Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics… and It’s Beautiful

OK, so, I started reading this with some skepticism. Only healthy skepticism, but some.

Then, as I began to grasp the ideas, I actually got the shivers!

This is, actually, incredible!

It isn't the answer, but it is a new way of looking for it and it is already suggesting some possibilities. I just have to share it.

Anyway, best left to the author:

Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics…
and It’s Beautiful - Stephen Wolfram

a reply to: chr0naut
So the thing we live in, it's all an interdimensional set of apparently mathematically ruled and patterned chaos, Yeah.

I knew that already.


Cool read. thank you

Didn't go through it all but had the feeling that it might be reflecting mathematics as a language rather than providing answers per se. That is not to say that another tool to try disect our reality cannot be useful.

a reply to: chr0naut

Wolfram suggests that the universe can be modeled using points in space and rules that, when applied, generate more points. As more points are added, a network is built. He further suggests that model universes can be built using hypergraphs that describe such networks—and the rules that are applied eventually determine the characteristics that make up a given universe. And this, he believes, suggests that it should be possible to start with a few points in space and develop a model that depicts the real universe—at least as we know it. All that is needed, he suggests, is for somebody to come up with the right rules. And that is the whole point of his project. Those who are interested need only visit the project website and begin downloading documents that further explain Wolfram's theories and how citizen scientists can get involved—and if they desire, create some rules and add them to the project.

physical.org - The Wolfram Physics Project hopes to find fundamental theory of physics.

YouTube - Wolfram Physics Project


Beware: It is 3 hours long! It is just Wolfram talking which is the same thing you read at the website!

Even he admits he went nowhere with this back in the 80s. I wonder why he thinks he had a breakthrough now??

I used to follow all this stuff but gave up. I want to say, "We get it! Complexity arises out of simplicity. You have pretty graphs showing us as much! But now what?"

I guess this is the "now what". I don't have the temerity to sit through a 3 hour video after spending just a half hour doing mandatory computer security training (Someone had too much time on their hands and is now wasting mine. It was really bad! From like 2010 and all the terms are now different and broken speech, lots of "uh..." "ah.. but a few years ago..." which is why I may have short fuse. [Like dude, get to the point!]). I am goofing off, hehe, I guess like old Tom Sawyer swearing, smoking, and drinking, up in the attic to get the taste back in my mouth!!

Best wishes to those that do venture down this path! It is lots of fun to think about things and wonder but it is also fun to do other things with your time. Remember, "scope", and you will be alright wandering down this path!

a reply to: chr0naut

This is, actually, incredible!

Just by the looks of it i would say: "much more credible than many other approaches"

Very interesting back to reading, there is a lot to take in.

Sincerely NC

a reply to: chr0naut

Instead "picking up where he left off", I would have been more impressed if he abstracted one more layer up. There you can ask the question, "Why (or how) does simple math lead to complexity" and at that level of abstraction, you can prod and manipulate mathematical ideas and maybe figure out some "new math" that makes everything we are running up against, simpler.

I think that would be worthy of investigating because there is a lot of "basic math" we still do not understand. And it seems that every great breakthrough has some element of "new math" in it (Einstein using 4D, Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, Zefram Cochrane and the warp drive...).

If we could figure out how chunks of basic math work in an abstract language we could create new languages with the abstract math and see where that leads us!

That seems a bit more exciting than rewriting physics using Wolfram code!

a reply to: chr0naut

Come on man, that page is MASSIVE. You guys gotta attempt some kind of intro or abstract when a thread source is that big and full of complexes of tech speak.

ATS attracts regular joes more and more as new members. How do you expect a layperson to tackle this beast if you don't show them where to put their feet?

Like one or two paragraphs as a primer so newbies don't come in blind. Nothing crazy, I can tell you want the author to speak and I concur with the motion.

My words may appear scathing, but that's not how it's meant. It would be a shame for the thread to be passed up by most when it can be one of the better posts so far this year. I see that much potential here.

ATS veterans will swing by to escape the Covid monotony. That alone makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. It would be a KILLER first dig. If it doesn't kill them, they will be ready for the crazy that ATS will drop on you out of nowhere.

Star and flag for sure. If this pans out imma have to send you a pack of bad-ass stickers or the Blue Bonnet of Ultimate Power. Something worthy of an ATS champion.

Can't give you my lvl 6+ Mace, though. Can't do it.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

THANK YOU! That abstract is exhaustive. AND a three hour video. If he takes 3 hours to explain it. Man I better grab a bag of cheeba before I wage unremitting war on this sheila.

And change my shorts.

a reply to: WorldUnderCeej

A snippet won’t do it justice but here is a bit of what is discussed in the article:

There are some awesome graphs that show how the simple rule can expand to a complex system.

Here’s roughly how this works. The key point is to think about what an observer who is themselves part of the multiway system will conclude about the world. Yes, there are different possible paths of history. But—just as in our discussion of relativity—the only aspect of them that an observer will ever be aware of is the causal relationships between the events they involve. But the point is that—even though when looked at from “outside” the paths are different—causal invariance implies that the network of relationships between causal events (which is all that’s relevant when one’s inside the system) will always be exactly the same.

In other words—much as in the case of relativity—even though from outside the system there may seem to be many possible “threads of time”, from inside the system causal invariance implies that there’s in a sense ultimately just one thread of time, or, in effect, one objective reality.

For me this is a very satisfactory solution to the mystery of why some particular rule would be picked for our universe. The answer is that there isn’t ultimately ever a particular rule; basically any rule capable of universal computation will do. It’s just that—with some particular mode of description that we choose to use—there will be some definite rule that describes our universe. And in a sense whatever specialness there is to this rule is just a reflection of the specialness of our mode of description. In effect, the only thing special about the universe to us is us ourselves.

And this suggests a definite answer to another longstanding question: could there be other universes? The answer in our setup is basically no. We can’t just “pick another rule and get another universe”. Because in a sense our universe already contains all possible rules, so there can only be one of it. (There could still be other universes that do various levels of hypercomputation.)

But there is something perhaps more bizarre that is possible. While we view our universe—and reality—through our particular type of description language, there are endless other possible description languages which can lead to descriptions of reality that will seem coherent (and even in some appropriate definition “meaningful”) within themselves, but which will seem to us to correspond to utterly incoherent and meaningless aspects of our universe.

Sorry, this is way over my head but I did read through much of it. Probably need to watch the video.

a reply to: chr0naut

Maybe we have been conditioned to only see symmetry as a preferred path.

The narrow winding crooked ways are not attractive so our minds never spend enough time to make sense of them.

We make complicated assumptions and theories to try and straighten what can’t be straightened.

Thanks for posting this. It’s very interesting to me, for some reason I’m drawn to it, the idea of simple rule has me captivated, not I mentioned I dig the cool graphs. I’m pretty much pretending to understand it at this point.

originally posted by: WorldUnderCeej
a reply to: chr0naut

Come on man, that page is MASSIVE. You guys gotta attempt some kind of intro or abstract when a thread source is that big and full of complexes of tech speak.

ATS attracts regular joes more and more as new members. How do you expect a layperson to tackle this beast if you don't show them where to put their feet?

Like one or two paragraphs as a primer so newbies don't come in blind. Nothing crazy, I can tell you want the author to speak and I concur with the motion.

My words may appear scathing, but that's not how it's meant. It would be a shame for the thread to be passed up by most when it can be one of the better posts so far this year. I see that much potential here.

ATS veterans will swing by to escape the Covid monotony. That alone makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. It would be a KILLER first dig. If it doesn't kill them, they will be ready for the crazy that ATS will drop on you out of nowhere.

Star and flag for sure. If this pans out imma have to send you a pack of bad-ass stickers or the Blue Bonnet of Ultimate Power. Something worthy of an ATS champion.

Can't give you my lvl 6+ Mace, though. Can't do it.

I think that it would not do justice to this, it would lose some of the 'amazingness', to reduce it much further.

However, if you consider all the cool things that people do, with something with simple rules, like Minecraft, and then apply the idea of simple rules making complex things, then you are starting to get a gist of the idea.

But it goes beyond that. It is like probing why time does what it does, by breaking down very basic concepts.

Most descriptions of time include things that are temporal. Defining time by itself? - Not a great definition. You need something that doesn't require time, but that explains time. That would be a valid 'building block' to really understand what time is.

The concepts that Wolfram is using are all very basic and by iterating around and around again, structures begin to arise in the simulations, which start to do the things that we have observed that time does. They provide an explanation of why time might be the way it is.

And time isn't the only basic thing that these ideas seem to be able to describe. There's gravity, space, dimensionality, energy, mass, and even why things happen in a sequence, that now seem to have a possible new 'explanation'.

Everything falling out of a few simple and fairly abstract rules, repeated a lot.

We are also free to 'tweak' those rules and see what we get, it is opening up new vistas of discovery, even if they ultimately lead nowhere.

Aww you fellers spoil me so! Yup, DEFINITELY gonna need a fat bag of chooch. My birthday is on the 21st, may have to doob it up and have my brains get blown out by Mr. Doctor-man's theoretics.

Rolling into my dirty 30's with an overhaul of how I perceive time/space sounds great. Thank you again for the thread.

Thank you for sharing this. Wow. I just lost most of my day to it! I just finished it all the way through and my noodle is baked! This is ground breaking stuff.

He is able to describe Dark Matter and Gravity to hint at its significance. We are seeing history in the making in my opinion right here. Singularity type even.

In his models the spacial outlines of the universe create matter. Or maybe matter and everything in the universe is a result? Either way space and matter are the same. Pretty cool.

This could be Nobel prize worthy.

The man is able to build universes with the most basic of equations multiplied by themselves to somewhere in the ballpark of 100 to the 500th power and ultimately a unique universe can be created. “Multiplied” is not the correct word. If we can find our “equation” in theory we could build our universe perhaps. And if we could process the data fast enough one could potentially see the totality of our existence (thinking 4th dimensional perspective)

Later down the paper gets... a. Little more complex in saying that maybe all the possibilities of equations are happening all at once more or less and it’s purely in the eye of the observer. Going very much back to a quantum mechanics viewpoint. Maybe our universe is an-infinite number of equations all happening simultaneous to each other and it is up to an entity’s senses, mental capacity And language perspective to latch on to one of those potentials in order to describe one of those infinite possibilities in a way that works for the observer. Uh that was really hard to explain! He does it a lot better than I am.

I saw hermetic laws
I saw sacred Geometry.
Truly Profound.

Thanks again.

-Cogi

Can anyone condense the theory in layman's terms? I mean, we can understand the standard model's contours and Einsteins theories.

Hers a link that's understandable...www.sciencenews.org...

A computer visualization depicts a “hypergraph” consisting of relationships between points constructed by repeatedly applying a simple rule for expanding, or “updating,” the network. Stephen Wolfram believes a massively complex hypergraph could represent all of physical space and its contents, a clue to finding the fundamental theory of physics.

a reply to: chr0naut

Thank you.

I have not yet read the link. But i have read the comments.

I have a model which includes everything. It is geometrical. Different way of math. Includes dark energy, gravity, relativity in scales. All in part 1 linked below.

Inside the box thinking about gravity in the SM

I have a week off work next week. When i will add part 2. This will be about dark matter.

There are also 3 forces to add.

It ends as a photon.

I will read your link when i have more time.

come up with the right rules. And that is the whole point of his project. Those who are interested need only visit the project website and begin downloading documents that further explain Wolfram's theories and how citizen scientists can get involved—and if they desire, create some rules and add them to the project.

Thanks TEOT.

I think i will suggest my SM model.

Nice find Chr0naut.

So let me get this right...

We observe nature, starting eons ago, and from it, we come up with a common language that communicates and describes what we observe, and call it numbers. (in ancient times these were wedges)

Then we use those patterns we observe with numbers in combination to turn around and describe precisely what we see in nature?

Does anyone else see the incredible irony here?

Yes, the answer is in math and numbers and the right use of them, but all we are really doing is communicating what we observe nature using a common language.

IMO, everything is connected. Every point in space and time is connected to at least one other point in space and time, and woven together like fabric. He makes total sense to me.

~Namaste

originally posted by: Cogidubnus
...
He is able to describe Dark Matter and Gravity ...

no he isn't. He's answering based purely on his knowledge and even says

...Of course, there are lots of details about this—which no doubt depend on the particular underlying rule...

And the underlying rule is why he's asking the public because it's nowhere to be found. Yet.
That's exactly where the cat bites its own tale, because I'd bet the rule he's looking for is sthg like "the unified forces theory" and we ain't got that.

originally posted by: Lr103
a reply to: chr0naut
So the thing we live in, it's all an interdimensional set of apparently mathematically ruled and patterned chaos, Yeah.

I knew that already.

You do not live in it.
There is only it and it is alone.

So where is free will?

a reply to: chr0naut

There is math that describes discrete time crystal resonance which might be evolved into something more.
You don't want to go insane like Georg Cantor, so maybe some fun damental research could be done?
For slasdot geeks Xoring RTDSC time stamps might be a good start. Entropy is not lost when you Xor different sources and there is random heat noise in most desktop memory that can be tapped at the wait state level.
LT did something like this for LINUX.
Autism tends to leave some of us shaking our legs like John the baptist rather than Shakespeare..