Doing some reading recently, it came to my attention that TOE, while for this blog referring to, Today On Earth, in physics circles, refers to, Theory of Everything. This is the idea that if you get down to a small enough level everything is made of the same "stuff" and that all that stuff in "our" universe is ruled neatly by the same laws or rules. That there is one theory for everything and that's the holy grail of physics. Hmmmmm...
Being an old, rock guy, my understanding of either astrophysics (the big stuff) or quantum mechanics (the small stuff) is somewhat limited but I have read or heard/seen enough about both to be both confused and informed. Obviously, our world/universe works; the particles in it, the forces acting on them all work in a manner that things are fairly stable as far as we can tell in our physical world. Getting into the quantum world of "strings"...multi-universes...multi-dimensions (beyond 4)...holographic images being our existence...Craziness! On the larger scales, if it doesn't give off radiation, we can't "see" it so now it's dark matter, dark energy...and it seems to dominate the universe...Craziness!
So, my take on the theory of everything is, even though not from Missouri, show me. Figure it out and explain it to me, so I could perhaps explain it to a ninth grader and I'll see if I buy into it. I know there is way more that we don't know than that we do and I've always liked the thought that "the universe is not wilder than we imagine, it's wilder than we can imagine" but we humans have pretty big imaginations! It seems pretty chaotic out there, atoms look like hurricanes that look like galaxies; seems to be an ordered chaos ruling the cosmos. I'm glad folks are looking into to it and I hope they figure out more and more and more about this wild planet and solar system and galaxy and local group and on and on in all directions and dimensions but I'll stick with getting out and enjoying, Today On Earth. Hope you do, too.
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