WEBVTT - Does Stephen Wolfram's Theory of Everything Work? 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:10.920 Hey, Daniel, how can you tell the difference between a 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:13.960 physicist and a crack pot? Is this one of those 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:16.759 Internet memes like can you tell which picture is a 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.920 homeless man and which one is a physics professor? Well, 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:22.759 you usually can, but I guess. I mean, you know, 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:25.319 if someone has a crazy new idea, how do you 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:29.840 know whether to take them seriously or just ignore them? Well? 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:32.760 The truth is mostly you can't tell. I mean, some 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:36.120 crazy ideas about the universe turn out to be true, 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:39.120 like look at quantum mechanics. Wow. So does that mean 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.960 that you read every theory that people send you over 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:44.400 the internet. I try to, but you know, there are 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.240 just too many. There's so many people out there with 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:51.280 fun and silly and crazy ideas, so honestly, most people 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:54.280 in physics just ignore them. Oh man, does that mean 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.440 that the theory of everything could be right now buried 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.760 in a spam folder? What a tragedy selected for the 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:18.840 junk mail pile by some Ai. Hi am poor Hammy 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:22.360 cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.399 I'm a particle physicist. I'm always on the hunt for 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:27.440 the theory of everything. But I don't expect it to 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.039 show up in my inbox? Is that how you usually 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:35.120 get your research ideas through Emailsdam? That's right. I just 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.600 like looking there the slush pile. So like maybe somebody 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:41.440 emailed me exactly the idea I need right now. Oh man, 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:46.840 it's called tenure sit around and wait for emails for it. No, 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.120 but I do get messages some from our listeners suggesting 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.840 new ideas and even like grand theories that could describe 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.640 some of the open puzzles in physics. Wow, that's awesome. 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.320 It's awesome that people are listening and getting you know, 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.800 stimulated intellectually, and and they come up with their own 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.160 ideas about how the universe might work. Yeah, and it's 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:07.040 not just our listeners, and it's not just me. I 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:10.400 think basically everybody who's a physicist gets a few random 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.519 suggestions for theories of everything in their inbox every week. 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.880 Do you think maybe that's sort of a basic human curiosity? 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:19.280 You know, we're all trying to figure out how to 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:21.080 all work. We all are, and as we say on 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.280 this podcast all the time, wondering belongs to everybody, and 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.239 these questions about the universe are ones that everybody wants 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:29.480 to know. The answer to and frankly, I love that 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:32.320 people are thinking about this and that they're imagining that 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.280 maybe they could come up with the idea they could 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.800 have that moment of insight, which explains deep questions about 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.520 the universe. Well, speaking of everybody, Welcome to our podcast 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.560 Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.680 Heart Radio in which we examine all those big questions 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:49.680 about the universe and take you to the forefront of 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:51.920 what science knows and what it doesn't know, and what 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:54.920 it's hoping you will email it to it because you know, 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:57.720 I guess it turns out that science doesn't know everything. 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.360 There's a lot we don't know. We know a timey amount. 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.959 We've only recently learned how little we know about the universe. 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:06.280 And so while it might feel like a lot of 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:08.919 the stuff around you is understood, the fraction of the 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.679 universe that we know is very small and big, crazy 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.880 new ideas awaits. So it's sort of like the universe 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:18.320 is still up for grabs. You know, anyone out there 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:21.600 could potentially come up with the theory of everything, because 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:23.440 we are pretty far away from it right now. We're 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:25.800 very far away from it. In fact, if you delivered 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.040 it to me today in complete form, I probably wouldn't understand. 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.000 It would take like days, weeks, months to digest it. 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:35.480 It might require whole new branches of mathematics, which I'm 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.040 totally not familiar with and nobody has even thought of. 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.560 So even if aliens arrived and emailed me, or you know, 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.680 delivered in golden engravings the theory of everything, it would 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.400 take a while to understand it. I might immediately dismiss it. 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:50.760 You mean, are you saying my handwriting is that bad? 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:55.680 Are you an alien? Are you admitting that? Finally? I 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.480 am a doctor technically, so I think we're required to 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:02.200 have bad handwriting. Crypto I'm writing. But the point is 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.160 that the truth about the universe might be something which 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.920 is strange and weird and sounds wrong on the surface, 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.200 which makes us think about the universe in a different way. 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:15.520 And that's the difficulty. But that's also the beauty of science, 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:17.760 is that we follow the data, we follow the clues, 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.760 and eventually we get to the right answer. It's amazing 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:22.680 that the process works. Yeah, And so to be on 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:26.160 the program will be tackling something, a new theory, a 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.919 new clue about the universe, that just that it is 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:31.599 super recent, it's hot off the process. It just came out, 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.599 and physicists are still sort of scratching their heads and 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:36.960 trying to think about whether or not this is something 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.560 that's actually true and describes the universe, or maybe it's 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.120 something that's totally wrong. That's right. It sort of came 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.360 out of left field, and it's a bold claim from 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:50.320 a man famous for bold claims, and you know, dropped 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:53.320 like a nine d pages of stuff on the physics community, 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:56.440 and it's fascinating that people are taking it seriously. He's 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:58.960 not a physics professor, but he's attracted the attention of 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.080 a lot of top physics Since it be on the program, 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:08.640 we'll be asking the question, did Steven Wolfram come up 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.400 with the theory of everything? Well, he definitely came up 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.040 with a theory. The question is what the theory of him? 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:17.880 Does it describe our universe or and the universe or 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.040 does it even work at all? And some listeners actually 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:24.039 wrote in asking us to break this down for them. Hey, 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.880 Daniel and Jorge, this is Cure from Chicago, and I 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.120 recently read about Stephen wolf from his physics project where 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.120 he's trying to come up with a fundamental theory of 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:35.080 physics that I know a lot of people have been 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:37.839 searching for for a long time, and it sounded really 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.279 interesting to me, but it was also a little bit 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:42.440 over my head. And you guys are really great at 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:44.640 explaining these kinds of things, So I was wondering if 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:46.920 you could maybe tell me a little bit about how 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.120 his theory works, how it's different from other theories that 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:52.839 are out there, and if you feel like it actually 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.920 has the potential to truly answer one of the great 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:58.080 mysteries of physics. Thank you, guys, and keep up a 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:00.839 great job. Thanks to everybody who wrote in with those questions. Well, 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:03.200 let's talk about Stephen Wolfram, because you know, I know 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:05.680 the name from my college days when I used a 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.960 program called Mathematica. But tell me what you know about 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:12.240 this person, Stephen Wolfram. Yes, so Wolfirm is sort of 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:16.320 a Polly math. He's a really smart guy. He graduated 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.680 got his PhD at a really young age. He studied 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:24.240 particle physics, He worked with Richard Feynman. Really he's a physicist. 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.159 He's a physicist for sure. Yeah, he was a professor 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.240 at cal Tech. Oh, he was a professor professor. Yeah, oh, 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:32.000 I see he made a time like maybe like he 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.400 wasn't a professor. No, I mean, the guy was really smart. 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:37.039 He definitely has the chops. He's the youngest recipient of 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.600 the MacArthur Genius Award. He got it at age twenty one, 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:42.600 so it was pretty clear from a young age that 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:45.840 this guy had a brain on him. And he's known 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:49.919 for writing Mathematica, which is a software that engineers and 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:54.839 mathematicians used to simulate things right and crunch equations and numbers. Yeah, 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.800 Mathematica is a beautiful piece of software. It does a 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.640 lot of the really gorgeous physics animations you probably see 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:03.560 on Twitter and elsewhere, but it's also really good for 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:06.800 doing symbolic mathematics. Like there's lots of ways to get 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.560 computers to do numerical calculations add these two numbers, but 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:12.680 it's much harder to tell a computer like take this 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.840 equation and simplify it. And Mathematica is really powerful that 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:18.880 doing that kind of stuff, and so it's really the 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.440 premier way to do math on the computer. Yeah, it's 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.120 pretty amazing, Yeah, because it can do symbolic math, which 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.360 is not just number crunching, but like manipulating you know, 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:32.240 the concepts and symbols and functions. That's right. And though 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:36.000 he's gone off into founding a company and becoming super 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.400 rich and writing this software, he's always had an interest 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.800 in theory and in physics because this is where he started. 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.520 That's where his hardway. Yeah, that's where all of our 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:48.560 hearts are. That's not where his money was pocketbook was. 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.680 But so he always had a sort of a passion 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:53.920 for and A and the chops in the background for 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.000 it to think about particle physics and things like the 0:07:57.000 --> 0:07:59.720 theory of everything. Yeah, exactly. And there are a lot 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.920 of as people who started out in physics and ended up, 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:05.040 you know, becoming super rich or started out with like 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.200 deep mathematics and went to Wall Street and became hedge 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:12.280 fund gazillionaires. You know. So these people do penetrate sort 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.360 of the water culture. They don't know, we just stay 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.040 in the white halls of academia. But you know, they're 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:19.920 always wondering, I think, you know, could I crack that 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.280 problem or you know, could I still contribute? And I 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.960 guess maybe you're saying he's unusual because he sort of 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.600 came up with this new theory of everything, not from 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:33.160 an office in a university I guess that's what's kind 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.440 of unusual, or at a research center. It's like he 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:37.840 sort of did it on his own in his house. Yeah, 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:39.400 he did it on his own, I mean, in his 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.160 company with a couple of other folks. But he's not 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.320 part of a mainstream research group, right, Like I see, 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:48.600 he has a team, he's a small team. He attracted 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:51.480 some young students want at Cambridge and other places to 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:53.440 work with him. Is it getting more legit by the 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:55.320 second thing? I have to say. I feel like we 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.080 started the episode talking about like a crack plot, but 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:01.200 I'm like, oh, mag I've see the difference between this 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:05.520 guy and Dannyl. Well he's a lot richer. That's difference 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.120 number one. But no, this is not like you know, 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:10.440 sheets of paper you found under the homeless guy at 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.120 the bus station. Right. This is a guy who everybody 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.920 respects as intelligent. But that doesn't mean necessarily that he's 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:18.800 always on the forefront of knowledge. I mean, the guy 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:21.400 is busy doing a lot of other things. It's difficult 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:23.760 to stay on the forefront of knowledge and to keep 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.000 up with academia and to understand the current ideas and 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.000 if you're not part of the community of academia, it's 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:32.720 difficult to contribute. You know, some people think of science 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.319 is like a single minded pursuit of truth. That's true, 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.200 but it's also it's people, which means it's people having 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:43.000 a conversation and it's cocktail parties, it's hanging out on Twitter. Yeah, 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:45.559 but it's it's also it's a big conversation and people 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:47.559 are talking about stuff. And if you're talking about things 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.960 nobody else is interested in or talking about, then even 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.080 if you're right, it's going to be hard to attract 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:55.280 their attention. So you have to speak the language and 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:57.360 you have to know how to talk to people in 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.199 order to get scientists to pay attention. So you can 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.480 be totally right and understand the universe, but if nobody 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:04.480 will hear you or talk to you or understand what 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:07.120 you're saying, you can't really have any impact. So there's 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:09.839 this human side of science that I think is underappreciating. 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.480 It strikes me as a not a good thing though, 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:13.640 you know what you know what I mean, Like, I 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.600 feel like it strikes me as like, you know, people 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:18.760 at a cocktrol party not wanting to listen to somebody 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:20.920 else just because they're not in their little group. Yeah, 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:23.440 it would be better if we had more people, so 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.560 we had more diverse ideas, we had more funding for science, 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:29.960 if it was more accessible and more open. Absolutely, it 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.360 also be better if humans were like objective and in 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:36.400 ways to measure these things, you know, objectively. But we 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.880 can't write human science is done by humans for humans, 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:43.439 at least until the aliens come. You had to press 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.880 the alien burn Thenner, Well, well, maybe Stephen Wolf from 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:49.840 is an alien. That seems very likely. This guy seems 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:51.920 too good to be true. Oh my gosh, maybe maybe 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.280 this is the aliens coming to give us the ideas. Right, 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:59.480 you're saying, Stephen Wolf from down. He just went from 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:04.320 crack to respectable physicists, to alien to maybe the next 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.440 the second coming. Where will this end up? Danny? But 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:10.640 this is unusual. It's very weird to have somebody outside 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.280 of academia, even somebody who used to be a professor, 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:16.880 come back and try to contribute. Often these ideas are 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:19.680 not given any attention, so it's unusual to happen, and 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.000 it's unusual that it has gotten so much attention. Interesting. 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:23.840 So okay, so he's sort of been working on this, 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:25.760 apparently with the team for a while, and he came 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.520 up with a theory of everything, and he's sort of 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:32.640 so popped into the cocktail party of physicists and dropped 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:36.360 a huge pile of paper saying I got it. Yeah. 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:38.240 And there was a little bit of a hint that 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:40.560 this move was going to happen, because about twenty years 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.760 ago almost he wrote a mammoth tome called A New 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:47.839 Kind of Science, in which he unveiled the way he 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.800 thinks about science. And you can tell from even just 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.600 the title of the book A New kind of Science, 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.160 that he thinks very highly of himself and his own work. 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.760 And it's important. How would you have called it, Daniel, 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:04.800 a possible new kind of science, a suggestion for a 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:06.719 new kind of science? Well, you know, I I'm a 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:09.640 strong believer in humility. Um. I value that a lot 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.040 um And I think that's that's sort of the conclusion 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:15.240 you leave for other people to draw. You know that 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.520 that you've invented a new kind of science. And a 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:21.360 lot of criticisms of that book is that there's a 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.559 lot in there. It's like twelve hundred pages, but a 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:25.679 lot of it is not actually that new he's not 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.280 always either familiar with the existing work in the field 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:31.520 and sort of reproduced it and claimed it as his own. 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:34.960 And some of the stuff is actually wrong. So there's 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:37.439 a danger to working all on your own in your 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.440 own ivory tower and then delivering a twelve page tome 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:42.920 is that you know, you can make mistakes early on, 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.640 and you could have benefited from some notes notes. Yeah, 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.400 and so he made sort of a splash last week. 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:51.720 And so physicists, you were telling me, are still sort 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.640 of going over his theory. But there's been sort of 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.959 a big initial reaction. People on the internet have reacted 0:12:58.000 --> 0:12:59.800 to this. Yeah, and so he's sort of a famous 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.480 and people give him attention. And so he captured the 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.199 world's attention, especially the attention of physicist when he announced 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:08.800 back on April thirteen that he had a model for 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:12.640 everything in the universe, space, matter and whatever and whatever 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:18.920 and whatever his technical term. And he put out a 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:21.679 really long blog post and a video and then submitted 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:25.040 a couple of sort of academic style papers to journals 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.440 full review. But in the meantime, physicists have been trying 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:29.920 to digest it. And you know, I'm part of this 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:32.120 community and everybody's been talking about it. If you read it, 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:33.880 what do you think? And there's sort of, you know, 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:36.400 the strong reactions to it. Yeah. So you collected a 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.880 couple of reactions from Twitter about physicists or well known 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.719 physicists who have sort of commented on this potential discovery. Yeah. 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:47.600 And so, for example, Sabine Haustin Felder, she's a physics theorist, 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:49.800 and she's also famous for being sort of an alt 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:52.800 theory consultant. She's the one that runs that program where 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:54.960 you can email her your theory and you'll get like 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:57.760 half an hour with an actual particle physicist to give 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:01.840 you opinions on it. I don't think so, because she 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.880 says I looked at it and I don't think it's interesting. Wow, 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.440 I spent five minutes with it. I think she dug 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:10.000 into it. Then there are other folks like Sean Carroll's 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:13.880 famous science popularizer, and you know he's also a theorist 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:16.400 working at the forefront of knowledge. Yeah, so you have 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:18.840 here that Sean said, I'm in favor of taking swings 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.160 that fundamental physics with wildly non standard ideas and seeing 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:25.240 what happens. Most such efforts will inevitably fail. But the 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.360 payoff is huge if you hit the target. Yeah. All right, 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:32.800 Well it sounds like people are not embracing this right away, 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.360 but keeping an open mind. Yeah, I think people are 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:38.680 sort of hopeful, like, wow, that would be awesome if 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.920 you came up with a grand new theory. At first glance, 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.360 it doesn't seem like maybe it really accomplishes everything that 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:49.000 Stephen Wolform claims, Like his claims are really broad and 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.080 very grand, and I'm not sure he really delivers. But 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:53.760 it's going to take the community a little bit of 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:57.200 time to read these papers carefully and to digest them properly. 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:00.840 All right, well, let's get into what this idea that 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.640 Stephen Wolfram just dropped in the physics community and talk 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.280 about how that describes the universe. But first let's take 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:25.880 a quick break. All right, Daniel, Stephen Wolfram, famous millionaire philanthropist, mathematica, 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.880 code writing genius, just dropped on the phitnist community a 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.280 theory of everything. And so let's first talk about what 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.440 this theory is because I'm super curious, and then we'll 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:39.640 talk about whether it actually describes the universe. We limit, So, 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.240 what's the basic idea Daniel here? So The basic idea 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:44.720 is one that I like. It says, let's look at 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:48.640 this really complex, vast universe with all these different kinds 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:51.120 of things in it at different scales, you know, from 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.840 little particles up to galaxy superclusters, and let's try to 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:58.280 explain all that using a simple set of rules. You know, 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.080 that's the sort of basic principle behind in particle physics. Right. 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.960 You could just describe the universe as like it is, 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:07.200 this is what it is, but we're seeking a reductionist answer. 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.720 We want to pull it apart and explain everything in 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:13.720 terms of something underneath that drives it. Right, And you know, 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:15.600 we've had success with stuff like that, Like you look 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.120 at the periodic table and you discover that all the 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:20.880 patterns in the periodic table come out of very simple 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.800 rules for how electrons fill their orbitals. So complex emergent 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.040 phenomena can come from a simple set of rules. That's 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.960 the motivation, right, right, I mean, isn't that sort of 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:33.360 how we've built all of our signs theories. I mean 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:37.400 it's all based on like simple particle interactions that then 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:40.600 you know, accumulate, and then that's how the universe exists. 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.120 That's right, And Stephen Wolf from Likes the particular kind 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:49.040 of this theory. They're called cellular automata, and the idea 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:51.320 is just take a couple of basic objects and a 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:54.320 couple of basic rules for how they can interact, and 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:58.440 from that you can get really complex behavior. Yeah. Like, 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.120 there's a guy who recently passed away named John Conway 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.280 who devised this thing called the Game of Life, who 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:06.520 showed that you can devise a really simple game based 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:08.480 on just like black and white squares and a few 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.600 simple rules, and really complex patterns emerge, patterns that look 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.320 a little bit like how life looks. Okay, so I'm 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.439 guessing that cellular automats that this concept that is not 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.760 related to cells, like human cells, like biological cells. It's 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.320 more like a mathematical term. Yeah, it's like a little 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.160 basic object. And you can also think of them as 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:29.240 like nodes and so, you know, like a little dot. 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:31.800 And the idea is just like, have a little very 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.439 simple thing and write down simple rules for what it 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.520 can do, and then study the behavior as you go 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.240 to a zillion of these things, or you take them 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:43.640 azillion steps forward, and you discover that you can get 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.159 from very simple things emerge complex behaviors. That's what the 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.159 game is, life is all about. I see. So is 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.320 the idea that he started approaching it from the bottom 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.720 up instead of the top down? You know, like you 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:58.199 know physicists, like what you do is you take regular 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.080 big stuff and you break it apart and you so 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:01.880 to see what it's made out of. Is he saying 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.720 that maybe a better way to approach the theory of 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.119 everything is to start like, let's let's let's see if 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.520 we can guess what the smallest thing does, and then 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:12.600 let's build it up to see if it works absolutely 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:15.439 And in that sense, it's very similar in motivation to 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:19.119 string theory. String theory says, maybe the whole universe is 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:21.639 a bunch of titsal vibrating strings, and here are the 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:24.639 rules for how those strings interact. Can we then build 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:26.879 up the universe that we know in the physics that 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:30.800 we've discovered from those simple rules. Very similar motivation, very 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:33.520 similar approach. But it's not the same as string theory. 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:36.959 It's not. Okay, So how is it different? How does that? 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.840 How does this theory describe the universe? Like, what's what's 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:42.840 he actually doing here? So what he's actually doing, is 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.480 he says, let's begin with a couple of nodes. So 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:48.159 he makes his graph where he says, I have a 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:50.520 couple of nodes and I connect them with lines of 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.520 what of space, of matter, of energy? Just mathematically pure. Right, 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:57.159 so far we're just mathematically appeared. Just like draw a 0:18:57.200 --> 0:18:59.720 dot in your mind and another dot and put a 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.879 line in doctor the man start start with like a 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.680 total abstraction. Just in the beginning. What is the thought? 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:11.520 In the beginning, there was nothing, And Stephen wolf from 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.920 created a dot, he said, and he just went from 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:19.240 alien to God, let there be created from the second 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:23.240 Coming to the actual Father himself. Well, he's sort of imagined. 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:24.960 That's the point, you know, not to be God, but 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:28.679 to imagine from what is the universe originated? What is 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:30.520 the basic element of it? You know, if you wanted 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.439 to build the universe, what is the essential source code? 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.119 And he would like if the essential source code of 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:38.280 the universe was just two or three lines that you 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.280 just run a zillion times. So he's saying, let's build 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:43.960 up the universe from scratch, and let's start with this 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:46.960 a little bit of math and code and see what happens, 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.040 and see if it ends up. If you pile it 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:51.600 on if it ends up into you know, funny and 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:56.320 interesting podcast about exactly. And he's hoping that if you 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.040 start from very simple rules and you build up a structure, 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:03.040 then you could then recognize in that structure familiar rules 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:05.680 of physics the things in our universe, because that would 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:09.119 tell you that maybe those are then the simple rules 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:12.040 of our universe. So he starts with, you know, a 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.959 couple of dots and a line, and he says, all right, 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:16.840 just pick a random graph, it doesn't really matter. Make 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.359 four dots and draw some lines between them. He just 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:21.960 know how it begins, and then make up with some 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:25.280 rules like say, well, if two things are connected to 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:27.600 the same thing, then you know, you can add a 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:29.439 line between them, or you can add a new node, 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:31.360 or you can add a thing whatever. Just make up 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.520