Picture this, the year is 1955. A famous physicist had just passed away, and one of the articles reporting his death showed a picture of his desk, which was full of various manuscripts and equations scattered all over. Among those scripts, a draft was highlighted…it was incomplete as if the physicist wanted to create his 9th symphony but the universe had other plans. That physicist was none other than the most extraordinary mind of the 20th century, a noble laureate, and the synonym to genius, Albert Einstein. The manuscript was titled The Theory of Everything, also known as the God Equation. Einstein spent 30 years of his life trying to figure out the God Equation, the one equation which governs everything you have learned, seen can imagine Everything! After him, several physicists attempted to achieve the God Equation, but no one could reach a unanimously agreed upon, beautiful God Equation.
Let me explain why the quest for God Equation is a huge deal.
A person with a scientific temper believes in two Gods, one his spiritual God, like Vishnu, Christ, or Allah, and the God Of This universe, the god of symmetry, beauty, and existence, the master of this universe. He defined the set of rules that this universe will work on and defined Physics as we know it. He could have made the world ugly, but everything fits into itself beautifully, it is splendid. In the words of Richard Feynman, this world is like a heavenly game of chess, and we are its mere observers. We observe this game being played on a set of predefined rules, which we are ignorant of. All we can do is look at the game and make conjectures, i.e. intelligent guesses based on our observations of the game. We make theories and try to explain what rules this world works on, the regulations made by the God Of This Universe.
Picture this universal god, standing before you. He has two, hands just like we do, but both those hands contain two realities of this world. On the one hand, lie the planets, the galaxies, our moon, that apple tree, me, you everyone, as we perceive them. On the other hand, there is a different reality, the world on a micro scale, quarks, electrons, photons, everything that has been connected to form our more comprehensive reality. Now, the lord of the universe, is the lord of symmetry and he sure keeps his word, everything in his left hand is in beautiful coordination, with itself and everything in his right hand is in coordination with itself. But alas, the two hands hate each other! No strong law defined by people worshiping his left-hand holds true in his right hand, and vice versa.
His left hand describes the macro world as we know it, the planets, galaxies, stars, and even apples, ants, and even the cells that make you up! The laws of Relativity, Newton’s Laws, etc hold in this reality. We can predict everything by making observations, like how long will it take to complete one revolution, will the meteorite hit the earth, How long will it take for the apple to hit the ground, etc. We are used to his left hand, but since no one can force the universe to make sense to us, there is his right hand.
His right hand is what Science fiction fans call Quantum Realm. If you zoom deep into the smallest things you can see, into electrons, nuclei, quarks, and stuff, physics, as we know it begins to break apart Everything, becomes random, and we are suddenly finding the probability instead of knowing exactly where the object is! Electrons suddenly behave like waves, light can be both wave and particle, and whatnot! Classical physics could not explain all this. Schrodinger and some other “disciples of the right hand” defined a new set of equations for this quantum realm, which worked, for the quantum realm but again was not compatible with the macro world.
What! So you are telling me that the God of Symmetry made it such that there lies the greatest unsymmetry of all in the same universe. Physics was no longer the subject of symmetry. This cannot be true, something is off because the God of the Universe cannot be so unjust to us. We must be missing something, and that something is what we call, The God Equation.
The God Equation will be the bridge between his left and right hand, instantly giving us the knowledge to master the universe. This equation would be elegant like Einstein’s famous energy equals mass times velocity squared. Which proved that mass and energy are not two alien concepts, but the same manifestation, which can be converted from one to another. Similarly, The God Equation will combine principles from the two hands, and prove that his almighty is the God of Symmetry.
There is a theory that comes pretty close to explaining this huge gap in physics, introducing The String Theory. Imagine an apple, you zoom deeper and deeper into it, reach the tissues, then the cells, then the molecules, atoms, nucleus, protons, and quarks, and you keep zooming further. We cannot physically see that because at that point the objects become smaller than the wavelength of the very light we see, so they cannot bounce back the light toward our eyes. But the string theory suggests on zooming more and more, you reach a String, hence the name... The vibration in that string causes the secondary particles to behave the way they are supposed to. Michio Kaku, one of the founders of this theory explains, “The universe is a symphony of strings. And Einstein wrote eloquently about the “Mind of God,” which is cosmic music resonating throughout hyperspace.”
However, the String theory is cool as it sounds and has not yet been proved. Many scientists assume that our Mathematical Knowledge is not yet well developed to comprehend such a high-level equation. This has already happened once. In the 1600s a massive plague broke out, killing a fourth of the European population. Due to this, one gentleman was quarantined in his hometown, and he observed an apple fall. He wondered, does the moon too fall like that? He carried out several practicals and calculations, but to his misfortune, the 17th Century maths did not support his calculations. So he made his own! This is how calculus was born. He used the differential equation in his second law which served as a basis for his other 2 laws. Calculus later helped several other physicists have missing puzzle pieces in their theories to have an easy, neat solution. Maybe, our maths is not developed enough to allow more evolution in this field. Perhaps we need another genius who can do this job. That genius could be you, science does not see who you are, just what can you do, anyone can find the God Equation, all it takes is the right mindset and a great idea to build upon…and knowledge of physics…of course.
Once we find this Theory of Everything, what next? Is that everything we could find? Is that when all physicists retire and find other jobs?
No, the answer is simple, one reading all the rules does not become the Grandmaster of the game. It takes applying those rules, finding several twists in them, and mastering the universe! We are yet to be immortal, travel around the universe, go in multiverses, go multidimensional, there is so much we humans have to do, so buckle up, this is a trip you want to be a part of!
