Zuckerberg: Time to end the quest for a Theory of Everything
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[Note: The day after I posted this spoof, a panel of scientists actually discussed this very some topic. The link is below.]
Stockholm, January 9 — It has been the Holy Grail of quantum physics since Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr clashed over the nature of reality: the quest to reconcile General Relativity and the Standard Model of the atom in one unifying “Theory of Everything.” Despite numerous attempts by quantum physicists over the past 100 years, virtually no progress has been made. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, speaking at a conference in Stockholm, has called for the quantum physics community to end what he called “this endless quest” and to explore new territories.
Zuckerberg addressed the conference on metaverse physics on Saturday at Sweden’s Knörklund Institute for Alternative Physics Studies, located across the street from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Conference spokesperson Maria Uruchelli said the Knörklund Institute had organized the meeting to endorse Zuckerberg’s proposal. “If we as scientists can’t see a reasonable path forward and develop a coherent Theory of Everything, we should say so,” she said. “With the metaverse we have entered a new era.”
Speaking to the Swedish media, Zuckerberg said that ending the search for a Theory of Everything should be welcomed by the quantum physics community. “There is no shame in just saying ‘No, we can’t do it.’ It takes a heavy load off their shoulders. What I like to see is that the quantum physics community focuses its research on the next frontier: the Metaverse. We know very little about the Metaverse. We do know that our survival as a species depends on it.”
Hiroshi Nakamura, quantum physicist at Tokyo’s Hashibashi Science Institute, who attended the meeting virtually from Japan, supports Zuckerberg’s landmark proposal. “Quantum physics needed to hear this powerful voice,” he said. “Frankly, we got lost in math and in the terminology. We were stringing ever more complex equations together. We used words like ‘space’ and ‘matter’ in a Newtonian sense and came up with fuzzy concepts like ‘empty space’ and ‘dark matter.’ We now realize that a word like space means different things to Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, and John Glenn.”
“The realization that ours is not the only universe was a humbling experience,” said Xiangy Zi Yang, a physics professor at Shanghai State University. Yang decided to close his theoretical quantum physics department. It will reopen later this year and offer courses in metaverse physics. Asked by a reporter to speculate on the law of physics we are likely to find in the metaverse, Zi Yang was cautious. “We don’t know yet. We are launching a rocket next year, Meta 1.0, to explore metaspace. But that’s just the beginning of a long process.”
Zuckerberg said he would help facilitate the physics community to transition to metaverse physics by funding a new Meta Learning Center, provisionally called the Einstein-Bohr Reconciliation Institute (EBRI). Asked how Bohr and Einstein would have responded to halting the quest for a Theory of Everything, Zuckerberg said he was virtually certain they would have welcomed it with open arms. “They had enormous respect for the mysteries of the universe,” he said. “So we’re confident they will enjoy exploring the metaverse and creating pathways from one metaverse to another. Our rebranded company, Meta, will bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find new communities and grow their businesses.”
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By dispatch
“Should we abandon the dream of a theory of everything and see it as an illusion born of hubris? Is the mistake not with the idea of a full explanation, but with the idea of ‘everything’, or as the Greeks would have said ‘the One’? Or is it just possible that as Stephen Hawking once believed a theory of everything is just round the corner?”
