The Story of
the
Theory of everything
............................................................................................
The good old quantum field theory!
What is the true nature of the universe? To answer this
question people came up with different stories since the
beginning of mankind. First, they looked at the surrounding
with the naked eye and they built stories around them. But
when they came across situations that they cannot explain
with those stories, they had to change the stories. Later on,
with the advancements of vision technologies, they started
to observe minute particles closely. They concluded that
the matter is made up of ‘atoms’ and that the atom is the
smallest layer of reality. But as time passed, they were able to
smash atoms together and discovered elementary particles.
Since they are so small, they couldn't see them even with the
most advanced lenses. The light we use to see things is an
electromagnetic wave. Since elementary particles are very
small, this electromagnetic wave misses the particles. To
overcome this problem, they tried making the wavelength
shorter. By doing so, they increased the energy of the wave.
As a result, when they tried to observe the particles, they
were already changed by the sheer impact of that energy.
So, there was no way to measure the elementary particles,
and this problem eventually gave rise to the basis of quantum
physics; the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Since there was
no way to find out the nature of these particles, people came
up with another story, with a mathematical fiction known as
‘Quantum Field Theory’.
world technologies we use in
today's world, such as hadron
therapy, Maglev trains, and
quantum solvents. But there
was a huge problem. Gravity!
In quantum mechanics, all
forces are carried by different
particles; but according to
Einstein’s general relativity,
gravity is not like other forces
in the universe. Gravity
is a theory of geometry;
Geometry of space-time
itself consists of distances
which we need to describe
with absolute precision. But
in quantum physics, there’s
no any way to measure the
distance. When scientists
tried to invent a new
particle for the gravity, their
mathematics broke down.
That was a big problem. If
they could relate gravity to
quantum physics and the
standard model, they could
In Quantum Field Theory, a particle is considered as a point get the theory of everything
in space. Electrons are distinguishable points with a certain of our nature.
mass and a charge. This theory solved a lot of problems
that they had. All the models of particle physics are built
upon that. This theory has helped a lot in building the real-
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University of Peradeniya GAUGE Magazine