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Math Science

Stephen Wolfram Presents a Path to The Fundamental Theory of Physics (stephenwolfram.com) 166

Posted by BeauHD from the theoretical-physics dept.
New submitter wattersa writes: Mathematician/Physicist Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research and creator of the technical computation program Mathematica, has announced a discovery in the area of theoretical physics. His long-form blog post discusses the emergence of physical properties of our universe from what he describes as simple, universal, computable rules. He claims the emergent properties are consistent with relativity and quantum mechanics through a 448-page technical paper on the subject, which is posted on a completely new website that just went online.
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Stephen Wolfram Presents a Path to The Fundamental Theory of Physics More

Stephen Wolfram Presents a Path to The Fundamental Theory of Physics

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  • The last 30+ years wasted on string theory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @09:20PM (#59947968)
    Hopefully we can turn the page on the string theory and have another breakthrough.

    • Re:The last 30+ years wasted on string theory (Score:5, Funny)

      by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @09:34PM (#59948000) Journal
      It's time to snip our tether to string theory, and pluck a new thread to follow as we unravel this mystery!

    • Re:The last 30+ years wasted on string theory (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mcswell ( 1102107 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @10:45PM (#59948180)

      String Theory is so Neanderthal! https://www.nbcnews.com/scienc... [nbcnews.com]

    • String Theory 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @11:36PM (#59948316) Journal
      Actually his new theory sounds like it has the same problems as strong theory. From the blog post:

      Oh, yes, and we're putting up a Registry of Notable Universes. It's already populated with nearly a thousand rules. I don't think any of the ones in there yet are our own universe...

      Which is exactly the same problem String theory has: there are lots of possible universes and no idea which, if any of them, match our own.

      Frankly, this whole thing sounds extremely dubious. The idea seems to be that simple rules can generate immense complexity which is pretty much the entire history of physics: this is not something new. Indeed the Standard Model is a simple set of rules for particle properties and interactions which does an amazing job at explaining a huge amount of the complexity of our universe (with some notable exceptions: yes, gravity I'm looking at you!).

      • Let's take a million monkeys and have them randomly typing the laws of physics, after enough time, one of them is guaranteed to get it right...

      • Re:String Theory 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @03:03AM (#59948918)

        Can the theory explain any formerly unexplainable phenomena?

        Does the theory make any testable predictions?

        String theory: No and no.

        Wolfram's theory: No and no.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rho ( 6063 )

          Nonsense. String theory made the testable prediction that physicists could dabble in nonsense for decades and still get paid.

          Test result? True.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

          Can the theory explain any formerly unexplainable phenomena?

          1. Yes, but there's no point in explaining because it's unexplainable. But "trust me".

          Does the theory make any testable predictions?

          2. Yes, but why the predictions are meaningless are unexplainable (see 1)... testing confirms unexplainable results.

        • To the contrary, his theory looks very much like it will generate testable hypotheses. For example: he predicts an entirely new category of fundamental particles, much smaller than the ones we currently know. If that can be made more specific, and we can figure out how to search for those particles, then this can be tested.

          My mathematics in relativity and quantum mechanics has rusted beyond use. But I remember the principles, and based on the non-mathematical summary, I think he is on to something. Even if

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        It's about what you'd expect from the guy. He was always a bit of a kook, but I'm sure the math checks out.

        Frankly, this whole thing sounds extremely dubious. The idea seems to be that simple rules can generate immense complexity which is pretty much the entire history of physics: this is not something new. Indeed the Standard Model is a simple set of rules for particle properties and interactions which does an amazing job at explaining a huge amount of the complexity of our universe (with some notable exceptions: yes, gravity I'm looking at you!).

        Well, at 448 pages, I'm not sure he nailed the simple part. However, the Standard Model is neither simple nor elegant. It's also missing some important things, like why all the fundamental particles with mass have the specific rest masses that they do, but perhaps that's inextricably linked to gravity,

        But I point out the mass problem because that one specific area than any "simpler set of rules from

  • Oh Stephen, you old kook (Score:5, Funny)

    by hacker_news_rocks ( 6409624 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @09:24PM (#59947978)
    https://www.smbc-comics.com/co... [smbc-comics.com]
    • Except the other sciences stagnate without the physicists and mathematicians providing them new and useful tools.

      Doctors wouldn't wash their hands until we handed them a microscope. It's been a repeating, consistent pattern since The Renaissance.
      • That was out of stubborn conservativeness, not for lack of practical evidence that hand-washing helped.

      • Doctors wouldn't wash their hands until we handed them a microscope.

        The microscope was invented in 1590.

        Doctors started washing their hands around 1870.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

          Doctors started washing their hands around 1870.

          Hah, it took more than Pasteur and Koch to convince us to wash our hands... and some of my colleagues still don't do it as frequently or as thoroughly as they should. Ask any hospital microbiologist...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Experiments demonstrated convincingly that hand washing and other hygeine measures prevented disease spread in hospitals before the germ theory of disease had caught on in Europe. Many doctors still don't wash their hands adequately. If you appoint a nurse to watch them, and the power to punish them, infection rates go way down.

        The invention and refinement of new instruments does drive scientific advance though, in all fields, including physics. It's one of the things that makes scientific development expon

  • It's not the first time Wolfram has made this type of announcement.

  • 448 pages... (Score:5, Funny)

    by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @09:30PM (#59947994)
    If there is a reason for TL;DR, this is it.

  • What I find most annoying about his post is his claim that he was the first to discover the concept of emergent behavior,

  • tl;dr Looks like automata theory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Proudrooster ( 580120 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @09:52PM (#59948024) Homepage

    Just taking a cursory glance at the technical description, it looks like he is trying create a framework or ruleset based on automata theory, set theory, physical properties of matter, space/time, accepted physical laws, and various maths {geometry, linear algebra, vectors, and diffEq} to create a language to model the observations that we see in physics. These models would then lead to understanding patterns and rules in larger systems.

    This could be very useful in chemistry as well.

    The best case is we will get new models and simulations for figuring stuff out and modeling the world.

    The worst case is that the math geeks will invade and figure out how to use this to do proofs and promote string-theory.

    I can't process it all tonight, but I want to come play with Wolfram's new toys when I am rested.

    • Re:tl;dr Looks like automata theory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @10:15PM (#59948084) Journal

      Maybe Dr. Wolfram is doing what many PhDs tend to do: keep re-doing their dissertation. In his case, perhaps:

      automata theory = hammer
      universe = nail

      Look, this guy is extremely bright. (IIRC, he got his doctorate at 19.) I'm definitely curious about what his mind cooked up here. Who knows? It might be revolutionary. Or it might be self-promoting twaddle. He has enough of a reputation that he might deserve at least a first glance.

      • Re:tl;dr Looks like automata theory (Score:5, Informative)

        by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @02:13AM (#59948774)

        Bearing in mind his reputation, I wonder whose work it really is. He has form for putting his name on his employees' work and contractually gagging them from claiming authorship.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by piojo ( 995934 )

          That explains a rumor I heard that he was an asshole, when I asked why an organization didn't use any of his software. But I always assumed it was something less nasty such as rudeness.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
            I think part of the reason was the fact that his pricing model was considered far too steep even by companies like Oracle :)

          • If you want to know anything about Wolfram's character, read the blog entry linked in the summary and count the number of times he referenced, lauded and cheered to his own work. Every two or three sentence, he will congratulate himself for something he did.

            And you know what people are like if they continuously congratulate themselves every step of the way.

            They might be successful businesspeople or entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists etc, and they might not neccessarily be wrong, but they sure will be pr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        The world is full of intelligent people. Being intelligent doesn't make you right. In fact there are some rather amazingly stupid and simple traps that only people with a high degree of intelligence are capable of falling into that the vulgar unwashed seem to avoid instinctively. Since almost no one is actually going to wade through 400+ pages line by line to see if it's just twaddle or actually worth the time investment, I'll fall back on "peer review" and call it marketing BS until proved different. The m

    • Re:tl;dr Looks like automata theory (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @10:31PM (#59948136)

      That's how I took it too. A couple of pages down his announcement post, I came across this:

      Oh, yes, and we're putting up a Registry of Notable Universes. It's already populated with nearly a thousand rules. I don't think any of the ones in there yet are our own universe - though I'm not completely sure. But sometime - I hope soon - there might just be a rule entered in the Registry that has all the right properties, and that we'll slowly discover that, yes, this is it - our universe finally decoded.

      Putting aside the underlying mechanism, he's devised a method for writing physics books. If one of those books matches the physics that we already know, then we can look in it for things we didn't already know.

      I think the project will flounder because of something that he notices and calls attention to - his generator is computationally infeasible. You can't predict what kind of physics will emerge from a given rule, you have to let it play out. And then, to be useful, you need an algorithmic way to compare the computed hypergraph with physics that we already know.

      I'm getting a distinct "infinite monkeys banging on typewriters" vibe here. That's not right - the monkeys are equipped with single-piezo inkjet print heads and it will take millions of dots to form words.

      Sadly, I'm not on lockdown, so I doubt that I'll have time to read the paper any time soon. I wouldn't be surprised at all if my quick first impression turns out to be all wrong, but I'm not getting my hopes up just yet.

      • Re:tl;dr Looks like automata theory (Score:5, Interesting)

        by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @11:12PM (#59948238) Journal

        I think the project will flounder because of something that he notices and calls attention to - his generator is computationally infeasible. You can't predict what kind of physics will emerge from a given rule, you have to let it play out. And then, to be useful, you need an algorithmic way to compare the computed hypergraph with physics that we already know.

        Maybe. If you read further you see that he has managed to derive some pretty important and non-obvious physics results -- e.g. relativity -- directly from the structure of iterated rule applications over time, and none of those results depend at all on the particular iterated rule (other than it has to achieve a certain level of complexity) but instead depend only on basic observations of how changes propagate through time from the perspective of an observer. Some of this is just tracking Einstein's well-documented thought processes, but even Einstein had to discover/invent the equations, he couldn't derive them. Assuming the derivation process is mathematically sound, that's pretty profound, even though Wolfram had the (enormous) advantage of knowing his destination.

        Moreover, it points to the possibility that even without identifying the putative rule(s) that define our universe, it may be possible to derive other as yet unknown but equally valuable results -- results which could be plenty simple and computable.

        Will anything come of it? Impossible to know. But it's certainly plausible, and the elegant simplicity is indeed beautiful.

        • Re:tl;dr Looks like automata theory (Score:5, Informative)

          by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @02:14AM (#59948776)

          Some of this is just tracking Einstein's well-documented thought processes, but even Einstein had to discover/invent the equations, he couldn't derive them

          ?! Lorentz discovered/invented the equations; Einstein derived them from the postulate that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by catmistake ( 814204 )

          Some of this is just tracking Einstein's well-documented thought processes, but even Einstein had to discover/invent the equations, he couldn't derive them.

          So well-documented, none of the ideas were actually Einstein's! I don't want to bash Einstein. He was truly brilliant. But I'll bash the notion that he was so innovative that all the ideas were his. None of them were. Let's examine all the original insights traditionally attributed to Albert Einstein.

          Empedocles (c. 490–430 BC) was the first to propose a theory of light, and claimed that light has a finite speed. In 1021, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published his Book of Optics, in which he presented a

      • It's the same problem string theory has: lots of possible "universes" and no idea whether any of them match ours.
  • I know Stephen gets some flak for the inflated grandeur of his claims, mostly warranted, but at the very least this post is a beautifully rendered blog post on some interesting topology / geometry phenomena. Math wants to be visualized.
  • So is this guy a hack fraud or not? The internet is full of crazy, and to my uneducated eye this reads like standard, normal, ordinary crazy. Is there anything to this or is it just more junk?
    • This is the problem. You need someone to tell you if he is a fraud, or not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      Think: "used car salesman". He's not a fraud - he is, after all, selling you a used car. The fact that he described its features and abilities with enthusiasm is not technically fraud....
  • Interestingly, the public DNS service and servers 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 cannot resolve wolframphysics.org
  • My experience with many theoretical physicists is that their work usually suffers from a RIDICULOUS lack of rigor. Many of them seem to be living by the famous "Don't let the facts stop you" saying. They get away with it mostly because their claims are not easily testable. I truly hope this is different. I've ran his paper up and their seems to be quite an effort to maintain rigor, but given its sheer length I'm in no position to judge.

    • I have been reading it, the time evolution is equivalent to computation (chap 7 of intro) and for quantum, he models with non deterministic Turing machine (he calls multi-way system) plus an add on which chooses branch of computation (branch in multiverse) on observation. So the whole thing is as rigorous as computation, but super general. It looks like he would like to create a universal language for physics, where all ideas and their computational representation are one, and of course have software ready

  • It seems like he's just describing a fractal compression framework and claiming that the fractal that we eventually find that describes all known physics upon expansion will be the Fundamental Theory we've long sought.

    Isn't that sort of like claiming that using curve fitting to encode the stock market for the last 100 years will allow you to predict the future?

  • Summary of article/post (Score:5, Informative)

    by wattersa ( 629338 ) <andrew@andrewwatters.com> on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @01:40AM (#59948698) Homepage

    I devoted most of today to reading Dr. Wolfram's blog post and technical papers, and I've had some time to digest this. I am very impressed. Yes, the size of his ego is basically infinite, but it's worth looking past that in order to gain real insight from what he proposes. From the perspective of an enthusiast researcher, at least, this appears to be a groundbreaking discovery in the area of theoretical physics and new ways of looking at many problems. I can forgive that it's also a long-form advertisement for Mathematica (full disclosure: I'm a Wolfram customer for Mathematica).

    I interpret his central theory as being that space is a lattice of infinitesimal nodes with relations between them defining "space," which emerge from a simple rule of substitution iterated around 10^500 times since the beginning of the universe. He explains a surprisingly large amount of properties and equations (including Einstein's equations, dark matter, the speed of light, etc.) using only the geometric and relational concepts he describes. It's truly impressive and I strongly believe this work has applications in, among other things, relational databases.

    He speculates that our universe is "approximately" three dimensional. That leaves an interesting question. Until reading his persuasive article, I refused to believe that we live in non-Euclidean space. But now I'm not sure anymore. If I had to guess, I think we're going to discover that there are "Pi" dimensions.

    He presents a novel theory that "oligons," which would be far smaller than the Planck length, are the source of dark matter halos around galaxies. He believes we are only scratching the surface and are looking at the "big" particles in the Standard Model. He presents arguments for why his estimates of the masses of particles are so small and what it means.

    You also get the sense that Dr. Wolfram is seriously dedicated to this cause; he is open-sourcing his research and tools plus internal video documenting the process. I was left with a sense of wonder that there are people like Dr. Wolfram out there who are dedicated enough to spend millions of dollars of their own money proving their research. Fortunately, he still has a lot of good years left and it seems like maybe a fundamental theory of everything is within reach, possibly even within his lifetime. It's obvious he wants to live to see it, and that is great to see.

    • It looks to me like another variation of Loop Quantum Gravity [wikipedia.org].

    • This smells a lot of trying to act as of reality *is* mathematical models, as is common among a certain type of mathematicians that treat math like a religion and have apparently never heard of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

      Remember that any model, including *all of mathematics*, is only ever actual science, and not religion, if it 1. makes predictions, and 2. they are backed by actual observation from the real world. (Unlike mere axioms aka paradigms aka dogmas.) With them 3. ideally being useful or

      • Re:But: Is it science? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DavenH ( 1065780 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @08:46AM (#59949786)

        Remember that any model, including *all of mathematics*, is only ever actual science, and not religion, if it 1. makes predictions, and 2. they are backed by actual observation from the real world.

        There's this thing called abductive reasoning that most people have never heard of. The idea is that if you can find a theory that replaces another by explaining the same observations, but it requires fewer assumptions / constants than the original, then it is more likely correct.

        That's the whole purpose of String Theory, to go from 19 fundamental degrees of freedom of the standard model, down to 1 or 2, and have those 19 be explained as emergent phenomena. Pretentious peanut-casting slashdotters be damned, this is an incredibly valid and meaningful pursuit.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Absolutely. Except string theory has failed to do that. The standard model has a fairly high dimensional parameter space, but you can measure the correct values and thereby generate the theory that describes reality.

          String theory began with the promise that you could eliminate a bunch of those parameters by explaining them with a deeper theory. Potentially, you could get the right theory just by setting a few of the basic properties of a fundamental string. Except it turned out that the way the extra dimens

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DavenH ( 1065780 )
            Fair points - it could be that String Theory dies by the same sword (simplicity / elegance) that it lived by. I don't know the specifics, just the motivation.

            The point I'm trying to make is that these metaphysical theories cannot be judged by the same scientific metrics as normal physical theories. Due to the unthinkable energies potentially required to illuminate the most fundamental building blocks of matter (e.g. something the size of a superstring), typical scientific principles are an unrealistic, unp

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        Not only that but someone needs to remember that the model is not the thing. It's a model. Even if it's entirely accurate, it's still just the model. This is where losing sight of the forest for the trees comes into play.

    • He explains a surprisingly large amount of properties and equations (including Einstein's equations, dark matter, the speed of light, etc.) using only the geometric and relational concepts he describes

      The geometrical interpretations involving 'foliations' he uses seem to have little or no convincing justification for the results he claims for them or why they even have meaning for a fundamentally abstract causal tree. I also sense a great deal of hand waving over time in the detail.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @02:47AM (#59948864)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:And this lead us... where, exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ath1901 ( 1570281 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @04:48AM (#59949152)

      If QM can be derived from a cellular automata then we should be able to derive exactly what is going on underneath the hood during measurements, quantum teleportation, quantum bomb detectors etc.

      New Kind of Science was a very very long time ago but I don't recall that he ever reconciled it with QM. Bells theorem is a bitch since it forbids local hidden variables and at first glance it seems like cellular automata would be a kind of local hidden variable theory. I haven't read any of the new stuff but that is where I would start since it just seems incompatible. I he can reconcile cellular automata with QM and Bells theorem then I'd be very much intrigued.

  • Is this peer reviewed, or is this Wolfram just being Wolfram again?

  • Always be wary of self-published scientific claims (Score:3)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @07:25AM (#59949474)
    Why did he publish to a new website and not to a peer-reviewed journal? Pseudo-scientific quacks run straight to credulous reporters with their claims instead of peer-reviewed journals because scientists see through their BS. So we should always be very suspicious when someone makes extraordinary public claims without having submitted their work for review.

    It doesn't mean Wolfram is pulling a fast one, but thorough skepticism is definitely warranted.

  • Theories without physical, testable, measurable results aren't theories. They're a form of complex mental masturbation (not that there's anything wrong with that).

  • But I'm more interested in why you guys even care. How did the laws of physics create a creature that thinks about the laws of physics. Basically the laws of physics are thinking about themselves.

    • This is the foundation of Descartes's proof of the existence of God, also known as Descartes Ontological Problem. It's been roundly rejected as poor logic since then, but it's interesting to understand.

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