Theories of Everything

[INRM]

Okay,

Since this has come up a lot. I'd like to simply have a thread that is completely devoted to plausible theories of everything.

There's Garrett Lisi's theory E8, which had 248 dimensions, of which one dimension was of time.

There's this theory where space was actually made of particles and the theory impressed some because out of that numbers started popping out which corresponded to the mass of certain particles

There's M-Theory, and String-Theory... and probably others.


Okay, which of these theories are the most accurate, and what evidence supports them?


INRM

[Darat]

There are currently no "plausible theories of everything".

[Mobyseven]

My theory?

[Number of replies to an OP] = [How interesting the topic of the OP is] / ([How complicated the topic of the OP is] * [How specific the OP is])

Rounded up, of course.

[quarky]

There's also Quarky's single quark hypothesis.

[INRM]

Okay, why not just list the one's that we've already heard of that seem to be good explanations of the physical properties of the universe and such.

BTW: What's Quarky's single quark hypothesis

[quarky]

Shucks, someone was bound to ask;

Its mostly philosophical in nature; yet not unproveable, as far as I know:

Reality is comprised of a single quark.
Said original tinyness is what existed at the big bang, as it still does.
It violates "C" bigtime; moving about fast enough to form all the various quarks; changing flavours and charm and such, fast enough to form the building blocks of sub-atomic particles; and then atoms; molecules, etc.

Every perciever percieves a unique universe. Some of them are so similar, we don't notice. We call that one 'reality' when we decide to agree on what we percieve.

True, the hypothesis implies that we too, are comprised of this single frisky fundamental particle. We remain safely removed from that slightly unpleasant lonliness through an effort; through constant commands to the single particle, which is at our service in an utterly non-moral way.

There was no big bang. We live in a potentiality; one of an infinite number of possibilities that could happen if there ever was a big bang.

I could go on, but I need to hear laughter first.

[baron]

:wackybiglaugh:

[MattusMaximus]

Okay, which of these theories are the most accurate, and what evidence supports them?

INRM


Answer: Whichever one is confirmed by experiment, which is none of them at the moment.

Some would argue that some of these ToEs are not even testable by experimental or observational methods. This is one of my key criticisms of the current state of string theory, for instance; though it is based upon readily accepted physics (GR and QM), it hasn't yet proposed any real experiments to test its validity.

And unless string theory can do that, it should end up in the dustbin.

Two great books about this topic, specifically referencing string theory and whether it should be regarded as scientific or not, are...

Leonard Susskind's "The Cosmic Landscape" (http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/books/38/0316013331/chapter_excerpt24093.html) - and -

Lee Smolin's "The Trouble with Physics" (http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com/)

To anyone interested in ToEs and whatnot, I recommend reading these books. They will provide the layperson with a decent understanding of the scientific issues involved.