazing things ahead of us, right, yeah, exactly.
And you know folks a thousand years ago who were
surrounded by mysteries, there are lot of opportunities that ever
scientists to explain the way things work. These days, it's
pretty unusual if you walk down the street for you

(32:13):
to see something that you don't think has a scientific explanation, right, Like,
very few people see miracles or ghosts or things that
they think are outside of the realm of science. And
that used to be every day, and now it's like
pretty rare. I mean people go to magic shows just
to have that experience, right, Um, but but there are
lots of things that we still don't understand. There're are

(32:33):
things that appear in your everyday life there at the
particle level or the tiny little level, or the cosmic scale.
But there are huge questions about the universe that we
we still have to unravel. All right, Well, I hope
you guys enjoyed dipping your toes into this topic. Yeah,
we hope you enjoyed this slice of everything and peanuts
and peanut butter, the peanut butter theory of the universe.

(32:55):
It's spreading. It's really jiffy. Come see you next time.
Thanks for listening. If you still have a question after
listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.

(33:17):
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Jorge dot com.