The Theory of Everything
The Theory of Everything
The Theory of Everything
Everything
By Erik Jorgensen
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction
1: Relativity Gravity Quantum
Starting with Newtons Laws
Special Relativity and why its important
Quantum Mechanics and why its important
The Dirac Equation
Fixing Problems with the Theory
Feynman Rules of QED
The Core Theory
General Relativity and Black Hole Orbits
2: The Leonard Jones Potential
Does QED predict the Leonard Jones Potential
What is Movement, Sound, and Heat
Perception of Sound and Music
Self Gravitating Fluids
3: Hydrogen and Helium
In the Beginning
The God Particle
Quarks Bind Together
Antimatter Matters
Fusion Creates Helium
Primordial Plasma
First Atoms
Structure Formation
Our Insignificance
Most Abundant Materials
4: It from Bit
What is a Bit
Logic Gates
The Adder Circuit
The Memory Circuit
The Central Processing Unit
Computer Programming
Conclusion
Introduction
Wow, where do I start? I am autistic. I love the universe, and want to know how everything
works. I am very sensitive, in particlular my sense of sound. I think its my insane curosity for nature
and my ability to understand it all, that makes it possible for me to write this book.
On the other hand, I have many challenges with my disability. Sometimes my thoughts are
incomplete, and I have very few friends. Most importantly, I’d rather do my science, than poop in the
toilet. I even would rather attack people, than to have them not understand me.
Make no mistake. I love the universe, which includes people. I always try to be on my best
behavior, and as of now, I’m even dating my older half sister. The last time I saw her was many years
ago. It’s not easy having autism. For me, autism is a two edged sword. I am laser focused on science,
which is both good and bad.
The intent of this book is to share the gift of knowledge to the reader. In it, I will be talking to
you about the universe, how it works, and how it relates to us. Come with me, and you will learn all
about the place in which we live.
We will build our universe on a computer. This will not be easy, and is a daunting task.
However I believe that anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. I started programming the universe
when I was 7 years old, and found out the theory of everything before I even began middle school. This
book is a guide for understanding nature, and I’m sure it will blow your mind.
Chapter One: Relativity Gravity Quantum
It is said that relativity theory and quantum theory are mutually incompatible. Scientists even
state that the theory of everything is impossible. This is very far from the truth, since physics has to be
compatible in order to be part of this one universe.
To find out what it means for something to be relativistic or quantum, we should start off
reviewing the rules of which modern physics is built. You can think of these rules as the ten
commandments of science. After I state all the rules, I will go over each one in detail.
For those of which this is unfamiliar, I will break the main ideas down into visual ideas that you
can explore with only pure thought. These ideas are known as thought experiments, and it was through
these experiments that many theoretical physicists find the answer.
I will also show the math that corresponds to each rule. In doing so, we can use high school
math to solve problems that usually would be too hard to solve mentally. For those who do not
understand math, or find it difficult, I have made a section explaining all of the notation and details of
what everything means.
Now, before we have fun with QED in all its glory, we will take a quick detour and talk about
newtons laws of motion. All physics is really based on newtons laws, which means that we would not
understand what relativity and quantum is without this prior knowledge. For two and a half centuries,
newtons laws was the only known physics. So it seems like this is a great starting point, considering
that all that follows was built upon it.
Newtons laws are basically a set of five equations. Because of its simplicity, we will gloss over
it rather quickly. So lets begin and talk about the first equation:
v =∂ x / ∂ t
This equation defines what a velocity is. Imagine a particle traveling through space. The change
in position, as time passes is its velocity. The velocity is simply the speed that a particle is moving at.
This kind of a gradient is known as a derivative. Specifically a time derivative. Applying a second time
derivative of position, gives us the acceleration of a particle:
a=∂ v /∂ t
The acceleration is simply the change in velocity through time. Note that the acceleration is a
second time derivative. Why not a third derivative? As it turns out the acceleration is simply as far as
we go in terms of physics. We will multiply the acceleration by the mass, to get the force. This abstract
quantity is basically the amount of a push or a pull an object experiences:
F=ma
Now, the force is a special quantity in physics. This is because unlike the other quantities, you
can add forces together, and apply them to specific particles. How much force a particle experiences is
the net force, or the sum of all of the forces acting on that particle. The definition of net force is given
here.
F =∑ ( F )
i ij
To sum up, a particle, or group of particles, tends not to move in any direction. In fact particles
tend to stay in their state of motion. We call this inertia. In order to preserve this fact, we need all forces
to come in pairs, so that if particle A is moving to the right, this tells us the particle B is moving to the
left. The formula is given here:
ij ji
F =−F
Basically all of this can be summed up in three rules, or laws of motion. Firstly objects tend
maintain their motion. Next, the force is defined to be mass time acceleration. Lastly, forces come in
equal and opposite pairs. By applying these rules to many different situations, we can learn almost
anything about the natural world. It's amazing that so few rules, can explain so much.
However, that is not the end of the story. Because problems were eventually found, that show
that these rules don't apply in certain situations. Two of those situations, are high speed and perfect
uncertainty. This is where new physics is needed to explain what the hell is going on!
In order to understand what it is saying, we have to know what a dimension is. To start, think of
an infinite number line that goes from negative infinity to positive infinity. A point on this line would
obviously be sitting on a number. This number is known as a coordinate.
Next, on a two dimensional piece of paper, we need two coordinates to specify where the point
is. These are the x and y axes that you learned in school. In short the number of dimensions is just the
number of coordinates we need to know where the point is in space.
Z
( x, y, z)
O z
x
y Y
How many coordinates does space have. To find out all we need to do is to find how many
sticks we can join in right angles to each other. If you do this thought experiment, we find that three
sticks would be needed to construct the space. This means that space is itself three dimensional. Who
knew?
Putting the three numbers x, y, and z, in a list is known as a vector. The position vector is shown
here as:
u
X =[t , x , y , z ]
You might wonder why time is included here. Lets try to find out what happens when we
include time into this picture. What this rule is saying is that time is the fourth dimension. To really
understand how time can be a dimension, we need to lift ourselves from the third dimension. But how
can we do that if three dimensions are all there is to space?
The answer comes to us, when thinking of time in snapshots or moments. If you took the frames
of video, separated the frames, and then glue them up in order, one by one. You would have a block
containing space and time. This block is known as spacetime. The point in space, even us, are basically
little spaghetti strands running into the future.
So why do we have such a sharp distinction between space and time. The answer is that time is
perceived one moment after the next. Its as if you were constantly moving in the fourth dimension into
the future. Everything around you would just be a slice in time that contains the three dimensions of
space.
In short, if you were going to meet someone, you would need to specify the coordinates of
spacetime in which to meet. Think of it. You need to know both where and when the meeting is. For
example the three dimensions are simply the street, avenue, and floor number.
If we simply had the address but not the time, we would arrive too early or too late and we
would miss the meeting. On the other hand, knowing the time but not the address would be just as bad.
In that case you would not know where the meeting is. We need four coordinates or numbers to specify
an event in spacetime.
From the first rule, we cannot talk of just space or time, because space and time are woven
together into a 4D structure known as spacetime. Therefor spacetime rather than space is the
background in which things happen.
The second rule is as follows:
2. There exist spacetime frames with respect to which freely falling objects move in straight lines at
constant velocity.
Here there is lots to unpack. First what is a local spacetime frame? Second how can a freely
falling object move in a constant speed straight line? To solve the first mystery, we will understand
what a local spacetime frame is.
A frame or reference frame is simply put someones perspective on spacetime. For example you
could stick three sticks together in right angles and put a clock at the origin of the sticks. This is your
personal reference frame. In this frame, the x axis would be to your right. The y axis point directly to
the front. Finally the z axis points directly overhead. Don't forget about time, the clock continuously
ticks away into the future.
Say for example, someone else was lying in bed. Their coordinate system looks different
because some of the space axes are rotated into each other. The next example shows that space and time
can also be rotated into each other. Here you are standing still, while the other person is in an airplane.
Here you might say the airplane is moving, but the passengers, inside the plane feel as if their sitting
still within it. Therefore to them it seems as if the ground is moving. The plane's time axis and your
time axis are pointing in different directions through spacetime.
With the idea that all spacetime frames are different from other spacetime frames, makes us
arrive at the conclusion that we could transform one frame to another using rotations in space, and
boosts in spacetime.
With this idea in mind, what the rule is basically saying is that spacetime frames are defined in a
frame that is freely falling. If you were to drop a hammer and feather, the feather is not falling freely,
because it is falling through the air and encounters wind resistance. As such only the hammer is falling
freely. However not all objects are affected by the wind. Try a pencil, a marble, or any other
lightweight object that falls freely.
Now the experiment says to drop the hammer and the pencil. What happens, they both fall at
exactly the same rate. To explain why, try jumping while you drop them. For a fraction of a second,
they hammer and pencil seem to float right in the air in front of you. You, the hammer, and the pencil,
are moving in constant speed straight lines, through your spacetime frame.
Once you touch the ground and maybe crash land. The hammer and pencil begin to accelerate
downward, as if the ground is accelerating upward. You are no longer in a single spacetime frame,
because your path through that frame is also accelerating upward. So in order to simplify the math,
spacetime frames are defined in free fall, so that all the objects in that spacetime are not accelerating.
So far, we have seen that all objects live inside spacetime, a fusion of space with time. And not
only is every spacetime frame different, but they all must be freely falling so that objects travel in the
simplest way, a straight line.
Straight lines are easy to understand in physics because their motion is linear, meaning only the
first derivative is necessary to completely describe the motion. Shown here is the first derivative of the
position. We call this the velocity vector given by:
u ∂ Xu
V =
∂s
where the number s is simply a graduation or label on the path through spacetime. In the next
section we will show what this label actually is. Now that we have tackled the basics, lets move on to
the cornerstone of the theory that we are developing. The rules goes as follows.
3. The speed of light is a universal constant, the same in any inertial frame.
In order to figure what radical changes this makes to our model, we need to think in terms of
spacetime as one thing, and most importantly, make our coordinate system in deep space, far away
from any gravity that would disrupt our model.
Here all objects travel through the void in constant speed straight lines. As such, picture you at
rest and your friend moving at an extremely high speed. From your partners point of view, you are the
one who is moving, but in exactly the opposite direction. What does the speed of light have to do with
this?
If we shine a laser through the vacuum, the rule says that it must move out from the pointer with
a constant speed. Since you are moving at high speed relative to your partner. Common sense tells us
that the speed of light must be your speed plus light speed. But that breaks rule three. How do we make
the speed of light stay the same while we change our point of view?
Going back to our model of spacetime as a big block. We see that from the point of intersection,
the speed of light maps out a cone in spacetime. Trying to find out how the speed of light remains the
same has been to find out which transformations leave the angle of the light rays at 45 degrees through
space and time.
In math terms we want the change in time to always equal the change in space. We can write
this as follows:
∂ t=∂ r
We define the variable r to be the radius or distance traveled. Using the Pythagorean Theorem,
we end up with this:
r 2= x 2 + y 2 + z 2
Rotations in space just rotate the cone around the time axis. Nothing special. We know how to
rotate space into space. But there are three options of how to rotate space and time into each other. The
answer lies in the fact that the axis of time rotates in the opposite direction than do the axes of space. In
essence time is different from space for this reason. We can see why by solving the two equations
written above.
When we solve these equations, we get an interesting result, shown here:
2 2 2 2
+∂ t −∂ x −∂ y −∂ z =some constant
With this knowledge, we see that the axes of space and time scissor together. We see that the
light rays are squeezed and stretched at right angles, preserving the speed of light. From this
breakthrough, time runs at different rates depending on how you are moving.
Since this so called space time interval is a constant for all reference frames, makes us wonder if
it is related to the constant in last section. In fact it is the definition of s itself. This is shown here:
2
some constant =∂ s
V u Guv V v =1
where the metric G is nothing other than the space time interval:
uv
G =diag[+1 ,−1 ,−1 ,−1 ]
Not only this but just like how momentum is movement of matter through space, we see that the
reason why kinetic energy is larger for faster moving objects, is that energy is movement of matter
through time. This all comes from the simple notion that time must slow down for objects that are
moving.
At the speed of light, time stops completely. From our analogy with energy, we can see that this
would require infinite kinetic energy, making the objects much harder to accelerate close to light speed.
However because of time dilation, we could rocket across the universe at nearly the speed of light.
simply by accelerating the whole time. When we arrived back home, we would have only aged a few
years, while the whole earth would have aged billions of years. Amazing! We found the secret to
interstellar travel.
Now that we have a recipe for understanding spacetime and how it behaves, lets turn our
attention to the final rule of spacetime.
4. The laws of physics are the same in any inertial frame, regardless of position or velocity.
Lets go back to our own freely falling reference frame. What we are saying here, is that all
reference frames are equally important. As such we are no longer the center of our universe, nor is
everyone the center of their own universe. We are all part of this one universe, with the same laws of
physics.
This sense of democracy is central to physics. We do not want physics to change when we
change our point of view, because then we cant trust it in those particular reference frames. We want
the math to be correct no matter what.
You, your partner, the hammer, and the pencil, may use different coordinates to describe your
surroundings. However they still are in the same universe, which means they must obey the same laws
of physics. This tells us that the math we are using must apply to all reference frames.
So how do we make our laws of physics invariant or immune to boosts or rotations. The answer
again lies in the space time interval.
x2+ y2
Simply put a wave function, is just like it sounds. The wave intensity is a function of our
coordinates in spacetime. If you give a function an input, the function will spit out an output. Functions
are used in computer science to define new and more complicated equations. Indeed, our equations are
getting quite complicated.
Here is an example of a function:
y =func( x )
ψ ( X u)
So far we do not know what the value of the wave function is at any point. Even so, we have
figured out that it must depend on the coordinates of spacetime.
Since we know that the coordinates are inputs to the wave function, tells us that the values near
such a point must be fairly similar. However to gain new insight, we really need to include new rules to
further refine the kinds of values the wave function possesses.
So now we go to the next rule of quantum physics, which says:
To understand this, we need to know what the quantum operators are for a given physical
quantity. Take momentum for example. So far we have defined momentum as follows:
P u= M V u
Where M is nothing other than the mass of the particle we are considering. We already know
that total momentum is conserved, because spacetime itself is invariant to translations. Therefore we
might guess that the quantum operator for momentum must be invariant under translations. Lets try a
derivative through spacetime and see if the physics matches:
P= ∂u
u
∂X
Now to find out if this gives the right answer, all we need to do is to multiply this by the wave
function and see if it reproduces a point particle traveling in a straight line through spacetime. Here we
multiply by the wave function:
∂ψ
Eψ=
∂t
Since the components of the momentum vector and the position vector give the same equations,
means we need to only consider one of the four equations. In fact a nice option is to use the time
component.
We can see that the slope through time of the function equals the value of the function. The only
function that obeys this rule is an exponential. To demonstrate why this is a failure, we just need to
realize that in either the deep past or deep future, the value of the wave function explodes off to infinity
and on the other end, decreases to zero. This is not good. Lets find out if any changes to the quantum
operator will fix this issue, obviously without modifying the correspondence between momentum and
position, or the fact that the function must be translation invariant.
One thing we have overlooked is the fact that unlike spacetime coordinates which must be
ordinary numbers, there is no restriction of the value of the wave function taking on a value which is a
square root of a negative number. These numbers are for some reason known as imaginary numbers.
Lets learn what effect this has on our wave function:
∂ψ
E ψ =i
∂t
Now instead of the wave function exploding off to infinity, it oscillates around the origin in the
complex plane. To see what this means, lets break the solution up in terms of its real and imaginary
components as follows:
We see here that energy of the wave is directly proportional to the wave frequency. This is good
because the wave function does not blow up at all. Instead it maintains its magnitude at all times. This
means the wave function conserves its energy. This was exactly what we wanted.
We can allow both the energy and time to be inputs to the wave function. In doing so we see
that we form a particle, that moves through time. How much the particle is spread out through time and
energy depends on the scale you are considering. Here is an equation that describes the uncertainty of
the waves:
∂ E ∂ t >1
This tells us that if the energies and times are close enough together, we would run up into the
waves themselves. However as usual, most energies in every day life are large compared to a single
particle. This is because we are ourselves make of many trillions of particles. This in turn means that
time scale of the waves is extremely brief. In other words, you need an extremely powerful slow
motion camera to detect the uncertainty in time. So from our scale, the waves condense into particles.
So all we have done so far, its to determine what the quantum operators are. This is clear,
because the three other momentum operators, do exactly the same thing as the energy operator. So far,
we know that the components of the position vectors and momentum vectors are related to the
spacetime interval and the mass respectively.
We can tell that quantum physics relates the momentum vector to its corresponding operator and
that relativity says that the momentum operator is related to the invariant mass of the particle. By
merging the two equations, we get an equation known as the relativistic wave equation. The derivation
is shown here:
P =i ∂ u
u
∂X
u uv v 2
P G P =M
( ∂ u G ∂ v )+M =0
uv 2
∂X ∂X
This is the equation that merges relativity and quantum. So far so good. Now we want to see
how this equation holds up in the last few rules of quantum physics. To start lets see if the wave
equation is compatible with the next rule. It states the following:
To start, we need to find the modes of this wave equation. Earlier, we saw that the energy is
proportional to frequency. From reasoning that all the quantum operators are all the same, we can say
that momentum is proportional to wave number. Writing the wave equation in this way is known as a
dispersion relation. The relation is shown here:
2 2 2
+ω −k =M
So when the wave number is zero, the wave function oscillates only through time at a perfectly
defined rate. However when the wave number is very large, we can see that the wave function produces
waves that travel in a specific direction at almost light speed.
Each of these modes has it's own amplitude or probability to occur. To understand the rules of
probability, we need to remember that when something has more than one way to happen, we add every
way that this thing can occur. This means that we add every mode together, and each mode is weighted
with its own probability.
This is the same idea as the rule we are discussing. Therefore so far, our equation is compatible
with every rule. Now lets move on to the next rule, given here:
That sounds simple enough. How is a measurement going to collapse a wave? Because if it
didn't collapse the wave, matter would spread out into a large diffuse blob. The act of measuring the
wave function actually shapes the waves into existence.
So what is the probability of detection? By definition, the particle has to be somewhere so the
probability must add up to one when averaged over all of spacetime. The probability is actually another
kind of Pythagorean theorem. This raised a natural question. What is the metric or the magnitude for
finding the probability from the wave function?
Since we are using complex number here, means that we should find the norm of the complex
numbers. This is easy to compute. Since these numbers rotate in a circle, the probability is simply a
sum of squares. Each component is the real and imaginary numbers that make up the wave function.
So what is the formula for computing the probability?
2
|ψ |
Now everything is seeming to hold together. Lets see if it passes the test of being truly a
quantum of version of relativity. To do that lets consider the last rule:
10. The time evolution of the system is described by the Schrodinger equation.
∂ψ
E ψ =i
∂t
We have already seen that the energy depends on both the momentum and mass. This gives us
our familiar wave equation. Sounds like we completed our job of merging relativity and quantum
together. That is, until you realize that by definition the energy needs to be first order in time. Seems
like were screwed!
Now we have one problem with the wave equation. It is second order in time. So our attempt to
merge physics together has resulted in finding a first order solution to the wave equation. In the next
section, we solve this problem. And we finally learn how weird reality is.
The reason why it should be first order is simply because, a second order quantum operator is
quadratic, meaning it has both first order and second order derivatives. It is these second order
derivatives that destroy the conservation of probability.
To fix this, lets try to take the square root of this equation, by factoring it into two halves. Our
equation should now look like this:
Now that we factored out the other part, we still need to define what the gamma matrices are.
By doing some tedious algebra, we would find out that the relations between gamma and the metric. It
is shown here:
These matrices are known as Dirac matrices or just gamma matrices. These matrices are
basically the square root of the space time interval. When plugged into the first order wave equation,
these matrices produce a fully relativistic quantum equation called the Dirac equation:
uab uv v ab a
(i γ G ∂ −m I )ψ =0
This equation gives four wave functions, The first two are the spin up and spin down electrons.
The last two are the spin up and down positrons. This new first order wave equation is spin half. On the
other hand, the second order wave equation is spin zero.
Now we might expect that since the Dirac equation is the only equation that allows positive
probabilities, means spin half particles are the only particles in the universe. Now we know that spin
one particles exist as light waves. So our model must be incomplete. How do we make, the spin zero
and spin one equations have a positive definite probability, just like the spin half equation?
Also for completeness, I will show the equation for a spin one particle, also known as
Maxwell's equations:
u u v u v u 2 v
∂ ∂ A −∂ ∂ A −m A =0
Not only do these equations have negative probability, but they all have negative energies too.
When we couple the equations together using interactions, these negative energy wave modes, cascade
down to infinite energy. This seems serious! We need a radical new solution to this problem.
To make particles out of the vacuum, we obviously need the vacuum itself to begin from. The
wave function for the vacuum state is given by:
ψ =exp(−ϕ 2)
This is nothing other than a bell curve. In other words spacetime isn't empty, its full. It has so
much energy, that I had to subtract the infinity off of it for simplicity. For this reason, you might want
to take these last two equations with a grain of salt. However they do explain how particles are excited
states of an underlying quantum field.
Finally, to make particles exist in our theory, we just multiply the vacuum state with a bunch of
creation operators. Each operator is a particle. In this way, more particles in a given mode will enhance
and strengthen that mode. This solves the idea of negative probabilities.
But what about the negative energies we encountered earlier. Now, since all particles have a unit
mass, means that the probability is proportional to the energy. We saw earlier that the quantum
harmonic oscillator has a positive definite probability. As such the energy is also positive. In so doing,
we now have solved both the negative probability and energy problems. Now we are ready to tackle the
rule we we laid off for later:
So gravity right? The thing that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein worked on. Going back to
newtons laws, the force of gravity is an inverse square force field. Why an inverse square law? This is
because all inverse square force fields are the way they are because of the fact that space is 3D. In 2D
space, gravity would only have an inverse relationship to distance, and in 1D space, gravity is a
constant force. If space had a different dimension, we would not exist, simply because atoms and the
solar system would fly apart.
If a force field lives in 3D, it must be an inverse square force field, just like gravity. In fact,
since gravity is not the only force, lets talk about the other force we know is an inverse square force
field. The electric force. This force attracts opposite charges and repels like charges. In gravity, the
reason why gravity and acceleration are equivalent is simple. Larger masses have greater forces applied
to them. This is essentially newtons second law, force equals mass times acceleration. In other words
the amount of gravity is proportional to the amount of inertia, where the inertia is simply the resistance
to motion. Stated like this, gravity is just like electricity, where the electric charge is replaced by a
gravitational charge.
Some important differences arise when we introduce relativity into the mix. First the metric G is
the force field of gravity, while the vector A is the force field of electromagnetism. The electric
potential energy also known as voltage is now simply the time component of the vector A. Similarly the
double time component of the metric also known as time is also the gravitational potential energy.
In fact the key difference between gravity and electromagnetism is spin. Yes, the same quantum
spin as we discussed earlier. Gravity is spin two, while electromagnetism is spin one. What?! Light
waves are electromagnetic waves. Amazing!
Now once we include quantum mechanics into our picture, we see that our task is simple.
Simply write out all of the relativistic wave equations, from spin zero to spin two. Then we replace the
waves with quantum harmonic oscillators to give us a relativistic quantum theory of nature.
Next we allow all of the fields to interact with all other fields. This will give us the forces of
nature. These include the interaction with the spin two field which is gravity, and the interaction of
fields with the spin one field which is electromagnetism. But what this rule is telling us is that not any
interaction will do. We need interactions that respect certain symmetries of our equations. For example,
we can't have interactions between two or more spacetime points, because that would violate the
symmetries of special relativity. In other words the spacetime interval would be broken. Other
symmetries include the complex phase of the wave function. This is nothing other than the electric
charge.
Section 6, Feynman Rules of QED
In QED, we only care about electrons and photons. Electrons are spin half and Photons are spin
one. In other words the excited states of the Dirac Equation and Maxwell Equation are the electrons
and photons. Now we have a relativistic quantum theory.
Here are the wave equations that electrons and photons obey:
uab uv v ab a
(i γ G ∂ −m I )ψ =0
u u v u v u 2 v
∂ ∂ A −∂ ∂ A −m A =0
We will set the mass of the electron to be one, and set the mass of the photon to be zero. This
gives us:
uab uv v ab a
(i γ G ∂ − I )ψ =0
u u v u v u
∂ ∂ A −∂ ∂ A =0
Next we allow the fields to interact each other, while respecting the symmetries of our theory.
This is achieved by locally multiplying our fields together. The interaction is given by the term shown
here:
0.3i A u γ uab ψ a ψ b
We are almost done making our relativistic quantum theory of electrons and photons. Now all
that is needed is to describe the motion of the electrons and photons through spacetime is to define a
greens function.
A greens function is the solution to a wave equation, with a source term at the origin in
spacetime. This will give us the propagators or the probability for a particle to jump to a new event in
spacetime.
These equations can be rewritten in terms of an interaction diagram. The complexity of the math fades
away into the simplicity of the diagrams.
Section 7, The Core Theory
We are finally ready to learn the theory of everything. The theory of everything is really just
several extensions to QED. To understand how we are extending our theory, we need to first break
down the theory in terms of particles and interactions. Particles are just waves with a certain mass and
spin. These waves obey a series of Klein Gordon equations. The interactions are much more
complicated, but I think you can handle it. In short, the core theory is simply every kind of particle
interacting in every possible way. This sounds kind of vague, so I will explain every part one by one.
In QED, we saw that the electron and photon fields, were interacting, because there was a term
in our wave equations that couples one field to another. Such a coupling is usually written as the
product of many fields at every spacetime point. We also interpreted this interaction as the electric
charge. In fact the value is around 1 / 137.036. We will encounter many more of these interactions.
In the core theory however, we are not limited to electric charge alone. All interactions that are
dimensionless are allowed. Also the only allowed particles are, spin 0, spin ½, and spin 1. The wave
equations that these particles obey are also all dimensionless. This greatly limits the number of
interactions from infinity to only a few. Through interactions, a spin 0 particle gives mass to other
particles, a spin ½ particle makes up the matter we see around us, and a spin 1 particle holds that matter
together through forces.
We can elaborate some more with the interaction of matter with forces. Spin 1 particles
sometimes need some extra symmetries for the math to work out. These symmetries include the unit
circle, the unit sphere, and the unit hyper sphere. These symmetries do not exist within spacetime, but
exist inside the interactions themselves. The matter particles then have charges that correspond to each
of these symmetries. These charges include the familiar electric charge, the flavor charge, and the color
charge. The color charge causes quarks to bind together into the nuclei of atoms. Then the flavor charge
causes neutrons to decay into protons. Finally the electrons are held in orbits around the nuclei due to
the electric charge of these particles.
The spin 0 particle then gives mass to all of the other particles. The carriers of the flavor
interaction and the spin 0 particle itself are extremely heavy. These particles weigh about the same as a
plutonium nucleus. Other particles do not weigh anything. This includes the carriers of the color
interaction and the carriers of the electric interaction. Neutrinos which jump out of the nucleus, every
time a neutron decays does not have mass either. However the two kinds of quarks, known as the up
and down quarks, along with the electrons, have a comparably small amount of mass. The quarks and
electrons have two other heavier counterparts. These particles can weigh anything from a significant
fraction of a proton to beyond the mass of the largest atoms.
Now that we have our core theory describing the microscopic landscape, two important
questions arise. What about the macroscopic force of gravity? How do we get our everyday world out
of this theory? These are good questions. What is gravity? Gravity is mediated by a spin 2 particle,
which causes spacetime to curve. It is this curvature that explains phenomena such as gravitational
waves, black holes, and even the expansion of the universe. By the way, the only way of getting our
universe out of these equations is to run a truly massive computer simulation. So lets do this!
Again for those who want the math, I give both an equation and a picture.
Here are the corresponding diagrams.
In this computer simulation, it is a good idea to remember the scale that we are dealing with.
This scale is known as the plank scale. The plank scale sets the granularity of space and time. This is a
good thing, because infinities appear in our core theory, at smaller scales than this. As such, it is natural
to set the grid scale and iteration time to be the plank length and plank time. In particular, if we run this
core theory up to the present universe, we would have needed a computer with enough processing
power to run an almost infinite number of iterations throughout an almost infinite number of data
cubes. However, we would not let that stop us from exploring, what would really happen if we had an
infinite computer, with infinite processing power.
In fact, modern science, can’t really figure out what happened before the beginning, without
messing around with highly abstract and weird ideas. There are string theorists who would claim that
their own theory would describe our universe. But that is not the case. No matter how hard we try to
come up with a successful theory, we inevitably fail. So to avoid being labeled as a crank, we will just
set the initial conditions ourselves and let it run.
The free parameters of the standard model of particle physics and the general theory of
relativity, are tabulated online, free for anyone to grab. This is because, modern particle physicists and
cosmologists, have gone through impressive lengths to gather the these numbers from experiments and
observations. Now all we need to do is to plug these numbers into our machine, and let it run.
For the first few iterations, space and time have weaved themselves into a pretzel. This occurs
naturally in quantum gravity, and is known as the quantum vacuum. For the next few hundreds of
iterations, gravity gradually settles down, as the universe expands. The black holes that were created
during the first few iterations, evaporate away through Hawking radiation. At this point, the spacetime
fluctuations are no longer violent enough to produce black holes.
As every iteration ticks by, space expands just enough to counteract the gravity of the matter
and radiation inside it. This story of the battle between expansion and gravity will continue for eternity.
As the universe expands, the matter and radiation dilute away, and the temperature drops. As such there
is less gravity produced, and the whole process starts to snowball. If the expansion was not exactly
right, the universe would not produce our universe we see today.
All of the matter and radiation inside our universe, pretty much remains unchanged for a million
million million million million iterations. The particles inside it are moving so rapidly due to the
temperature, that they are moving at the speed of light, and appear to be without mass.
However as the temperature drops, so does the kinetic energy of the particles. At some point the
kinetic energy would be comparable to the mass of the heaviest particles. This occurs around a
millionth of a microsecond after the start of our simulation.
Standard Model of Elementary Particles
three generations of matter interactions / force carriers
(fermions) (bosons)
I II III
mass ≃2.2 MeV/c² ≃1.28 GeV/c² ≃173.1 GeV/c² 0 ≃124.97 GeV/c²
charge ⅔ ⅔ ⅔ 0 0
spin ½ u ½ c ½ t 1 g 0 H
up charm top gluon higgs
SCALAR BOSONS
QUARKS
≃4.7 MeV/c² ≃96 MeV/c² ≃4.18 GeV/c² 0
γ
−⅓ −⅓ −⅓ 0
½ d ½ s ½ b 1
GAUGE BOSONS
μ τ
−1 −1 −1 0
½ e ½ ½ 1 Z
electron muon tau Z boson
VECTOR BOSONS
LEPTONS
At this point, it is a good idea to remember that the quarks and electrons, each have two heavier
counterparts. There are the Up, Charm, and Top quarks, with an electric charge of +2/3. Then there
exist the, Down, Strange, and Bottom quarks, each with an electric charge of -1/3. There also exist
heavier versions of the electrons, and are known as mu particles, and tau particles.
Tabulated in the previous picture, include the rest mass of all these particles. As we know from
relativity in the last chapter, the energy increases for faster moving objects. This kinetic energy reaches
a minimum when all the particles stop moving. This temperature scale depends on the mass of the
particle in consideration.
Another process that occurs is the annihilation of the matter and antimatter versions of these
particles. After they annihilate, one matter particle is left behind for every billion matter antimatter
pairs that once existed. This discrepancy has to exist, otherwise there would only be heat and nothing
else in today’s universe.
If physics tells us that matter and antimatter are in balance today, means that the antimatter does
exist, but it might be so far away from us, that we would never know it is there. The fluctuations in
matter to antimatter most likely were tiny at the time of creation, but after a millionth of a microsecond,
the fluctuations have already spread out so much that this one in a billion discrepancy seems universal.
Right at the start of this era in history, all particles have to interact with the god particle, which
is the only scalar particle in the model. However with the temperature high enough for the flavor force
and the electric force, to be unified. That means that before those two forces separate, all particles,
including the top quark, the god particle, and the flavor force carrying particles, were without mass and
moved exactly at light speed.
As the universe continues expanding as it always does, the temperature drops enough for the
two forces to separate, and suddenly all of these supermassive particles, including the god particle,
decay and annihilate into particles and antiparticles with less mass. After a few thousandths of a
microsecond, the same process of annihilation occurs for the bottom quarks, the tau particles, and the
charm quarks.
Section 3, Quarks Bind Together
At 1 microsecond, the only particles and antiparticles that exist include mu particles, strange
quarks, down quarks, up quarks, electrons, neutrinos, gluons and photons. Mu particles are heavy
electrons, and strange quarks are heavy down quarks. Both weigh about 200 electron masses.
The quarks and gluons form an intimate fluid, known as a quark gluon plasma. The force
holding quarks and gluons together is the strong nuclear force. This force is an inverse square force
field, just like electromagnetism or gravity. However, at longer distances, strength of the force becomes
a constant. This constant force is literally several tons. At very large distances, the potential energy is
enough to produce a new quark anti quark pair. The reason why the force does not fade away, is
because the gluons interact with themselves, producing flux tubes that hold the quarks and gluons
together.
As every microsecond ticks by, the universe expands and cools, causing the average separation
between quarks to increase. In turn, the strong nuclear force gets much stronger. Eventually the up,
down, and strange, quarks and anti quarks, bind together to form new composite particles. Most of
these particles are quark, anti quark pairs. The lightest of which, weigh as much as a strange quark, or a
mu particle.
Since the beginning of time, there was and still is a slight excess of matter over antimatter. This
excess is less than a part per billion. This means that for every billion anti quarks, there are a billion
and one matter quarks. The billions of quark anti quark pairs form, leave a tiny fraction of purely
matter quarks. These matter quarks, bind together in groups of three. The lightest of these composite
particles are the protons and neutrons.
The universe is now 20 microseconds old. It is filled with extremely heavy composite particles,
that weigh many hundreds, even thousands of times heavier than the electrons and anti electrons. Since
the average energy of all particles is around 300 electron masses, means that the heaviest composite
particles instantly decay, into the lightest particles. In particular bound strange quarks, decay into
bound down quarks, in a few nanoseconds after their formation.
As tens of microseconds pass by, the temperature drops below the threshold to produce mu
particles and pi particles. They quickly annihilate into photons, which are particles of light. At this
point only the very lightest particles and antiparticles exist in thermal equilibrium. These include the
electrons, the anti electrons, also known as positrons, and the neutrinos and photons. The small excess
of matter over antimatter, produced the protons and neutrons, which are known as nucleons.
Section 4, Antimatter Matters
As the age of the universe approaches 1 second, neutrinos decouple from the rest of matter and
antimatter. These neutrinos keep the small residuum of protons and neutrons in equal numbers. Now
that neutrinos hardly interact with matter any more, halts the thermal conversion of protons and
neutrons.
However, there is still plenty of electrons and positrons around to be able to continue this
conversion between neutrons and protons. But unlike the neutrinos, which don’t have mass, electrons
and their antimatter counterparts have a relatively tiny amount of mass that makes it increasingly
difficult to produce neutrons from protons. Soon one in six nucleons are neutrons, with the rest being
protons.
This would be a great time to remember how rare matter is compared to the other particles. The
universe is almost entirely made of electrons, positrons, photons, and neutrinos. But since neutrinos
hardly interact with anything, we can ignore them.
As the first few seconds pass by, it becomes increasingly hard to produce electrons and
positrons out of photons. As most photons lose energy to the expansion of the universe, the remaining
billions of electrons and positrons, annihilate to produce more photons. These photons reach an
equilibrium temperature slightly higher than the neutrinos which decoupled before the disappearance of
antimatter.
Only a few electrons survive the annihilation, and are in the minority along with protons and
neutrons. The only particles that really exist are the photons, also known as the particles of light. They
outnumber electrons to a billion to one.
Section 5, Fusion Creates Helium
We are now 10 seconds after time zero. Other than the thermal radiation that fills our universe
with gamma ray light, we have a small residuum of matter left over from the annihilation. These
particles include protons, neutrons, and electrons.
The electrons now do not have enough energy to reproduce neutrons from protons, or to
produce electron positron pairs. Neutrons are a few electron masses heavier than protons, which means
that neutrons and protons are now distinct from each other.
Even though electrons cannot do much damage, the light energy is so intense that it is
preventing the fusion of neutrons and protons. The temperature and density of the nucleons is well
above the threshold of nuclear fusion, which means we should see everything form iron 56 nuclei
almost immediately. But that would be forgetting that all the subatomic particles are bathed in an ocean
of extremely energetic light.
The particles of light are preventing protons, neutrons, and electrons from combining. Since
electrons do not interact through the nuclear force, they just scatter away with enormous speeds. On the
other hand, the nucleons are strongly interacting and much heavier, than the electrons. So while
electrons will be bouncing around for almost an eternity, protons and neutrons are starting to feel the
nuclear force.
As seconds turn into minutes, the light energy decreases enough for the nuclei to not be broken
apart right after their formation. Three minutes in to history, each neutron merges with a proton to form
deuterium, or the nucleus of heavy hydrogen. Then these nuclei swiftly merge to form alpha particles.
But why alpha particles? Alpha particles which are made of two protons and two neutrons, are
the most stable nucleus one can build. Most small nuclei have a binding energy of a few electron
masses. Alpha particles have a whopping binding energy of 50 electrons. This means that as soon as
alpha particles form, it is extremely hard to destroy them.
Four minutes in, all of the neutrons have merged into alpha particles. The remaining particles
are the protons. For the next fifteen minutes, nuclei are still fusing into one other. So why doesn’t
oxygen and carbon nuclei form from helium nuclei. The reason is simple. All nuclei with 5 or 8
nucleons is completely unstable. This means that as soon as an alpha particle or proton fuses with
another alpha particle or proton, it decays right back where it started.
If neutrons still existed, they would be protons by now. This is because free neutrons beta decay
in less than 15 minutes. But since all neutrons are bound together into alpha particles, means that they
are stable.
Now 20 minutes in to creation, nuclei are moving much slower. Nuclei are held together by
virtual pi particles. Since these particles decay very rapidly, tells us that the lines of nuclear force
weaken with distance. At a distance of three proton radii, the electromagnetic force, which is carried by
virtual photons dominates. In layman's terms, the nuclei are not moving fast enough to overcome the
electronic repulsion between the protons.
The nuclei are not getting close enough to fuse, and just nearly miss each other, as they fly by.
The remaining unstable nuclei decay back into protons and alpha particles.
Section 6, Primordial Plasma
After 20 minutes have passed, all nuclear fusion has stopped. This means that the ratios of the
first elements and isotopes are fixed. For every twelve protons, there is one alpha particle. But what are
these particles. To find out, we need to examine their properties. We will frame our units in terms of the
electron. The last subatomic particle to exist at this time.
A proton is about 1840 times heavier than an electron. Comparatively, an alpha particle weighs
in at 7300 times heavier than an electron. Particles of light, known as photons do not weigh anything,
this is because they move at the ultimate speed limit, the speed of light. The Protons and Electrons that
make up hydrogen are spin half particles. Alpha Particles are spin zero, while particles of light are spin
one.
The electric charge of a proton is positive one, where as the electric charge of an alpha particle
is positive two. This reflects the fact that a proton is the nucleus of hydrogen, and that an alpha particle
is the nucleus of helium. Since, electrons have a charge of negative one, means that these nuclei will
attract electrons until they form neutral atoms and molecules. Photons, the particles of light, are neutral.
But at this time, temperature was in the millions of degrees, and no atoms have formed yet. It
was still an opaque fog, consisting of the hydrogen and helium nuclei. The electrons and photons were
scattering around everywhere. Virtual photons create the forces that are causing the electrons to attract
to the nuclei. But real photons, which constitute the radiation between the atoms, are having no trouble
bouncing of the electrons. This creates the opaque fog that tightly locks radiation and matter together.
This state of matter is known as plasma.
This primordial plasma lasts a very long time. After one day, the plasma still exists. It is still
there after a whole year. Even thousands of years pass, and it is still plasma. However the universe is
expanding this whole time, and after 380 thousand years, the age of the plasma comes to an abrupt end
as the first atoms form.
Section 7, First Atoms
As photons lose energy due to the expansion of the universe, the temperature drops from many
millions of degrees to just a few thousand degrees. At this point the electrons are moving slow enough
to be captured by the nuclei, forming the first atoms. The light that was bouncing around between the
atoms is now free, since atoms are now electrically neutral.
The light that is emitted is about 3000 degrees C, or 5000 degrees F. As usual the universe
expands. Over time, the light waves stretch out and lose energy. After 5 million years, there is no light
to be seen, by the unaided eye. However, there is still plenty of near and far infrared, which we feel as
heat. As millions of years pass, the background heat gradually gets colder and colder, until today of
which we hear this background noise in radio stations.
Lets admire the beautiful complexity that we name an atom. Both the hydrogen atom and the
helium atom, are made of electrons bound to nuclei. The force that holds the electrons in orbit, is the
electromagnetic force, which is carried by virtual photons. By definition, a hydrogen atom contains one
electron, and a helium atom contains two electrons.
The electrons themselves have mass, and so they have a minimum radius given by the Klein
Gordon equation, this radius is about 386 billionths of a micron. However the electrons orbit 137 times
farther away, because of the feebleness of the electromagnetic force.
The nucleus is only a couple of billionths of micrometers in size. An alpha particle is made of
four nucleons, two of each kind, where as a single proton, is just that, a proton. The nucleons are held
by the residual nuclear force which is carried by virtual pi particles. Pi particles, weigh in over 200
electron masses, which is still a fraction of the mass of a nucleus. Just like how nucleons can be both
neutral or charged, so can pi particles.
Nucleons and pi particles, are the particles that make up the nucleus of an atom. Nucleons, are
built out of three quarks, whereas pi particles, are built out of a quark anti quark pair. These particles
are in the midst of a swarm of interacting virtual quarks and gluons. It is this swarm that causes these
composite particles to outweigh electrons by many thousands of times.
Finally beta decay, which causes neutrons to decay into protons, is a very weak force, that
doesn’t play a significant role until you are thousands of times smaller than a nucleus. It is at this scale
that we see the God particle, giving mass to the quarks, electrons, their heavier counterparts, and the W
and Z particles, which carry the weak nuclear force.
So in short, the matter of the universe is made of an assortment of particles, interacting via
forces that hold the particles together in complicated ways. These is one force that we left out, gravity.
So far gravity has just been causing matter to dilute as the universe expands. Then this matter causes a
slowing in the expansion.
But now that atoms are free, tiny irregularities in their density left over by inflation, leads to a
runaway collapse of matter in some areas and a runaway dilution in other areas. It is this topic we will
talk about next.
Section 8, Structure Formation
The tiny irregularities that existed in the very early universe were less than 1 part in 100
thousand. This is also the square root of the number of light particles per atom. For the first 300 million
years, only two forces exist. Gravity, which causes bulk matter to attract itself, and Gas Pressure, which
fights against gravity. Everything we see today, was sculpted by these two forces. In fact computer
simulations of deep space, rely on both fluid dynamics and gravitation.
By running computer simulations of the early universe, we see that matter clumps together into
a cosmic web, with gaseous filaments strewn all over the primordial sky. As millions of years go by,
not much happens. The only thing that does happen is the difference in density between the empty
voids and the somewhat dense filaments, drastically increases.
After 300 million years of this differentiating, a vast array of structures emerge. The cosmic
web, galaxies, stars, worlds, landscapes, living creatures, molecules, and atoms. Most of this structure
formation occurs on a huge range of scales of both space and time.
At the scale of the cosmic web, the density gradient continuously becomes more drastic, as the
universe expands. Huge filaments, containing trillions of galaxies merge, and tie the cosmic web in
knots. Eventually the cosmic web gets so vast, it spans the visible universe.
Zooming inside the tiny nooks and crannies of the cosmic web, we find the first galaxies. These
galaxies are messy in shape, and are known as irregular galaxies. But as the cosmic web grows, the
irregular galaxies merge into larger and larger structures. These include spiral galaxies, such as the our
own milky way galaxy. Lastly, as the cosmic web continues to grow, two spiral galaxies, one from each
filament crash into each other, similar to the future collision between the milky way and Andromeda
galaxies. This produces a huge ball of stars known as an elliptical galaxy.
Zooming inside each galaxy, we arrive at the stars that make up the galaxy. Irregular galaxies in
the early universe, are made of high mass stars, which weigh 10 times that of the sun, and last only 10
million years each. A middle aged spiral galaxy, tends to be made of sun like stars, and most last the
whole age of the universe so far. An old aged elliptical galaxy, tends to be made of trillions of smaller,
dimmer, more longer lasting stars, than the sun.
The bigger a star is, the brighter it is, and thus the faster it burns through it’s nuclear fuel. With
the fuel spent, larger stars tend to die more violently than smaller stars. The stars are supported by their
own weight, through the heat produced by nuclear fusion reactions. Stars fuse elements together, where
the big bang couldn’t have. These stars continue burning helium, into mostly oxygen and carbon, with
small amounts of nitrogen, neon, iron, silicon, magnesium, sulfur, argon, and trace amounts of every
molecule, element, and isotope, that exists in the periodic table. And then when these stars end their
lives, they contaminate the spiral arms of galaxies with their nuclear fallout. Today, these materials
make up the majority of planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and living thinking beings such as us.
We are nothing in comparison to nature. In fact, lets just list out all of the reasons why people
are insignificant in comparison to the cosmos. To start, we are made of exactly the same materials as
the universe is, so there’s nothing special there. If you list out the ingredients for life, and compare
them to the ingredients of the universe, you will find that they match almost exactly. Other than the
primordial gasses in the big bang, supernovae crank out water and amino acids, the same materials that
make us up.
Also we are tiny critters that live on a thin film over an ordinary rocky planet, orbiting a
somewhat average star, inside of a usual disk galaxy, inside of the cosmic web. It turns out that we
aren’t significant here either, because of our tiny size.
Not only that, but if there exist other creatures throughout the entire universe, then we can’t say
that we are the only species that’s significant, because there will be other alien life forms that were
created out of the same organic chemicals that fill deep space. We are nothing, and that’s that.
In fact, what separates us from the cosmos, is the sense that we want to feel important. It is this
drive to feel important, that empowers us to build modern civilization. This is what is means to be
human. Humanity is nothing other than a cosmic virus, colonizing and destroying everything it touches.
No other species does this. In the next chapter we will talk about one of these inventions, the modern
computer.
black holes
hydrogen
helium
water
methane
ammonia
carbon dioxide
nitrogen
neon
talc
iron
hydrogen sulfide
Chapter Four: It from Bit
In this chapter, we will learn to construct a computer from the smallest unit of information, a
bit. Mathematics is the language for both computers and the universe. This is why computer
simulations are so useful. They literally are pocket universes, because they follow the same
mathematical rules.
But. What if it is math that is fundamental, and not physics? Could there be other universes with
different mathematical rules? Do we just find ourselves in a universe that happens to obey the core
theory. The answer is a resounding yes. Why should we restrict ourselves to physics, when we could
explore the other worlds of mathematics.
Computers, are machines that process and store information. The fact of the matter is that all of
math could be written as computer code. For example, multiplication is a series of additions, whereas
variables are a series of memory locations. Saying C = A*B in math, is simply a series of instructions
for the central processing unit.
This means that the most general formula for making a universe is just computation alone. Out
of the nearly infinite number of mathematical codes, we find QED, our universe, or other more bazaar
shapes such as a fractal pattern. But first, we will have to learn how to build a computer, in order to
know what is really going on under the hood.
There are only two kinds of bits. True and False. A bit is the smallest unit of information. It is a
very hard thing to define what information is. To get an idea of what kinds of bits there are, we need to
think about different kinds of energy. There exist mechanical bits of information, sonic bits of
information, thermal bits of information, and so on. In fact, you could make a bit out of anything you
want.
Our brains use electric and chemical bits to store and process their information. Our modern
electronics also use electricity to store and process information. So even though a bit has many
analogies, we will just use electrical bits for our purpose.
So what are the bits of electricity? To arrive at our answer, we need to ask a deceptively simple
question. Is there electricity flowing or not? If there is electricity, then the statement is true. If not, then
the statement is false. To really grasp this idea of statements being true or false, we can rephrase the
two bits mathematically, with the numbers 1 and 0. How many true statements do you have? 1 true
statement, or 0 true statements.
In order to control the flow of electricity, we need a digital switch, known as a transistor. This
will allow us to make immensely complex circuits that interpret the information that it is given. Again,
there are many kinds of switches that could be used, like vacuum tubes, mechanical relays, water taps,
or anything else that controls the flow of a medium. We will later learn that its the huge variety of ways
we can build circuits out these smaller components, that makes computers possible.
Section 2, Logic Gates
So far, we only have wires that carry electricity. These wires are either powered, recording a 1,
or off, recording a 0. We also talked about a kind of switch, known as a transistor. As it turns out, each
of these components by themselves, isn’t that helpful. Rather, it’s the huge array of permutations and
combinations between these components that makes them so useful.
To start, we will define three universal circuits, known as logic gates. These gates are the AND
gate, the OR gate, and the NOT gate. Since, large circuits generally contain large numbers of logic
gates, the definition of where one gate starts and another ends is arbitrary. Its all up to your taste of
what you think is the easiest way of explaining logic operations.
These logic operations are best understood if we include another way of representing the two
bits. These are true and false. Also known as correct, and total bullshit. Now, each logic gate, gives a
true when each input satisfies the logical operation. For example. The AND gate is only true when both
its inputs are true. In other words, if A and B are true then C is true. Similarly for the OR gate, if A or B
are true, then C is true. Finally the NOT gate is just that, the opposite.
In the world of digital electronics, three symbols are used for the logic gates.
These symbols might seem like we just made them up, and that is true. The actual inner
workings of these circuits are just transistors, hooked up in series, and parallel. The diagrams are just a
visual aid, to help reduce the complexity of all the connections.
The inputs A and B, give an output like we discussed earlier. However logical operations give
answers, only for certainties, which is why they are so useful in binary. The advanced among you, will
recognize that, the logic is the same as multiplying and adding probabilities.
So how are the transistors connected in each of these logic gates? To start, the AND gate is just
two transistors in series. The circuit diagram for this interaction is given by the following picture. To
see how this produces the logic of an AND operation. Just realize that in series, of one switch, or light
bulb breaks, the whole circuit turns off. Anyone who is familiar with Christmas tree lights, knows that
it is a real pain to find the bulb that broke. This fact makes constructing an AND gate easy, because the
only way for all the lights to be on, is to have a continuous path of current. This can only happen if all
of its inputs are on.
Next up, we have the OR gate. Like the AND gate, it contains two transistors. The only
difference is that the transistors are parallel to each other, instead of in series. The fact that the circuit is
parallel, makes the circuit more like lights in your house, than like Christmas tree lights. We all know
that when one bulb breaks, the other lights stay on. This means that you are still paying your electric
bill, even though one of your lights broke. The only way for you to be off the grid, is for all of your
lights to be off. This fact is the basis for the OR gate. The only way for the OR gate give an output of 0,
is for all of the inputs to be 0. If any switch is on, then the output is on. This is the OR gate.
Finally, we have the NOT gate. Notice how the output comes before the input. To design a NOT
gate, we need to remember that all the current takes the path of least resistance. When the input is off,
the current is blocked from traveling through the transistor. As such, all the current flows to the output.
If the output was after the input instead of before, the gate would just pass the same signal on, and
would be a buffer.
We have seen that the AND gate is the all on gate, and the OR gate is the all off gate. The NOT
gate just an inverter. Now our next step is to combine these gates in to more complicated circuits. These
circuits are very useful, for a broad range of applications.
One circuit we will need for our computer, is a circuit that adds two numbers. These two
numbers will use the binary number system. To really understand this circuit, we need a way to
understand binary numbers.
In normal base ten numbers, that we use today, we have a ones place, a tens place, a hundreds
place, a thousands place, and so on. This is because we have 10 numbers, which are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
Similarly, in the English alphabet, we have 26 numbers, or characters. The Greek alphabet has 32
variables. Our last example is time of day, which is base 60.
As we can tell, the base of our number system is completely up to us. The more characters we
have, the larger the base of our number system. Binary has just two numbers 1 and 0. This means that
we have a ones place, twos place, fours place, eights place, and sixteens place.
As we all know from adding numbers, we carry numbers that overflow. For example, 1 plus 1 is
2. But since the number two doesn’t exist in our computer, we have to carry a 1 into the next column.
This is similar to how adding 1 to 9 produces 10. We need a need the tens place or in our case, the twos
place in order to represent this number.
Going through all the possible ways of adding single digits together, we find that we carry the
AND operation, and the sum is given by; It seems like we have our first problem, it does not
correspond to any logic gate we have so far.
The first three operations are 0+0, 0+1, and 1+0. These correspond to the OR gate. As we talked
about earlier, that should not be a surprise, because that’s the math symbol for that gate. However, we
know that adding 1+1 gives 2, or 10 in binary. As such the OR gate needs to be modified to give a 0
instead of a 1. This new logic gate is known as the XOR gate.
We can build it from our three original gates like so.
B Q
Q=(A+B)⋅(A̅ +B̅ )
As we can see, this gate plays a key role in the addition of two digits. The reason for that might
not first seem apparent, but it is because the gate only gives an output, when it’s inputs are different.
The XOR gate, is represented as an OR gate, with a smile. Well kind of. But where are the NOT gates?
They are represented differently than before, as tiny circles before and after logic gates.
Putting all this knowledge together, we put two XOR gates and two AND gates in parallel, with
the first half adder feeding in to the other half adder. Finally, we OR the two carry bits, and we arrive at
a full adder.
A
B
S
Cin
Cout
Now that we got our adder circuit out of the way, we still need to make a memory circuit. This
circuit is a little easier than building the adder, so lets get to it. First, we need to remember that so far,
our circuits always flow in one direction, from the input to the output. So what happens if we make a
circuit that feeds its output back on itself?
Trying that out with some logic gates, and adding some gates on the outside to separate the data
flow from the control flow, gives us a circuit known as a flip flop. This is the circuit diagram of the D
flip flop, or data flip flop.
D
Q
Q
E
The central processing unit, is the brains of any computer. It is the thing that makes a computer
what it is. The two circuits we built, is the adder and the memory. Each of these circuits can only
handle one bit of information at a time. In order to do anything useful, we need to scale up. The more
bits, the more powerful is our machine.
However, we have already completed the construction of a 1 bit CPU, since we made the adder
and memory circuits for it. But that’s clearly not enough computer power to do anything useful, other
than to show off how it works.
What we really want is to build a computer that has enough guts to produce our entire universe.
This means that we will have to find the total number of bits that our universe is made of? So lets take a
detour and talk about our universe.
Our universe has three dimensions of space and one time dimension. Each of these dimensions
has at least 10 to the power of 60 bits. That number would be the same as saying the word million, ten
times. This is such a big ass number, that we could just say that it was infinite. But it’s still finite. We
would need 256 bit computers.
In the early days of computing, the first computers could store 8 bit numbers in 256 different
locations. Before that computers could store 4 bit numbers in 16 different locations. And yet further
back, 2 bit numbers in 4 different locations. You might notice that the number of locations equals the
value of the largest number it can store. So for example, there are 256, 8 bit numbers. Which means
that each 8 bit number has it’s own location.
Lastly, let’s connect our 256 bit adder to our 256 bit memory to produce our computer. Now, we
have our computer. This massive CPU, still rivals today’s 64 bit computers, including my own
computer I am writing this on.
There is still one missing piece, which is, how do we connect the circuits to themselves. This is
the essence of computer programming. The more ways we can connect these parts, the more complex
programs we can run on it. Each program, is a particular configuration of components, similar to the
connections inside our heads.
Let’s now turn our attention to programming this machine, and learn that our universe, might
just be a large computer game after all.
In computer programming, there are several primary things a computer can do. Primary in the
sense that any computer program uses these fundamental operations. These operations are, load, store,
add, negate, jump, and halt.
In computer science, it is important to remember that more complex programs such as
multiplication, or the sine of an angle, or even the theory of everything are all built from these six
simple operations. These operations are quite easy, one you get the hang of it.
The Load instruction, loads a particular number in memory into a temporary memory, known as
a register. But unlike the actual memory, a register can only store one number at a time. The Store
instruction does the opposite and saves the number back into memory.
Once we have two numbers in memory, we can either add or subtract them. Addition is easy, but
subtraction would require us to build a new subtract circuit. Not really, in algebra, you know that
adding a negative number is the same as subtraction. This means we can invert our entire input, we
want to negate, and feed this into our adder. This kind of inversion is known as the two’s compliment.
Next, the jump instruction is useful whenever you don’t want your program to run over
unnecessary codes in sequential order, and help control the flow of your code. For example a
multiplication code, uses a loop that repeatedly adds a number a certain number of times. This means
that without the loop, multiplying two numbers would be impossible.
The loop jumps back before the addition to allow the repetition when doing such a calculation.
There are other uses for the jump instruction, which includes testing if a number is negative, these
kinds of flow controlling operations are common in low level computer programming software.
Lastly the Halt instruction, stops the program from crashing and giving you a hard time fixing a
blue screen. This is because our program would process all the zeros in memory after your current
program and the operations would turn into a mess, crashing your computer.
Now that we know how to program a computer, we can turn a bunch of connected circuits into
easily understandable mathematics, that anyone can read. So every time we say we are going to
program this or that equation, just remember that what we are really doing is changing the codes in our
computer.
Conclusion
Okay, so, we successfully made a whole universe on our computer. This universe is completely
identical to ours. If so, does that also mean that our universe is a computer simulation. Who knows, but
there is plenty of evidence.
Today, computers are fast enough to produce 3D detailed landscapes and fill them with sentient
life. Don’t believe me, well just too bad, life changes. Do those beings think their in a simulation, of
course not, the game most likely is about finding some poo on an alien space ship, than being about a
simulated universe.
This means that we actually do not need an entire universe bit by bit, we only need the part of
the universe that is visible to us. This means that you will need to try really really hard to find anything
that isn’t in our universe, even though the game’s program known nothing about physics. If this is true,
then our universe isn’t about physics, it is about us, and trying to make it look realistic to us.
For the game lovers out there, God might have produced our universe as his own computer
game, and we reason why we find inconsistencies in physics is not because the universe is that way, but
because he used visual effect trickery to make the simulation faster and real time for us. This might
actually be so, with the infinity of universes all existing on hard drives throughout spacetime.
But before you junk physics and all that it has accomplished, I will have to point out, that we
have proven that this theory of everything does a much better job, albeit a very slow job, of producing
our universe. And even though God might change the laws of physics from time to time, we already
have put together the theory of everything from everything we discovered and we know that it works.
Should I say that I am a total nerd, or not. It depends on what you think. Yes, I am extremely
obsessed with the universe, and how it all works. However, it is wrong to say that we could live
without science. It isn’t just some thing you have to learn to get your PHD. Like it or not, is the
foundation of reality itself. Everyone likes something, and everything exists within the universe,
therefore everyone likes science.
Most people don’t call it that, less know what science is and how it works. In science, you put
ideas to the test. If the test fails, then there must be a contradiction somewhere in your logic, and the
fun part is to figure out where they contradict. Rinse, repeat, and before you know it, you are building
universes inside of computers.
So what does all of this have to with people. That is because we all live in a dangerous universe.
From the next person, to a supernova in an alien galaxy, anything could destroy us. This is why science
is so helpful. Science produced technical advancements that improves our lives. From the computer I
am writing this on, to the GPS that guides all of us to work, to the power grid that makes life more safe
and enjoyable, and well anything man made that ever exists, is here because of some scientist that
figured something out about the universe.
Once we unlocked the power of electricity, we were able to build machines capable of think for
themselves. Imagine, what it would happen if we discovered everything. We would be living among the
stars.
Why this, well without us living between the stars, amounts to us all being crammed into one
planet. If some disaster hit us, naturally or man made, there is a small chance that everyone will be
gone. This is known as a mass extinction.
Currently we are living in a mass extinction. This extinction isn’t some asteroid impact that
wiped out the dinosaurs or volcanic eruption that kills almost every creature on earth. This one is
caused by people.
Human beings are dangerous creatures, and if we want to survive, we need to spread our
population to more than one planet. We need our eggs to be in more than one basket. And let me tell
you, it’s not easy at all to do this. However, unlocking more technologies might be one of our only
options to improve our society.
So out of all this, what is science all about. Science is about finding out what is true, and what is
false. Moreover, we want our ideas in science, to always be correct, no matter what. This amounts to
finding universal truths, such as gravity, relativity, and quantum. In fact, merging these three ideas, is
the central key to finding the theory of everything. However, many practicing scientists will tell you
that the theory of everything does not exist.
A string theorist, is not working on actual physics, because they think their own equation,
somehow explains everything around them. String theory is just fake physics. They believe in all sorts
of mythical things, such as extra dimensions, time being an illusion, many universes, forms of matter
we could never detect, consciousness affecting matter, our universe being a huge computer game,
particle physics is not enough quantum, and that gravity and quantum are incompatible.
Now, engineers have another problem, which is they would say that “newtons laws of motion
are the only true thing in the universe.” Newtons laws are not wrong, but they are very obsolete. They
would use these laws in all situations, including those where it isn’t designed to be used.
Newtons laws are the first real physics that works. But it doesn’t always work. Again the three
areas that newton’s laws need improvements on are, you guessed it, gravity, relativity, and quantum.
When an engineer sees the theory of everything or anything related to it, if it isn’t newton’s laws, they
would say to you, “Your theory, does not explain reality.”, when it actually does explains reality. The
truth is that the theory of everything explains reality better than the newtons laws, which work only in a
rather small domain in nature.
String Theorists have gone too far, whereas Engineers have not gone far enough. I think that, if
engineers and string theorists payed more attention to the theory of everything, we would be a galactic
civilization by now. This is because the theory of everything will unlock the doors to the survival of our
species in an otherwise hostile universe.
This universe we live in is the most amazing thing that exists, because everything that exists,
exists within the universe. We all know that the universe is arranged with immense detail at all scales.
Take a tree for example, zooming in on the tree trunk, reveals the branches, then the leaves, and
eventually the veins inside each leaf. This kind of self similarity is known as a fractal.
Our universe is a fractal. The conditions have to be exactly right for an intricate object to
appear. However, different objects will require different conditions to exist. These conditions could be
anything you want. For a human being, it requires, food, water, shelter, and many other insignificant
utilities. For a star such as the sun, it requires a balance between nuclear fusion and the sun’s self
gravity.
This does not mean that stars or people are rare, it means exactly the opposite. There are an
infinite number of stars, planets, moons, cities, people, or anything else in nature. You just need to
zoom out to see the varieties of all of these objects.
For example, there are many stars like the sun out there, but that doesn’t mean they are the sun.
These stars can have very different temperatures and pressures, but they all follow from the same basic
rules that create all stars, which is a balance between fusion and gravity.
Now if we restrict our search for these stars, and say that we want stars that have this or that
feature. Then it is increasingly unlikely that we would find such a star, and we would have to look to
much farther distances to find them.
Unique as we may seem, there exist an infinite number of us, with each of us being slightly
different. This blurs the line between people and aliens. There might even exist aliens that look and act
exactly like everyone on earth, but live on a planet that they call “Earth”, but exists an unfathomably
large distance away from us.
These so called people, will be on another timeline, that is identical to our timeline. This means
that the farther we look into the past, the more we have in common with these aliens, because we are all
related. You and your sibling, have the same parents. You and your cousins have the same grandparents.
Going back millions of years, all of the plants and animals are descended from a common ancestor.
Using this analogy, we learn that simplicity is common, and complexity is rare. Many of moons
of the outer planets likely have simple bacterial life, where as in order to find a parallel timeline of
human history requires us to leave our galaxy to find such an “Earth”.
Going deep enough into the fabric of spacetime, we might find creatures that not only share our
past, but share our future, possibly millions of years ahead. The next time we are visited by ET, it is
most likely our descendants from a parallel earth like world. No wonder the TV show ancient aliens is
so popular.
In this vast cosmos, exist beings that understand it. These beings include us. Since we are made
of the cosmos, means that just like how we understand ourselves, so does the universe understand
itself, through beings like us. The universe is conscious.
That might seem like a bold claim, but with some simple reasoning, we get to this conclusion
rather easily. If we are really a byproduct of the universe’s existence, then we should expect that as time
progresses, sentient beings will dominate over the entire cosmos.
And that’s exactly what we see! Take earth life for example. It took billions of years for bacteria
to evolve from the chemicals of the early earth. Then multicellular life evolves in the last few hundred
million years. Finally human society evolves within the last few thousand years. Clearly, complexity
builds exponentially. Given our current population growth rate, in another 8,600 years after the modern
age, or 10,600 AD, we would have consumed all the matter in the universe in the form of human
beings.
Lets now look at how insignificant we are from the perspective of the universe. Today, our cities
make up a thin film of earth’s surface. Earth itself is a rather small ball of rock and iron. It is part of a
solar system, made of 1 star, 8 planets, 19 moons, 5 dwarf planets, and a shit ton of small debris.
This solar system, when viewed from our galaxy, the milky way, is one of billions of solar
systems, each with their own worlds, that might harbor sentient life. The milky way galaxy is just a
drop in an ocean of billions of galaxies. These galaxies arrange themselves into a sponge like structure
known as the cosmic web.
And all of this has lasted for 13.8 billion years. Think of it. Billions of years of nothing much
happening, and then all of a sudden, Boom! Sentient life floods the universe in a few thousand years.
The universe gave birth to us, and it would be a waste to let our civilization die out. We have a
responsibility to take care of the world around us. If we fail, the cosmos will likely not produce another
human race, simply because every thing is unique. We are precious, and we need to expand out into the
cosmos.
We learned that firstly, computers are not magic, they are a bunch of connected wires all put
together in a way to solve a certain math problem. We then learned that the laws of physics that rule our
universe are ultimately math, which can be programmed on a computer. After that, we found out what
the theory of everything is, and then interpreted the computer simulation that follows from this theory.
This will bring humanity into paradise, as we continue exploring our amazing universe.