What Is Modern Physics ?

Modern physics has moved into a realm where there is a vanishingly small chance that this contradiction could be presented, as the use of elementary particles cannot be made valid without breaking quantum mechanics, or at the very least undermining its conclusions, something that those who have been exposed to the richness of quantum mechanics have not been prepared to tolerate.

However, due to the marginal plausibility of the premise and the scarcity of the support for the suggestion, there are some prominent physicists who are prepared to entertain the possibility, so long as it is stated clearly that it is only an hypothesis.

Stephen Hawking is one such physicist, who argued in his books A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design that “The simplest explanation is that gravity is a deterministic physical law that causes particles to fall towards one another and to exert force on one another, thus forming galaxies and galaxy clusters. It appears at first sight like an explanation in the sense that it explains what happened at certain times and in certain places; but in fact this conclusion has no relevance to the origin and evolution of the universe.”

He further noted that the laws of physics have conditions that should have prohibited the possibility of the development of an isolated Universe: “The law of gravity has its own little frame of reference and once you allow that, things get even stranger. … The Laws of Nature require that the universe must have come from a single location. If there were no gravity, there could be no stars, no planets, no black holes, no neutron stars. No, the only remaining possibility is that the law of gravity was broken in the past and this explains everything.”

In his book, A Brief History of Time, he elaborated: “The fact that there is something rather than nothing is not a simple matter. At a minimum, it suggests that there must be a source of energy, or cause of energy, something that gave rise to the subatomic world. All we know so far is that the answer is right in front of us. The laws of physics are rather self-contradictory, to put it mildly; the fundamental principle of Newtonian physics, for example, states that gravity is a consequence of the curvature of space-time. The existence of the two concepts is incompatible.”

The “source of energy” has to be a substantial enough phenomenon in order to explain the entire Universe, and Hawking has argued that the “cause of energy” can be found in the physical laws of the Universe.

Physicist Sean Carroll published a book called The Fabric of the Cosmos, in which he argued: “The Standard Model of particle physics gives an insight into the origin of the Universe. The Model states that the number of particles in the Universe was chosen at the big bang, in accordance with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. What will turn up eventually in experiments is the evidence that gravity can create matter. When that happens, it will be the end of the story: the graviton will turn out to be the fundamental force of nature. All of physics will have to be rewritten. … Even if you think you have a good idea, the laws of physics seem to be contradictory, as I do, and nobody is going to change them for you.”

As physicist Michael Kamen was quoted as saying, “There’s an old expression: ‘Gravity is a blind man’s cane.’ The laws of physics seem to say that gravity must have some sort of connection to the curvature of space-time. The only thing physicists can figure out so far is that the answer is blindingly obvious if you are willing to take a bigger leap of faith.”

The age-old debate that has been going on for a long time is not only a debate in the “scientific” domain but also a classic metaphysical debate in philosophical circles. In his book Beyond Creation and Death, the philosopher Peter van Inwagen writes, “How can it be that the laws of physics allow for such an intricate creation when they could not have come into being before the beginning of time? We have never seen a multiverse, but that does not mean that it does not

exist; a multiverse is just another way of describing the same thing.”

This brings us to the reality of the cosmos being described by the great quantum theorist Albert Einstein. As quantum physicist Max Tegmark has noted: “The universe is not the sum of its parts; it is the whole. ‘Who or what is to say that the universe can or cannot continue forever?’ one might ask. Albert Einstein once said that it cannot.”

The physicist Jeremy Bernstein of Columbia University has stated: “I think of the universe as a long, slow dance in which galaxies are one of the great bands. However, the part we live in is its finale. The dance has no beginning. It is an infinity of future dances, and so the dance will go on forever.”

When the fabric of the universe is described by its laws of physics, then the only possible cause that has to remain the same over the infinite past and future of the Universe is the forces