In April 2020, Stephen Wolfgram from the United States announced that he had discovered the theory of everything in the world through his computational science model, but he quickly retracted this statement himself, but caused an uproar in the world physics community.
Today, let's introduce this emerging research direction that has emerged in recent decades - computational science.
01What is the theory of everything?
I mentioned in the article introducing Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" that time has no end? Let's make a trip with time!
One of the big problems in our scientific community is the lack of a unified theory (or formula) to explain the laws of how we operate in the world, an area that has been fiercely confronted and developed by the scientific community for the past 50 years.
Today's scientists describe the laws of the universe according to two basic theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics.
General relativity describes gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure of the cosmic scale that can be observed from only a few kilometers to as large as 100 billion billion kilometers. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, deals with phenomena of very small scales, such as a trillionth of a centimeter.
However, neither theory can be true. For example, in the macroscopic dimension, relativity is suitable for the analysis and inference of gravity (gravity), such as the analysis of stars, celestial bodies and other laws of operation.
Quantum mechanics holds true in microscopic dimensions, such as atoms, electrons, microscopic sizes as small as quarks and bosons, but there is a clear difference or contradiction between the two theories, such as quantum entanglement and the uncertainty principle are contradictory to relativity.
One of the main research directions of the contemporary scientific community is the search for a theoretical formula that can merge relativity and quantum mechanics — hawking calls it quantum gravity — the theory of everything.
02 Who is Stephen Wolfgram?
Stephen Wolfgram, the founder of computational science theory, has a very strong resume:
Born in England in 1959, he taught himself physics at the age of 11 and became obsessed with Statistical Physics at the age of 12, writing his first book on physics.
At the age of 15, he published papers on particle field theory and particle physics, entered Oxford University from Eaton College at the age of 17, received a Doctor of Theoretical Physics from Caltech at the age of 20, and wrote Mathematica software, the most important scientific computing software in the world today, at the age of 27, founded a company and served as CEO for commercial operations.
In 2002 he published A New Science – Computational Science, pioneered computational science, launched the Wolfgram Alpha automated question answering system in 2009, challenged Google, apple Siri, Samsung S Voice, and the second largest search engine Microsoft Bing, which are now widely used, all partially adopted this technology and hailed as one of the most likely future products to achieve artificial intelligence.
In addition to being a top physicist, Wolfgram is also an excellent mathematician, software engineer and company manager, an adjunct professor at the prestigious university UIUC, and a principal investigator of the American Mathematical Association, a combination of genius, diligence and honor.
03 The Origin of Computational Science
As early as 1981, at the age of 22, Wolfgram began to focus on the origins of the physical world, trying to use software and computer calculations to explain a variety of complex physical phenomena, and in the following 20 years, he used his spare time — and held various positions at the same time — to study the improvement and application of this method.
He usually sat in front of his computer at 10 p.m. to start his scientific work, until dawn, and then slept until noon, in a total of more than 4,000 dark nights, Wolfgram tapped the keyboard a hundred million times, moved more than a hundred miles of mouse, made tens of thousands of pages of notes, the results of the research accounted for 10 gigabytes of hard disk space, compiled nearly a million lines of "mathematical" software commands, and ran a trillion computer operations. The result is a 1,200-page, 5-pound tome.
These research methods and achievements are summarized in Wolfgram's book "A New Science" published in 2002, which systematically introduces the origin, research methods and some of the results of computational science.
Wolfgram claims that this book is one of the most important works in the history of science, and that he has done as much as Newton's contribution. This, of course, caused a lot of criticism, and many people ridiculed him as arrogant and exaggerated.
But there is no denying that this book has helped many scientists broaden their horizons and provide a unique research direction and idea.
04When is the importance of computational science?
The purpose of computational science is to use the increasingly powerful computing power to calculate backwards the essential laws of our world, that is, the basic physical model of the world, the theory of everything, which may be a formula, a rule, a principle, or a model.
As the ultimate rule of our world, this rule or model or formula, after infinite iteration, forms the time, space, matter, past, present, and future of our world.
Isn't that mysterious? Yes, this goes back to the most famous ultimate three questions, "Who am I?" Where am I from? Where am I going", or "What is this world?" Where did the world evolve? What will the future of the world look like? ”
Wolfgram wanted to find the answer to these three questions computationally: to find the theory of everything in this world.
Throughout the ages, countless prophets and sages have been looking for answers, from the Christian "God said, there must be light, so there is light", from the Buddhist "all things are made by the heart", from the Taoist "Tao sheng one, life two, two birth three, three lives of all things", the singularity of the big bang of modern physics, light, heart, Tao, singularity, etc. are all trying to explain the origin of the world from different perspectives.
05 Research results of computational science
Wolgram found that a simple set of rules, after many iterations, can create unexpected complexities, such as when we develop a very simple rule: "Starting with a black cell in a hexagon, if a cell adjacent to a cell has black, the cell becomes black." So we can see:
This is what it looks like after 30 iterations, and theoretically, after an infinite number of iterations, the resulting model is infinitely complex. Therefore, Wolffram assumed a large number of different basic rules in the computer, using the computer's powerful computing power to iterate calculations and simulations to produce different models.
Surprisingly, after a large number of iterations, the evolution of spatial and motion records (i.e., time) appeared in the models produced by certain simple rules.
If you amplify this iteration infinitely, will it produce an infinite space (including time)?
Isn't it getting more and more interesting? This unique infinite space can also be seen as a universe, and what does it have to do with the universe we live in? Is it a parallel universe?
So Wolfram assumes a large number of rules and formulas on this basis, iterates on iterative operations, and after countless iterations, selects the results that may produce space and time in the resulting model for screening, and compares with the laws of the world we live in to find similarities.
Theoretically, if the simulated model of the universe is 100% similar to the law of operation of the universe we are in, then the origin of our world can be reversed.
In April 2020, Wolfgram claimed that the theory of everything had been discovered, and later overturned the statement, you can imagine how much calculation and experimentation he has done using computational science.
Of course, this also illustrates the limitations of computational science.
06 Limitations of Computational Science
Computational science certainly has limitations, which individuals summarize into three points:
(1) The exploration and discovery of the laws of the world in the existing scientific system is far from reaching the essence of this world, simply put, that is, we humans have too little understanding of this universe, not to mention the infinite cosmic space, that is, for human beings themselves, the understanding of the earth, are far from reaching the most basic level of cognition, without these, how to compare and confirm the model results obtained by Wolfgram through computational science?
(2) Whether the computing power is sufficient, whether the computing power of the existing computer can meet the calculation of an unlimited number of times, and whether the time spent is within the predictable range. Of course, with the advancement of quantum computing technology, more powerful computing power will continue to emerge.
(3) The third and most critical point is, can our knowledge of the basic rules exhaust all possible?
Is this basic rule a formula, a definition, a set of sequences, a model, or even an idea of ours, all limited by our human brain itself? If this rule cannot be exhausted, even outside of our human cognition, then we may never find this theory of everything.
Computational science provides a method for human beings to find the origin of the world, and whether this method can achieve our purpose of finding the origin of the world cannot be verified at present. But Wolfgram uses the thinking and perspective of computational science to open a window for more scientists to be able to study in this direction and find more possibilities.
My life also has an end, and knowledge has no end, and human exploration and pursuit are endless. As more methods and tools emerge, humans will explore the world more deeply.
Maybe one day in the future, computational science will bring us a big surprise.
The author of this article, Sun Yangzheng, originated from the public account "Thoughter's Notes" (ID: swot 0101)