The Last Theory: Recent Episodes
Mark Jeffery
The Last Theory is an easy-to-follow exploration of what might be the last theory of physics. In 2020, Stephen Wolfram launched the Wolfram Physics Project to find the elusive fundamental theory that explains everything. On The Last Theory podcast, I investigate the implications of Wolfram's ideas and dig into the details of how his universe works. Join me for fresh insights into Wolfram Physics every other week.
You know peer review, right?
It’s the way academics check each other’s research papers.
It ensures that only the good ones are published and prevents the bad ones from getting through.
Right?
Wrong.
Peer review does precisely the opposite of what you think it does.
It prevents the good papers from being published, and ensures that only the bad ones get through.
Peer review is suffocating science.
If we want to reverse the stagnation of science over the last 50 years, then we’ve got to get rid of peer review.
—
I highly recommend you read Adam Mastroianni’s splendid article The rise and fall of peer review
I first heard Adam’s ideas about peer review in his conversation Adam Mastroianni on Peer Review and the Academic Kitchen with Russ Roberts on EconTalk
Why has there been no progress in physics since 1973?
- article
- audio
- video
Scientific papers:
- The journal Nature began to require peer review in 1973
- Millions of academic articles are published every year
- Some scientists simply make stuff up
- Fraudulent studies make it into respectable journals like Science, Nature and The Lancet
Physicists:
- Isaac Newton
- Albert Einstein’s four papers published in 1905
- Max Planck’s principle that science progresses one funeral at a time
The Wolfram Physics Project:
- Stephen Wolfram
- Jonathan Gorard
My projects:
- The Last Theory
- Open Web Mind
Image of Adam Mastroianni by permission from Adam Mastroianni
—
The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web Mind
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here
The full article is here
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“Sorry, this is now getting very metaphysical,” says Jonathan Gorard part way through this excerpt from our conversation.
We start by talking about applying more than one rule to the hypergraph to create rulial multiway systems.
This takes us part way towards applying every possible rule, in other words, towards the ruliad.
We move on to the idea of measuring the complexity of a structure in terms of the minimum amount of information needed to express it.
Jonathan applies this idea to the ruliad, pointing out that it takes almost no information to express, since it encompasses all possible rules.
Since he believes, however, that there is some content to the universe – that it is not a tautalogy – this leads Jonathan to reject the idea of the ruliad.
We dig into why he has this intuition is that the universe is not a tautalogy.
Jonathan invokes theologians like John Duns Scotus, who promulgated the idea the the world is neither completely reducible nor completely irreducible.
He follows the scholastics in steering a middle path, suggesting that there’s enough content in the universe that it’s interesting, but not so much content that we can’t write down well-defined laws of nature.
This brings us, for the first time, to the role of the observer in the Wolfram model.
Again, Jonathan steers a middle path between placing the computational burden entirely on the universe and placing the computational burden entirely on the observer.
I find this 9-minute exposition fascinating. It gets to the heart of some of the philosophical differences between Jonathan Gorard and Stephen Wolfram, and to the nature of the universe and our role as observers.
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Jonathan Gorard
- Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project
- Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University
- Jonathan Gorard on Twitter
- The Centre for Applied Compositionality
- The Wolfram Physics Project
People mentioned by Jonathan
- John Duns Scotus
- Xerxes D. Arsiwalla
- Hatem Elshatlawy
Research mentioned by Jonathan
- Homotopies in Multiway (Non-Deterministic) Rewriting Systems as n-Fold Categories by Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Jonathan Gorard, Hatem Elshatlawy
- Pregeometric Spaces from Wolfram Model Rewriting Systems as Homotopy Types by Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Jonathan Gorard
Concepts mentioned by Jonathan
- Rulial Multiway System
- ∞-category
- ∞-groupoid
- (∞,1)-topos
- Grothendieck’s homotopy hypothesis
- Algorithmic complexity theory
- Algorithmic information theory
- Kolmogorov complexity
- Einstein field equations
- Curvature invariant
- Qualia
—
The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web Mind
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
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It’s pretty easy to see how three-dimensional space might arise from Wolfram Physics.
The hypergraph kinda looks like space, and, for some rules, it kinda looks like it’s three-dimensional.
But our universe isn’t just empty three-dimensional space.
It’s mostly empty space, but there are also particles moving through that space: photons, neutrinos, electrons, quarks.
Sometimes, these particles interact, annihilating each other and producing new particles.
If Wolfram Physics is to be a successful model of our universe, it must, of course, model these elementary particles and their interactions.
So where are the particles in the hypergraph?
What is a particle in Wolfram’s universe?
—
Animations:
- Thanks to Alan Dewar for permission to use his excellent implementation of Conway’s Game of Life for many of the animations in the video
- Thanks also to Chris Rowett for permission to use his Life Viewer, a beautiful implementation of Conway’s Game of Life, which I used for the greyship animation in the video and image in the thumbnail
- Another implementation of Conway’s Game of Life, which reproduces the Life Lexicon from ConwayLife.com, is at playgameoflife.com
Sources:
- Talking of ConwayLife.com, that’s another incredible resource for information on Conway’s Game of Life
Tools:
- I created an RLE to text converter to convert Run Length Encoded patterns to plain text format
Images:
- John H Conway 2005 by Thane Plambeck licensed under CC BY 2.0
Sounds:
- Crickets choir by Serg Childed licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
—
The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web Mind
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.
In the early days of the Wolfram Physics Project, Stephen Wolfram seemed to be seeking a single rule that, when applied to the hypergraph, could generate our universe.
More recently, however, Wolfram has promoted the idea of the ruliad, the application of every possible rule to the hypergraph.
So I asked Jonathan Gorard, who was instrumental in the founding of the Wolfram Physics Project, whether all rules might be applied to generate our universe, or whether he was searching for one rule to rule them all.
—
Stephen Wolfram’s 2010 TED talk in which he said he was committed “to see if within this decade we can finally hold in our hands the rule for our universe”.
Jonathan Gorard
- Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project
- Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University
- Jonathan Gorard on Twitter
- The Centre for Applied Compositionality
- The Wolfram Physics Project
Concepts mentioned by Jonathan
- Equivalence class
- Congruence class
- Lagrangian mechanics
- Hamiltonian mechanics
- Teleology
- Ontology
- Axiomatic view of mathematics – top-down
- Constructivist view of mathematics – bottom-up
- Domain of discourse
- Intuitionism
- Algorithmic information theory
—
The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web Mind
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
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John von Neumann might be the most important figure in Wolfram Physics prehistory.
Whenever any of the most important prerequisites to Wolfram Physics were happening – quantum mechanics, Gödel’s theorem, Turing machines, electronic computers, cellular automata – John von Neumann always seemed to be there.
How did John von Neumann always come to be in the right place at the right time to contribute to some of the most significant developments in physics, mathematics and computation history?
For this, another high-budget, big-hair episode of The Last Theory, I flew all the way to Budapest, where John von Neumann was born, to point to a plaque and get some answers.
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I took inspiration and information for this episode from Ananyo Bhattacharya’s biography of John von Neumann: The Man from the Future
- Buy it in the US
- Buy it in the UK
- Buy it in Canada
- Buy it in Australia
People
- John von Neumann
- Albert Einstein
- Erwin Schrödinger
- Werner Heisenberg
- Kurt Gödel
- Alan Turing
- Seth Neddermeyer
- J. Presper Eckert
- John Mauchly
- Stephen Wolfram
- Jonathan Gorard
- Max Piskunov
- Stanisław Ulam
- Father Strickland
Concepts
- Hilbert space
- Gödel’s incompleteness theorems
- Universal Turing machine
- Turing’s proof
- Von Neumann architecture
- The Manhattan Project
- Cellular automata
Computers
- IAS machine
- ENIAC
- EDVAC
- IBM 701
Images
- Image of John von Neumann from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which rather pointlessly requires that this rather ponderous statement be reproduced here: “Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor LANS makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.”
- Turing Machine Model Davey 2012 by Rocky Acosta licensed under CC BY 3.0
- Animation. 1200 iterations of the ‘Rule 110’ Automata by Mr. Heretic licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0
- Bundesarchiv Bild183-R57262, Werner Heisenberg by an unknown author (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R57262) licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
- Turing in 1935 by Tomipelegrin licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
- Gospers glider gun by Lucas Vieira licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
—
The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of the Open Web Mind
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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The Wolfram model allows an infinite number of rules.
Some of these rules generate interesting universes that are complex and connected, some of these rules generate plausible universes that look a little like our own, and others... go nowhere.
In this excerpt from my conversation with Jonathan Gorard, I ask him how to find rules of Wolfram Physics that are both interesting and plausible.
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Jonathan Gorard
- Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project
- Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University
- Jonathan Gorard on Twitter
- The Centre for Applied Compositionality
- The Wolfram Physics Project
The paper referred to by Jonathan
- Algorithmic Causal Sets and the Wolfram Model by Jonathan Gorard
Concepts mentioned by Jonathan
- Causal invariance
- Manifold
- Causal graph
- Space-like separation
- Causal cone
- Dimensionality
- Curvature
- Discrete differential operators
- Discrete Laplacian
—
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
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This is the second of a series of excerpts from my recent conversation with Jonathan Gorard, who was instrumental in the founding of The Wolfram Physics Project.
I asked Jonathan why he found the computational approach to physics so compelling.
In his answer, he broached a wide range of fascinating topics in the philosophy of science:
- how we moved from a clockwork paradigm in the age of clockwork to a computational paradigm in the age of computation;
- how saying that the universe is computational is different from saying that the universe is a computer;
- how our adoption of mathematics as the basis for physics has biased us to think of space-time as continuous;
- how the history of science might have been different had Turing been born before Newton;
- how the Wolfram Model can be thought of as a way of building a constructivist foundation for physics.
This led us to discuss a couple of the deeper questions of Wolfram Physics:
- is it possible to know whether the universe is continuous or discrete?
- does the hypergraph really exist?
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Jonathan Gorard
- Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project
- Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University
- Jonathan Gorard on Twitter
- The Centre for Applied Compositionality
- The Wolfram Physics Project
People and Concepts mentioned by Jonathan
- Isaac Newton
- René Descartes
- Democritus
- John Locke
- Bishop Berkeley
- Corpuscularianism
- Atomism
- Alan Turing
- Turing machines
- Lambda calculus
- Recursively Enumerable Functions
- Constructivism
- L. E. J. Brouwer
- David Hilbert
- Intuitionism
—
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
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In my conversation with Jonathan Gorard about the founding of the Wolfram Physics Project, I said that I don’t like String Theory.
Now, I’ll admit, I don’t really understand String Theory.
It’s highly mathematical. And I’m not much of a mathematician. Actually, that’s an understatement. I’m not a mathematician at all.
So if there’s a problem in the relationship between String Theory and me, it might not be String Theory, it might be me.
Sadly, admitting that I might be part of the problem doesn’t change anything between us. I still don’t like String Theory.
Here’s why.
–
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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In 2019, Jonathan Gorard and Max Piskunov goaded Stephen Wolfram into pursuing his ideas for a new kind of science.
This led to the announcement of The Wolfram Physics Project in 2020.
Last week, I talked to Jonathan Gorard about the revolutionary ideas that have come out of the project.
In this first excerpt from our conversation, Jonathan talks about his instrumental role in the founding of The Wolfram Physics Project.
We cover why the time was right in 2020... and why it had been wrong in 2002 when Stephen Wolfram published his book A New Kind of Science.
We talk about how Wolfram Physics might take over from string theory, why Jonathan likes string theory... and why he doesn’t.
It was a true pleasure to talk to Jonathan about what might prove a pivotal moment in the history of science.
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Jonathan Gorard
- Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project
- Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University
People and Projects
- The Centre for Applied Compositionality
- The Wolfram Physics Project
- Stephen Wolfram’s announcement of the project
- Max Piskunov
- SetReplace on GitHub
Concepts mentioned by Jonathan
- Irreducibility
- Undecidability
- Universality
- Current algebra
- Regge theory
- Gauge theory
- Standard Model
- String theory
- Poincaré group
- Mirror symmetry
- Calabi–Yau manifold
- K3 surface
—
Images
- Calabi–Yau manifold CalabiYau5 by Andrew J. Hanson, Indiana University, who allows use with attribution
- Feynman diagram Feynmann Diagram Gluon Radiation by Joel Holdsworth, public domain
—
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
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Wolfram Physics models the universe as a hypergraph.
Maybe I’m just seeing things, but it seems to me that hypergraphs are everywhere: physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, ecology, sociology, technology.
What I want to know is:
Why?
Why are hypergraphs everywhere?
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Molecular structure Styrene-butadiene chain2 by Guido Raos, professor of chemistry, Politecnico di Milano, Italy licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Metabolic pathway BRENDA pyrimidine metabolism by BRENDA – The Comprehensive Enzyme Information System licensed under CC BY 4.0
Brain image Neurons & glia by The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) licensed under CC BY 2.0
Pelagic food web An in situ perspective of a deep pelagic food web by C. Anela Choy, Steven H. D. Haddock and Bruce H. Robison licensed under CC BY 4.0
Social graph Partitions in my social graph by Matt Biddulph licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Internet map Internet map by Matt Britt licensed under CC BY 2.5
Feynman diagram Paarbildung by Ivan Baev licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
—
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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As you’ll know from Episode 8: Where’s the computer that runs the universe? ( read ⋅ listen ⋅ watch ), I have my doubts about the existence of a computer that’s whirring away, applying Wolfram’s rules to Wolfram’s graphs, performing the computations required to run our universe.
This computer, if it exists, is necessarily invisible to us, and as I warned in Episode 12: Beware invisible things ( read ⋅ listen ⋅ watch ) we should be wary of what we can’t see.
Still, I want to revisit this idea of a computer that runs the universe.
I want to come at it from a slightly different direction.
Rather than adopt the stance of the monkey with its hands over its eyes and insist that if I can’t see it, it’s not there, let’s suppose that there is a computer that runs the universe and ask a simple question:
How big would it have to be?
—
Other episodes I mention:
- Episode 8: Where’s the computer that runs the universe? – read ⋅ listen ⋅ watch
- Episode 12: Beware invisible things – read ⋅ listen ⋅ watch
- Episode 15: Where to apply Wolfram’s rules? – read ⋅ listen ⋅ watch
—
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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Here are answers to some fundamental questions about hypergraphs:
A hyperedge can connect any number of nodes: one, two, three, four, seventeen or any other number.
And a hypergraph can include any of these different kinds of hyperedge, or all of them.
Let’s take a look at what this means for Wolfram Physics... and at some of the beautiful hypergraphs it allows us to generate!
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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In previous episodes, I’ve been simulating Wolfram Physics using graphs.
But you may have come across simulations of Wolfram Physics using hypergraphs.
What’s the difference?
What is a hypergraph?
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This epsiode refers to previous episodes on dimensionality:
- How to measure the dimensionality of the universe audio ⋅ video ⋅ article
- Are Wolfram’s graphs three‑dimensional? audio ⋅ video ⋅ article
- What are dimensions in Wolfram’s universe? audio ⋅ video ⋅ article
and previous episodes on space:
- What is space? the where and the how far audio ⋅ video ⋅ article
- The expanse: dimension, separation & explosion audio ⋅ video ⋅ article
—
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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Confession time: I haven’t been entirely honest with you about applying a rule to a graph in Wolfram Physics.
I’ve explained precisely how to apply a rule, but I’ve been strangely silent when it comes to where to apply the rule.
I know, it’s unlike me to be silent, right?
Time to come clean.
It turns out that the question of where to apply Wolfram’s rules is not as easily answered as you might think.
This seemingly straightforward question will take us into the philosophy of time, causality, consciousness, contingency and determinism.
And it’ll lead us towards some of the most important concepts in Wolfram Physics: the multiway graph, branchial space and causal invariance.
Check your breathing apparatus: we’re going deep.
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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In his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein combined the three dimensions of space with the one dimension of time in what we now know as Einstein’s equations.
Ever since, physicists have thought of space and time as effectively the same thing: components of four-dimensional space-time.
This might be the biggest blunder physicists have ever made.
Stephen Wolfram, on page 22 of his book A project to find the Fundamental Theory of Physics, calls it the “one ‘wrong turn’ in the history of physics in the past century”.
Space-time is dead.
Here’s why... and how physicists got it so wrong for so long.
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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We’re used to thinking of space as continuous.
A stone can be anywhere in space. It can be here. Or it can be an inch to the left. Or it can be half an inch further to the left. Or it can be an infinitesimal fraction of an inch even further to the left. Space is infinitely divisible.
The graphs of Wolfram Physics, however, are discrete.
If, as Stephen Wolfram proposes, the universe is a graph, then you can’t be just anywhere in space. It makes sense to think about a node of the graph as a position in space. It makes no sense to think about anywhere in between the nodes as positions in space. This space is not infinitely divisible.
It’s as if a stone could be here in space, or here in space, but nowhere in between.
So which is it?
Has every physicist from Leucippus to Einstein been right to insist that space is continuous?
Or is Wolfram right to up-end millennia of settled science and insist that space is discrete?
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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We humans have always been fond of invisible things.
Poltergeists, fairies, unicorns, the Yeti, the Lost City of Atlantis.
Just because you can’t see them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Scientists, no less than any other humans, suffer from this fondness for invisible things.
Phlogiston, miasma, ether, strings.
Just because you can’t see them, scientists have insisted, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Beware these invisible things.
As I explore Wolfram Physics, I’m aware of certain invisible things that we believe in now, but we’re going to have to let go, if Stephen Wolfram is right.
And I’m also aware of the temptation to replace this old set of invisible things with a new set of invisible things.
Here’s why we’d do well to resist.
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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We know what it means when we say that our universe is three-dimensional: it means that we can move in three orthogonal directions: left-right; up-down; forwards-backwards.
But what would it mean to say that a universe is 2½-dimensional?
Or 3.37-dimensional?
Or 9-dimensional?
When I measured the dimensionality one of Wolfram’s graphs, I found it to be at least 3.37-dimensional.
If Stephen Wolfram is right, then our universe might not be uniformly three-dimensional.
So maybe dimensionality isn’t quite what we think it is.
What, exactly, are dimensions?
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
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Are Wolfram’s graphs three-dimensional?
In Episode #009: How to measure the dimensionality of the universe – watch the video or read the article – I introduced a mathematically-minded crab, which was able to determine the dimensionality of its universe by measuring how much space it covered moving different distances in every possible direction.
Now I’m going to use the same crabby method to determine the dimensionality of graphs generated by Wolfram Physics.
I’m finally going to answer the question: how many dimensions are there in one of Wolfram’s universes?
And the answer’s going to be unexpected.
Here’s a hint: it’s not two and it’s not three.
Today’s episode includes a lot of visuals, so I recommend you watch the video or read the article rather than listen to the audio.
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Today’s episode includes a lot of visuals, so I recommend you watch the video or read the article rather than listen to the audio.
In Episode #007: The expanse: dimension, separation & explosion – watch the video or read the article – I argued that the graphs of Wolfram Physics are going to have to be three-dimensional to be a true representation of our universe.
But how can we tell whether these graphs are three-dimensional? Many of them are so convoluted that it’s difficult to tell whether they’re two-dimensional, three-dimensional or somewhere in between.
I’m going to make the question even more difficult. We’ve been looking at graphs from the outside, from a God’s-eye view.
In reality, though, we’re not outside the graph. Remember, we’re hoping that the graphs of Wolfram Physics will prove to be a true representation of our universe, and we can’t be outside our own universe.
How could we tell whether a graph is two-dimensional, or three-dimensional, or even two-and-a-half-dimensional, from inside the graph?
How would we measure the dimensionality of our own universe?
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I’ve been running simulations of our universe, according to Stephen Wolfram’s computational theory of physics.
Where’s the computer that runs these simulations?
Well, it’s right here. This a low-powered laptop in my hand is literally the computer that runs these universes.
It’s natural to ask a follow-up question.
If Wolfram’s right and the real universe evolves computationally in the same way as these simulated universes, where’s the computer that runs the universe?
I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.
The full article is here.
Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.
In the last episode, I introduced two fundamental characteristics of space: position and distance.
Today, I’m going to introduce three more characteristics of space: dimension, separation & explosion.
If it’s to be a viable theory of physics, Wolfram Physics has to accurately model space as we know it, including all five of these characteristics.
Let’s see how it measures up.
—
Today’s episode includes a lot of visuals, so you might prefer to read the article, or watch the video, where they’re animated.
In the episode, I refer back to Episode #006: What is space? the where and the how far. Again, I recommend you watch the video or read the article rather than listen to the audio for that episode, since you’ll want to see the visuals!
Doppler siren by jobro reproduced under CC BY 3.0
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What is space in Wolfram Physics?
I’ve talked about the basic concepts of Wolfram Physics: nodes, edges, graphs & rules.
I just threw these concepts out there. No explanation. No rhyme, no reason. Nodes, edges, graphs & rules. Take them or leave them.
Naturally, this raised a few questions in some people’s minds.
These questions can be summed up as follows:
Wait... What? Nodes, edges, graphs & rules? Why?
This a deep question.
Let’s get into it.
—
This episode includes a few visuals, so you might prefer to read the article or watch the video.
In this episode, I refer back to Episode #004: Different rules, different universes. This one, too, includes a lot of visuals, so again, I recommend you watch the video or read the article rather than listen to the audio for that episode.
I also refer to a Polynesian stick chart. You can find it here: Micronesian navigational chart.
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I like being asked questions about Wolfram Physics.
When I try to answer them, though, I often find myself trapped in an infinite regress.
To address a question about Wolfram Physics, I might first need to address another, more fundamental question, about physics.
And to address that question, I might first need to address another, more fundamental question, than might be more philosophy than physics.
Today, I’m going to go to one of those deep questions that need to be asked, if not answered, before I can begin to address many of the questions I’ve been asked about Wolfram Physics.
What is physics?
Prefer to watch the video? Watch here.
The full article is here.
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It’s all about the animations.
I’ve been coding coding coding the few weeks to develop my simulations of Wolfram Physics.
So now I’m able to explore a number of simple rules and ask a number of simple questions.
What different rules could be applied to our universe?
What different universes would arise from these rules?
Today, I explore different rules, different universes.
Today’s episode includes a lot of visuals, so you might prefer to read the article, or watch the video, where they’re fully animated.
If you missed Episode #002, Nodes, edges, graphs & rules: the basic concepts of Wolfram Physics, you can find the article here and the video here.
Wolfram Physics might be the most fundamental scientific breakthrough in your lifetime.
And yet you’ve probably never heard of it.
Here’s why.
—
Albert Einstein’s 1905 papers
Stephen Wolfram’s project to find the fundamental theory of physics
Stephen Wolfram’s 2020 announcement
There are maybe half a million physicists in the world
—
Prefer to watch the video? Watch here
The full article is here
Are you ready?
Today, I’m going to dive right into Wolfram Physics.
If you’ve never heard of Stephen Wolfram or his team’s project to find the fundamental theory of physics, don’t worry.
Think of it like this: I’m going to dive right into the fundamental structure of the universe.
And, well, you might not believe that the words “simple” and “physics” can go together, but I’m going to keep it simple.
Today’s episode includes a lot of visuals.
You can find them in the article, or you might want to switch to watching the video, where they’re fully animated.
I always envy those people who, through a fantastic stroke of luck, find themselves to be exactly the right person in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I always ask myself, why can’t that happen to me?
Well, it just did.
Let me explain.
In this week’s episode, I discuss why I’m writing about Wolfram Physics.
I’ll be digging into the details, as well as taking a step back to see some of the philosophical implications, in future episodes.
Prefer to watch the video? Watch at lasttheory.com/channel/001-why-i-am-writing-about-wolfram-physics
The full article is at lasttheory.com/article/why-i-am-writing-about-wolfram-physics
Welcome to The Last Theory, an easy-to-follow exploration of what might be the last theory of physics.
In 2020, Stephen Wolfram launched the Wolfram Physics Project to find the elusive fundamental theory that explains everything.
On The Last Theory, I investigate the implications of Wolfram’s ideas and dig into the details of how his universe works.
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After all, this might be the most fundamental scientific breakthrough of our time.