<b>Don't Panic.</b>
In Douglas Adams' classic science fiction novel Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer called Deep Thought has spent 7 million years of thinking to come up with the answer to the "ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything," which is "42." But Adams didn't say at first what the "ultimate problem" was.
In a paper recently published on the academic website arXiv, physicist Roland Allen of Texas A&M University and physicist Suzy Lidstrom of Uppsala University in Sweden have made an attempt to figure out the problem, describing what they think of as 42 ultimate questions about life, the universe, and everything.
Regarding the mysterious answer to "deep thinking," Allen and Lidstrom write that they "believe that this means that there are 42 fundamental questions that must be answered on the path to full enlightenment." The resulting article is more than 50 pages long, but it provides a good introduction to some of the ultimate questions in science—which, in the eyes of at least the two authors, are the ultimate questions.
Although this is a list that the two scientists themselves have made, the article is still worth reading as a whole. But to save time, this article has downbridged Allen and Lydstrom's 42 questions, making each explanation roughly the length of a tweet.
The theory of the cosmic constant was first proposed by Einstein, which describes the energy density of the universe. The problem is that astronomical observations show that the cosmological constant is much smaller than what physics predicts.
In 1998, cosmologists were surprised to find that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. This astonishing observation is attributed to the action of "dark energy," and more than two-thirds of the universe is thought to be made up of this mysterious force, but it has yet to be convincingly explained.
Einstein realized that, like everything else in nature, gravity should be able to be described in terms of quantum mechanics. However, when gravity is very strong, such as around black holes, efforts to unify quantum mechanics and gravitational theory fail.
Although Stephen Hawking has done pioneering research work on black hole radiation, Allen and Lidstrom point out that a "fundamental mystery lies in why the entropy of a black hole should be proportional to the area, and not to volume as in other physical systems."
The information is thought to encode on the surface of the black hole's event horizon and be sent back in the form of radiation. However, all black holes of a particular mass emit exactly the same radiation and have nothing to do with information on the event horizon. This means that black holes destroy information, which violates the laws of thermodynamics.
Scientists believe that the universe underwent exponential expansion at the beginning of its birth. The two big questions here are: What is the origin of cosmic inflation? Is there direct evidence of inflation?
According to the Standard Model theory of particle physics, matter and antimatter should have been completely annihilated in the early universe, leaving only photons. But the universe is relatively rich in matter, but there is very little antimatter, what is going on?
Our observations of galaxies suggest that about a quarter of the universe is made up of dark matter, but so far physicists have not detected any dark matter particles that can explain the observed effects. Will it be an axis, a massive weak interaction particle (WIMP), or something completely different?
In the Standard Model, there are four main elementary matter particles: upper quarks, lower quarks, electrons, and electron neutrinos. However, these particles each have a second and third generation (i.e., a copy), such as a cane quark, a odd quark, and a muon, why is this the case?
Where do the four elementary particles mentioned earlier get their mass? Scientists believe that the mass of elementary particles is related to the intensity of their interactions with fields such as the Higgs field, but anomalies make this simple explanation untenable.
Quasicrystals Al-Pd-Re prepared in the laboratory.
The Standard Model cannot explain why the weak nuclear force is so much stronger than gravity (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times).
In the Grand Unified Theory, the three fundamental forces other than gravity (strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and electromagnetic force) are combined as elements of a force, but the way they combine remains a mystery.
Symmetry means that the state of the system remains unchanged before and after it is transformed. CPT symmetry (i.e., positive and negative charge symmetry, cosmic symmetry, time-inversion symmetry) has never been broken, even though every particle has this symmetry. Is it possible for CPT symmetry to be broken?
The Higgs boson reveals to us that our universe is only in a state of "edge stability," or in the transition to a more stable state, and that the nature of the universe before and after the transition will be fundamentally different. The question here is whether our universe is stable now.
It is generally believed that quarks are confined to the protons they form, and it takes a very large amount of energy to release them. There is growing evidence that quarks must always be confined, but this is not rigorously proven.
Honestly, I don't know either, so post a screenshot of the paper here:
Particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have helped us discover new particles, will this continue to happen? This is an important question for physicists at institutions such as CERN.
There may be new types of stars waiting to be discovered, such as the massive Third Star, which formed in the early universe and consisted almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, or the "dark stars" that were energized by the annihilation of dark matter (rather than nuclear fusion).
Over the past few decades, by exposing materials to extreme temperatures, physicists have created a number of superfluids (fluids without viscosity) and superconductors (conductors without resistors). In the future, what other materials can we find these properties?
Topological insulators are materials that are superficially electrically conductive but internally insulating, where else can we find them?
The previously mentioned topological insulators have been validated in single-electron or quasiparticle systems, what other types of materials are likely to be utilized for alignment particles?
In recent years, researchers have discovered many new phases, such as quasicrystals and time crystals, and are there many more waiting for us to discover?
The race to develop large-scale quantum computers, which can surpass traditional computers in many tasks, such as cracking most encryption technologies, is in full swing. But is it possible for these applications to get out of the lab, or are they too fragile to become a temporary novelty?
A quantum internet will help keep data secure, but to do so, we need to be able to manipulate photons from an unprecedented distance. The current photon entanglement transmission distance record was set by a Chinese satellite last year, what innovations can we see next?
If there are other dimensions, how is the "inner space" of that dimension constituted?
Are there countless universes, and each with its own laws? Has our universe been fine-tuned to have the conditions for intelligent life to emerge? The theory is known as the anthropic principle. More importantly, how will we use science to prove these theories?
What is the "shape" of the universe? If the structure of the universe allows for the existence of bare singularities, wormholes, and/or closed time loops, this could make travel back in time to the past possible.
Why did the universe have an origin, and was the universe really born out of the Big Bang? Studying the past will help us understand our own future and whether the ultimate fate of the universe is the "Great Rip" (i.e., all matter is eventually torn to pieces)?
The title says it all, and if I had to add, you might want a "cross-smoke bottle" before trying to solve these problems.
Grand unified theories like supersymmetric chord theory tend to assume local Lorentz invariance (i.e., Einstein's theory of relativity) rather than trying to explain it. But can Einstein's theory of gravity be deduced from the field of vacuum energy or string theory? If not, where does gravity come from?
All forces in the Standard Model (weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, electromagnetic force, gravity) are described in gauge field theory, which describes how elementary particles are coupled to a particular field. Why, however, do only these types of forces exist, and why can matter only be weakly coupled to these fields?
Does quantum mechanics still make sense when it comes to deeper principles of the universe? This theory will explain why the universe is made up of quantum fields and explain some confusing observations, such as observations that cause the wave function to collapse.
Good theories and experiments are mathematically consistent, however, relatively simple quantum field theory has not yet achieved this mathematical consistency.
If mathematics and the physics described by it are actually human creations, then we must answer the question of what is the connection between human consciousness and reality, as well as other related questions, such as why things exist and not everything is empty.
How will better computers improve our models and help us understand some of the most complex experiments, such as the Large Hadron Collider? As our telescopes become more advanced, what secrets of the universe will they reveal?
We live in an era of unprecedented technological progress, is there an upper limit to this progress, and will the rate of new discoveries only get faster and faster? This problem is particularly relevant to artificial intelligence, which aims to create truly super-intelligent machines.
In 1944, Erwin Schrodinger asked this famous question. More than 70 years later, biologists are still seeking answers to this seemingly simple question.
Did organic molecules emerge from the "primordial soup" of early Earth, or were they brought to Earth by asteroids from outer space (this is known as biological alienism)? Furthermore, how did our single-cell ancestors eventually develop into complex life forms?
Robots on Mars are looking for organic matter, and astronomers from the Extraterrestrial Civilizations Project (SETI) are listening to radio waves in the universe, but so far we haven't found evidence of life elsewhere in the galaxy, whether intelligent or other forms of life. Are we really lonely in the vast expanse of the universe?
How does it happen that seemingly "stupid" creatures can perform very complex tasks, such as protein folding, or multiplying cells and forming complex organs (such as eyes, hearts, brains, and other organs?)
Creatures have an astonishing diversity, even within the same species, which makes it extremely difficult for us to cure some of the most serious diseases. Is it possible for us to eradicate disease and death once and for all?
This question has puzzled philosophers for centuries, but only recently have we tried to use technology to explain it from a scientific point of view. Was consciousness born out of the complex interactions of billions of cells? Is consciousness a spectrum? Can it be copied?
Translation: He Wuyu
Proofreading: Qiqi
Edit: Man Qian
Source: Motherboard
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