- 5/26/2025
It was Einstein's famous unfinished project - to find one law that unites all of physics, and explain everything in the universe. It's still an unfinished project, and today hundreds of physicists from CERN to NASA to the Ivory Towers around the world are struggling to find this holy grail of science.
When the Earth is closer to the Sun on January 4th, the rate of radioactive decay is faster.
The pilot wave theory states that an electron is both a wave and a particle all of the times--not just when it is being observed.
Freeman states that we can see is approximately 5 % of all the matter, dark matter accounts for another 23%, and lastly, dark energy accounts for the remaining 72% of all matter. At the time of this documentary in 2011, Clare Burrage was thinking that dark energy is a by-product of the chameleon particle.
Interviewed experts: Jere Jenkins, Ephraim Fischbach, Anton Zeilinger, Yves Couder, Antony Valentini, Petr Hořava (theorist), Clare Burrage, Max Tegmark.
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#throughthewormhole
#season2
#episode6
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
#space
#nasa
#spacedocumentary
#morganfreeman
#howdoestheuniverseworks
#howtheuniworseworks
#principleofuniverse
When the Earth is closer to the Sun on January 4th, the rate of radioactive decay is faster.
The pilot wave theory states that an electron is both a wave and a particle all of the times--not just when it is being observed.
Freeman states that we can see is approximately 5 % of all the matter, dark matter accounts for another 23%, and lastly, dark energy accounts for the remaining 72% of all matter. At the time of this documentary in 2011, Clare Burrage was thinking that dark energy is a by-product of the chameleon particle.
Interviewed experts: Jere Jenkins, Ephraim Fischbach, Anton Zeilinger, Yves Couder, Antony Valentini, Petr Hořava (theorist), Clare Burrage, Max Tegmark.
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#throughthewormhole
#season2
#episode6
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
#space
#nasa
#spacedocumentary
#morganfreeman
#howdoestheuniverseworks
#howtheuniworseworks
#principleofuniverse
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Our universe, it's awe-inspiring and baffling.
00:07From colossal explosions of stars to the strange movements of tiny particles, each new discovery
00:16seems to reveal another layer of mystery.
00:20Our understanding of the world around us has taken us from the Stone Age to the Silicon
00:26Age.
00:29Now ironclad laws of physics are breaking apart.
00:34What we believe is reality may not be real at all.
00:38The future of humanity depends on our discovering how the universe really works.
00:49Space, time, life itself, the secrets of the cosmos lie through the wormhole.
01:18Think of existence as an enormous web that we're all woven into, but we can't see the
01:26whole thing.
01:28We just see the patch where we are standing.
01:31We can't see the whole of reality.
01:34But what if we could see it all?
01:37What if we could understand how the whole of creation joins together?
01:44The rewards of finding this equation would be enormous.
01:50A revolution in science far beyond anything that has come before.
01:55A great leap forward that will transform life on Earth and ensure our survival as a species.
02:05But what hope do we mere mortals have of uncovering the hidden secrets of the universe, of knowing
02:13the mind of God?
02:18I remember my first day of school, the day I was supposed to start learning about the
02:24world and how it works.
02:28I made it about 20 yards to the schoolhouse, then I froze.
02:35What hope did I have of understanding everything, or anything?
02:41My mind reeled.
02:44I ran back home.
02:49I wonder if scientists feel much the same way.
02:54There is so much we don't know about why the universe functions the way it does.
03:01Imagine trying to play a game of chess if you don't know the rules.
03:06You might figure out some moves, but a lot of it would make no sense.
03:11Once you know the rules, though, you can begin to move the pieces with purpose.
03:18Science is our means to discover those rules, and so far we've revealed quite a few of them.
03:26But what if we've got them wrong?
03:32Deep in the basement tunnels of Purdue University, scientists Jerry Jenkins and Ephraim Fischbach
03:40have discovered that one of the supposedly unbreakable laws of physics is broken.
03:47It began with a mystery.
03:48I'll come out and set up a few tethers and receive some tools and he'll come out right
03:53after me.
03:54In the second week of December of 2006, astronauts from the space shuttle were up at the International
04:00Space Station and everybody was out on an EVA.
04:04There was a solar storm.
04:15Because the astronauts were all out there, the solar storm was big news.
04:19Sitting there and watching that news story, I thought, well, wouldn't that be funny if
04:23I saw that appear in the data?
04:26Jenkins studies a powerful source of energy we can't see but is all around us, radioactivity.
04:34Every second of every day, the sun sprays out showers of radioactive atoms.
04:40These atoms are unstable.
04:43They spit out energy until they burn away in a process known as radioactive decay.
04:51Radioactive decay is supposed to be a random process that cannot be affected by anything.
04:59In early December of 2006, we're plotting this.
05:02It's a nice straight line.
05:03It's following exactly like it should.
05:05But then on December 13th, the flare happened and we see that the decay has actually departed
05:10what the standard decay line should have been.
05:12And it departed it for quite some time.
05:14This is actually the space of about four days.
05:17It appeared, or so it seemed, that something may have been changing this radioactive decay
05:23process which nothing is supposed to change.
05:27Kirschbach, a theoretical physicist, struggled with the huge implications of this finding.
05:33Knowing how fast radioactive particles break down is critical for nuclear power, weapons,
05:39electronics and medicine.
05:42Could it be that a concept so uniformly accepted and central to modern life was wrong?
05:50The idea that nuclear decays cannot be influenced by an external influence is so fundamental
05:55to so many aspects of quantum physics, nuclear physics, elementary particle physics that
06:00changing that would likely have a significant change in our understanding of the universe
06:04as well as on practical applications.
06:08Still reeling from this shock, Jenkins and Kirschbach uncovered another mystery.
06:15Radioactive decay was not just being affected by the solar flare.
06:19The discharge of radioactive particles appears to change depending on how close the Earth
06:24is to the Sun.
06:31When the Earth is closer to the Sun, around January 4th, the rate of radioactive decay
06:35seems to be faster.
06:36And when we're farther away, the rate seems to be smaller.
06:39Now, we're going to illustrate this in the following way.
06:43I represent the Sun, and Jerry is going to represent the Earth, and the bucket represents
06:47a sample of radioactive radium atoms.
06:51And you see that as Jerry moves an ellipse, where he's closer to the Earth around January
06:564th, more tennis balls are thrown out, meaning more particles come out than happened around
07:01July 4th.
07:07This small change in numbers could have big consequences.
07:13Cancer patients receive very tiny doses of radiation to kill their rebel cells.
07:18If the strength of that radiation changes seasonally, they might get too little or too
07:24much of a dose.
07:26Knowing the difference could save lives.
07:31But the duo's most important discovery could secure the future of the human race.
07:38Forty hours prior to the actual time of the flare, we saw the decay rate change and actually
07:43leave the line.
07:46After the flare, it started to recover and move back toward the line.
07:50So this possibly gives us the opportunity then to predict when these solar flares are
07:54happening.
07:55A large solar flare could wipe out every one of the nearly 3,000 satellites orbiting the
08:02Earth.
08:03In a flash, we would lose the internet, GPS, television, radio, telephones, and the systems
08:12that control our power grids.
08:15Knowing a flare is coming could avert a global apocalypse.
08:21If this phenomenon is real as we believe it is, then it's essential to understand how
08:25this is happening because this will certainly be a part of a bigger puzzle that we must
08:30understand to put all this physics together.
08:35We're groping in the dark of the vast universe, thinking we have uncovered its deepest truths.
08:42In finding, we still have much to learn about the rules of nature.
08:48And nature does not make things easy for us.
08:52Down at the smallest scale of existence, deep in the weird world of quantum mechanics, it
08:58seems to play by two different rules at the same time.
09:05And the deeper we probe into its mysteries, the more we are forced to ask not just how
09:11the universe works, but whether anything is real.
09:22Quantum mechanics has transformed the world.
09:26We owe most of our amazing technology to its explanations of how extremely small particles
09:32behave, but we don't really understand it.
09:39In the quantum world, nothing seems to make sense.
09:43Reality stops being real.
09:48This mystery is our greatest obstacle to unlocking the secrets of the universe.
09:53If we can solve it, we may hold the keys to creation itself.
10:07Vienna, Austria is arguably the birthplace of quantum mechanics.
10:13This is where you will find the leading quantum experimentalist in the world, Professor Anton
10:19Zeilinger.
10:23When I first heard of quantum mechanics, when I was a student, I was immediately struck
10:29by three things.
10:34First, its unbelievable mathematical beauty.
10:38Secondly, by the incredible precision to which the predictions work.
10:43And thirdly, by the fact that it doesn't make sense.
10:53Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of all the tiny particles that everything is
10:57made of.
10:59This knowledge has given us computers, nuclear power, satellites, advanced medicine, most
11:06of the great leaps forward humanity has taken in the past hundred years.
11:11But the quantum world seems to run contrary to everything we know about the laws of nature.
11:18Simply put, down where things are very, very small, the universe follows a different set
11:24of rules.
11:28Consider the phenomenon of quantum non-locality, when two tiny particles instantly share information
11:36across vast distances.
11:39If there were quantum dice, it would mean that if I throw one die here, it shows a certain
11:46number.
11:48The other die thrown at some distant location would show the same number.
11:54How can that be?
11:56Quantum mechanics describes it very well.
12:00Time and again, Zeilinger has proven that no matter how extreme its predictions, quantum
12:06theory works, even though it shouldn't.
12:11And perhaps the ultimate proof of just how unsettling quantum mechanics can be is something
12:16called the double-slit experiment.
12:19It will make you question whether reality exists at all.
12:26This simple configuration shoots particles of light called photons, one at a time, through
12:33two tiny slits in a screen.
12:35With a laser which produces light, this light is attenuated such that only one photon at
12:43a time emerges.
12:46These photons pass through a two-slit assembly, and then we have a camera which registers
12:53the pattern behind the two-slit assembly.
12:55So what we see is that the photons arrive one by one on the screen, some here, some
13:03there, and it looks pretty random.
13:07Since the photons travel one by one, some through this slit, some through that slit,
13:13you would expect them to leave a pattern of two stripes on the wall.
13:18And you would be wrong.
13:20They mysteriously create a band of stripes.
13:24This is what you would expect to see if a constant beam of light shined through the
13:29two slits.
13:31It would spread across the wall like a wave.
13:35So how can single bullet-like particles of light create a wave pattern?
13:40This could only happen if the particles go through both slits at the same time.
13:46In other words, the particle is in two places at once.
13:51But strangest of all is what happens when you put detectors next to the slits.
13:57When the photons are being watched, the wave pattern disappears.
14:03Take away the detectors, and the wave pattern comes back.
14:09This suggests that we can change the way reality behaves just by looking at it.
14:18Does this mean that reality itself is not real?
14:23The modern answer is that the path taken by the photon is not an element of reality.
14:29We are not allowed to talk about the photon passing through this or this slit.
14:37Neither are we allowed to say that the photons pass through both slits.
14:41All this kind of language is not applicable.
14:48So do we just keep reaping the benefits from quantum mechanics and accept that deep down
14:54nature plays by a set of rules that will forever remain a mystery?
14:59The interesting message here is that we have quantum physics now around for nearly 100
15:05years, and we are still working at the foundations.
15:09And that tells me that when we found it, it will be an absolute revelation.
15:15It will be something different from what we have been thinking.
15:24If the quantum theorists are correct, we will never understand the fundamental level of
15:30the universe.
15:32Our hopes of finding an ultimate theory will fail, and the human race will hit a roadblock
15:37it can't break through.
15:41But what if they're wrong?
15:44What if the truth about what happens deep inside you, me, and everything else in the
15:50universe is there, if we're willing to look for it?
15:58For most of the 20th century, scientists believed quantum physics could not be explained,
16:06that we would just have to accept that we'll never know why things behave as they do down
16:10at the deepest levels of existence.
16:14But now, a growing band of rebel scientists thinks there may be a logical explanation
16:20for quantum weirdness after all, and new hope for revealing the ultimate truth of our universe.
16:31The trail begins here, with a drop of silicon.
16:38In his Paris laboratory, physicist Yves Coudet and his team conduct an amazing series of
16:44experiments.
16:46They are observing the behavior of silicon droplets bouncing in lockstep on a vibrating
16:52plate.
16:53The liquid of the drop never touches the liquid of the substrate, so they're always separated
17:00by air film.
17:01And in fact, this is stable.
17:02You can keep the drop bouncing on the liquid surface for several days, if you wish.
17:11Using a camera that shoots a thousand frames per second, Coudet has discovered that these
17:17droplets mimic behaviors seen in the quantum world.
17:23And that shouldn't be possible, because the quantum world and the large-scale world play
17:29by two different sets of rules.
17:39Yet here we see a single droplet moving randomly like a quantum particle, but behaving like
17:45a quantum wave.
17:48If you watch this carefully, you'll notice that the wave appears to be guiding the droplet.
17:57In fact, the wave fields around the droplets develop a memory of the trails they have followed.
18:03Despite their random behavior, they follow a small number of paths.
18:08Again, this is eerily similar to the behavior of quantum objects.
18:14This runs so contrary to popular belief that at first, Coudet refused to believe what he
18:20was seeing.
18:22In any physics experiments, you only see what you are prepared to see.
18:27Of course, it was very obvious that there was a memory, but it took us some time to
18:32realize that it was that we were observing, because you have to adapt this new idea.
18:39Perhaps most revealing of all, Coudet has reproduced the double-slit experiment using
18:46his bouncing silicon droplets.
18:49The mystery of quantum mechanics is, how can things like electrons sometimes behave like
18:55particles and sometimes behave like waves?
19:00Perhaps this is the answer.
19:03They are particles and waves.
19:07Of course, this system, though small, is not quantum.
19:12Our system is not a model of quantum mechanics, but it is an association of a particle and
19:17a wave, and some of its properties are similar to the properties observed in quantum mechanics.
19:25Coudet won't claim that his experiments show us what is really happening down at the deepest
19:30layers of existence.
19:33But this man will.
19:35To him, those droplets are more proof that the quantum world makes sense after all, and
19:41that reality really exists.
19:48Anthony Valentini of Clemson University is a quantum heretic.
19:54He loudly proclaims that physics went off the rails in the 1920s when it embraced the
19:59doctrine of quantum uncertainty, which says that nothing is real until we look at it.
20:06Valentini champions the theory that got left behind.
20:10It was created by one of the pillars of early 20th century physics, Louis de Broglie.
20:18Louis de Broglie's original idea is that an electron is both a wave and a particle
20:23all the time.
20:25It's not the case that, well, sometimes it's a particle, sometimes it's a wave.
20:29There is a wave guiding a particle at all times.
20:33And de Broglie called this a pilot wave.
20:38In quantum theory, there is something called the probability wave, a purely mathematical
20:45object that tells you the chance of finding an electron at any point in space.
20:52Pilot wave theory treats this wave as a real physical object.
21:01So a simple analog is a bottle.
21:04Someone is on an island and they want to send a message.
21:08So they write something on a piece of paper, put it in a bottle, close it and throw it
21:12in the ocean.
21:17And water waves simply push the bottle along.
21:24There is a crucial difference between the waves we know and the pilot wave.
21:30According to the theory, pilot waves exist in hidden dimensions of space beyond the three
21:36we know.
21:38True.
21:40This means that contrary to the accepted theory in physics, quantum objects obey the same
21:45rules as large objects.
21:48They do not exist in two places at once.
21:51They're part of the real world.
21:55I think that quantum mechanics itself is not even a candidate for the truth about the microscopic
22:01world because it simply doesn't attempt to describe precisely what the microscopic world
22:07is.
22:08And the mere fact that there are different theories about what the answer might be doesn't
22:13mean that there's no answer.
22:15And eventually one of them is found to be the correct one.
22:19To understand how the universe works, we need to unlock why the quantum world is so different
22:27from the world we know.
22:30It is an unsolved mystery that affects every single person on Earth.
22:36And this man thinks he can solve it.
22:44The more we understand the inner workings of the universe, the more we humans are rewarded
22:50with new medicines, new technologies, and undreamed of improvements in our lives.
22:57But some say we're a long way off from unlocking the universe's deepest secrets.
23:03We want definitive answers.
23:06What we have are mysteries upon mysteries.
23:13And one of the greatest mysteries is how the big stuff and the small stuff in the universe
23:18fit together.
23:23Two well-tested theories describe how matter behaves.
23:28Relativity theory, which governs the physics of the large, and quantum theory, which describes
23:33the very small.
23:36If they were a couple, relativity would be a logical, pocket-protector-wearing engineer
23:42who strictly follows a speed limit of light.
23:46Quantum theory would be his volatile artist wife who seems to be everywhere at once.
23:51On paper, they don't get along.
23:53But in the real world, they are a happy pair.
23:58And like some real-life odd couples, no one understands why.
24:04The mystery boils down to gravity.
24:08Gravity dominates the world we know, and thanks to Newton and Einstein, we understand it pretty
24:14well.
24:16But physicists have no idea what role gravity plays in the quantum realm, or its effect
24:22on space and time.
24:25If we crack this mystery, we will finally know if it is possible to travel back in time,
24:33or through a wormhole.
24:38Pedro Chava has a history of exploring the wild frontier of physics.
24:45Now he's tackling quantum gravity.
24:49So how do you reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity?
24:52There are several different ways it can happen.
24:55Either quantum mechanics is stronger and wins, and gravity has to be modified, or quantum
25:00mechanics has to be modified and gravity stays the same as in Einstein's general relativity.
25:08Pedro feels the key is to watch how things change in scale between the upper layers of
25:13nature, where gravity holds sway, and the quantum layers down below.
25:20Nature organizes itself in layers of structure, and you see more and more layers as you zoom
25:26in and gain a better resolution of how you view the system.
25:32It's one of the most important theoretical concepts in modern physics.
25:39To Pedro, nature is an archaeological dig that we are slowly excavating, layer by layer.
25:46Right now we are only capable of uncovering a small part of the vast and complex ultimate
25:50truth.
25:51But we can learn a lot by comparing the layers we can see.
26:02In this picture, the two images of Mona Lisa represent the two faces of space-time, space
26:07and time.
26:09They look the same when we look at it at large scales, but perhaps when we zoom in and look
26:14at the system at much smaller scales, it could be that space and time scale in a very different
26:20way.
26:22This could be the missing piece of the puzzle of quantum gravity.
26:26Pedro suspects that as you shrink down to the smallest and deepest level of existence,
26:32space begins to stretch at a different rate from time, until they tear apart.
26:40Think of space-time as analogous to this sheet of paper.
26:43At macroscopic scales, it's smooth and geometric, two-dimensional.
26:48But if you tear the piece of paper into two halves and look at the edge of the paper,
26:55zoom in, zoom out, the structure is similar to itself, but only if you stretch in the
27:01horizontal direction with a different rate than when you stretch with the vertical direction.
27:06From a distance, the tear looks smooth, but close up, you can see mountains and valleys
27:13along the edge.
27:15Similarly, space and time seem perfectly joined from a distance, but close up, you can see
27:20the separation.
27:24Pedro thinks this tearing apart of time and space at the macroscopic scale is precisely
27:30why the strange rules of quantum mechanics emerge.
27:35If space and time are unhinged, particles can't be in a specific place at a specific
27:42time, hence fuzziness and uncertainty.
27:47Unraveling the enigma of quantum gravity is a major hurdle in our quest to understand
27:52how the universe works.
27:55But it shrinks against the magnitude of the biggest mystery facing humanity.
28:0195% of the universe is missing.
28:07This woman may know where and what it is.
28:17The more we peel away the layers of nature, the more we realize that something is missing,
28:25something big.
28:27An enormous chunk of the universe seems to be invisible.
28:31We can't see it, hear it, or detect it in any way.
28:36But if we want to unlock the secrets of the universe, if we want to advance as a species,
28:42we have to find out what and where it is.
28:50The universe began with the Big Bang, a shattering explosion of raw energy.
28:58That energy burst outward in a mass of superheated plasma.
29:03As it cooled, it began to clump together into all the material in the universe, the solids,
29:10liquids, and gases that everything is made of.
29:15To crack the cosmic code that underlies our universe, we have to understand energy in
29:21all its forms.
29:23But what if almost 95% of the universe is made of a form of energy we can't see and
29:30don't understand?
29:33These are the kinds of questions confronted daily in Geneva, Switzerland, the home of
29:38the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, and also hundreds
29:45of physicists.
29:51Claire Burrage is one of them, but she's hardly typical.
29:55Young, female, and an accomplished figure skater, Claire is trying to solve the vast
30:03mystery of the missing universe.
30:11So if we think about the sun, the light from the sun carries energy to us here on Earth
30:16and we can feel the warmth of the sun on our skin on a nice day.
30:20But Einstein tells us that what's happening is that energy and mass are the same thing.
30:25So in the centre of the sun, mass is being turned into energy and that's what's transmitted
30:30by the light here to us on Earth.
30:34So the energy from the sun we know and we understand very well, but it seems like there's
30:38another form of energy out there in the universe called dark energy that we don't understand
30:42at all.
30:44Accepted laws of physics dictate that the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang
30:49should be slowing down.
30:52But recent astronomical observations have revealed that the expansion is rapidly speeding
30:58up.
31:00Some unexplained form of energy is pushing galaxies apart.
31:05So at the moment I'm moving forwards even though I'm not doing anything because of the
31:10force of gravity.
31:11But if I were in space where there are no forces acting on me, I shouldn't be moving
31:15at all.
31:16If I'm moving forwards, then there has to be something very strange acting on me and
31:20this is what we call dark energy.
31:23How much of the universe is dark energy?
31:27Put it this way.
31:29Here's the universe.
31:31This sliver, 4.6%, is all the matter we can see.
31:37Near massless particles called neutrinos take up another 0.4%.
31:43We think that something called dark matter accounts for another 23%.
31:52Dark energy is the remaining 72% of the mass and energy of the universe.
32:01We cannot see it, touch it, taste it, or detect it, but cosmologists are certain it is there.
32:15Without dark energy, gravity would cause the universe to collapse in on itself.
32:28Claire suspects that dark energy is a byproduct of a radical new piece of physics, an undiscovered
32:35particle called the chameleon.
32:39These mysterious particles actually carry an entirely different basic force than the
32:44four that physicists know about, a fifth fundamental force.
32:53In physics as we understand it, there are four forces, so they are gravity, which holds
32:58us here on Earth, there are the electric interactions between atoms, and the strong and weak forces
33:05that control what happens in atoms.
33:07And so if there is something new, a new particle like the chameleon, like dark energy, it's
33:13going to look to us like there's a fifth force out there.
33:20This force carrier is called the chameleon because it can change its appearance.
33:25When it is heavy, it becomes sluggish and ineffective.
33:31When it is light, it can zip around much faster and become stronger.
33:36How heavy it is depends on its environment, how much stuff is around it.
33:43So here on Earth, there's a lot of stuff around, a lot of matter, and the chameleon becomes
33:48very heavy, very massive.
33:49It doesn't interact with the things around it very much, and that's why we don't see
33:54it in our everyday lives and in experiments here on Earth.
33:57But in intergalactic space, where there's almost nothing, the chameleon becomes very,
34:02very light, and it can interact with things over huge distances.
34:07And that's why it can drive the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.
34:12This shape-shifting property explains why the chameleon has yet to be spotted in our
34:16particle accelerators.
34:19It should be everywhere, inside you and me and far out in the cosmos.
34:25But how do we detect a master of disguise?
34:32The chameleon shows up in experiments on really tiny scales and on really huge scales.
34:36So you can look for it in the ways that particles behave in colliders on really tiny scales,
34:42but also it affects the way that light travels.
34:45And so we can look on very large scales at how light from stars comes to us and whether
34:50we can see the effects of the chameleon there.
34:55Our slow and steady understanding of electromagnetism and the nuclear forces has transformed our
35:01lives.
35:02From electricity to telecommunications, transportation to warfare.
35:09What benefits could dark energy bring us?
35:14It's very hard to say now how a better understanding of dark energy is going to make people's lives
35:19better.
35:20In the past, understanding things better has always led to benefits for mankind.
35:25So in some ways, understanding dark energy, for understanding the universe, it's more
35:29important than understanding the physics that we know here on Earth.
35:32The particles that we understand make up about a percent of the universe as we know it.
35:38Dark energy is a massively more important contribution.
35:43Dark energy is the unknown variable in our quest to crack the cosmic code.
35:50And a set of equations that describe how the universe really works.
35:56But this man says that doesn't go far enough.
36:00He believes equations don't just describe the universe.
36:05Equations are the universe.
36:08And we are all living inside them.
36:13We are hunting for an ultimate equation.
36:18The theory of everything that will explain the mechanisms of the universe and revolutionize
36:24life on Earth.
36:26One man believes that equation exists.
36:29And the solution is the universe.
36:33According to him, the equation of everything is everywhere you look.
36:40And we are all part of it.
36:48Max Tegmark lives in Winchester, Massachusetts, a northern suburb of Boston.
36:54He's an outdoorsy sort who likes to go on long walks and think.
36:58But Tegmark's thoughts are a bit more exotic than your average power walker's ponderings.
37:05I think the reason our universe is so well described by math is that it is math in the
37:11sense that we are living in a giant mathematical structure.
37:16So the reason we physicists have discovered all of these equations which describe our
37:21world so well is simply because these equations can approximately describe the true math,
37:27which is our reality.
37:30To Tegmark, equations are windows on the universe.
37:34And the universe is pure math.
37:38At first glance, our universe doesn't seem mathematical at all.
37:42We don't have big numbers written visibly in the sky.
37:46If we look more closely, we find mathematical patterns and shapes all around us.
37:53Like if I mess around with my garden hose here.
37:57The water makes this very simple shape called a parabola, which has this extremely simple
38:03mathematical equation, y equals x squared.
38:07This mathematical shape, the parabola, is really built into nature at quite a fundamental
38:12level because it describes the motion with gravity of any object, regardless of what
38:17it's made of.
38:26When we look around us in the universe, we see shapes everywhere.
38:30We see that all the planets are going around the sun in a shape called an ellipse, which
38:35looks like a stretched circle.
38:37And anything orbiting anything out there in the universe, why is it always that shape?
38:42It's not a figure eight or a square.
38:44As soon as we scratch beneath the surface, we start to discover all these patterns and
38:49regularities and even numbers.
38:51Like if I just pick up some sticks here and I ask, like, how many sticks can I put here
38:56which are perpendicular to each other?
38:59I get a number.
39:00I get three.
39:01We have a fancy number for this in physics.
39:03We call it the dimensionality of space.
39:06And these numbers that are built into nature are very important because if you tweak them
39:10a little bit, if you say the proton isn't 1,836 times heavier than an electron, but
39:165,000 times heavier, for instance, we would die.
39:20In fact, if you change many of the numbers by just a few percent, the sun might blow
39:25up or suddenly atoms would collapse and life as we know it just wouldn't be possible.
39:32So not only are these numbers there, but they're extremely important for understanding the
39:38very essence of our reality.
39:43This brings us back to an uncomfortable notion suggested by the prevailing theory of quantum
39:48mechanics.
39:50At the deepest level of reality, nothing is solid.
39:55There is only information.
39:57Numbers adhering to a set of rules we don't yet understand.
40:02The only properties an electron has is a bunch of numbers.
40:07Many physicists have names for them like spin and charge, but they're just numbers.
40:13There's really nothing there at the bottom level except numbers, except math.
40:22Math may be the ultimate truth, but given our limitations and how vast and strange so
40:28much of nature seems to be, is it even possible to solve this problem?
40:34Can we ever know how the universe really works?
40:38There's certainly no guarantee that we'll find the ultimate equation, but I think we
40:45do have a shot at it.
40:46It's really remarkable how far we've come as a species in the last hundred years beyond
40:51our wildest dreams in understanding stuff.
40:54And there's no better way to guarantee we're going to fail than to not try.
41:00If I'm wrong and there is something inherently non-mathematical about the universe, then
41:05physics is ultimately doomed.
41:07We're going to reach a roadblock beyond which we just can't proceed.
41:11Whereas if I'm right, that would actually be a very happy situation where there is no
41:15roadblock and our progress would only be limited by our own imagination.
41:25Will we ever see the entire web of reality?
41:30Can we find and will we understand the ultimate truth?
41:36Right now, we're like archaeologists who have uncovered a small triangle buried in the sand,
41:42the tip of an enormous pyramid that we can't yet see.
41:47Perhaps it's presumptuous for human beings to think we ever will, but we continue to
41:53uncover the truth bit by bit, piece by piece.
41:59If we keep digging, we may finally reveal the full beauty of creation and perhaps steal
42:08a glimpse into the mind of God.