Roads to Reality

• Science shows us that our experiences are a misleading guide to reality
• Breakthroughs in physics force us to reevaluate our idea of space
• Developments in physics have shown space and time to be the most important and incomprehensible features of reality, this book investigates space and time
• Newton developed what is known as classical physics; described space and time as unchangeable and a structure (framework) for the universe
• Einstein, with the theory of relativity, proved Newton wrong; he showed space and time are “flexible and dynamic”
• However, classical physics is still useful as relativity is only detectable in the extremes of speed and gravity
• Classical physics and relativity say that if you know the velocity and position of any object you can determine its position and velocity at any other time past or future; quantum mechanics, however, states the best that can be done is to predict a probability of position and velocity
• Quantum mechanics describe a reality in which things are partly one way and partly another
• It also implies that something done here can be instantaneously linked to something there no matter how far away
• We perceive time as a one way arrow but known laws of physics don’t show this, so how can it be?
• The answer may be that the universe’s initial ordered state at its inception imposed this direction on time
• Unfortunately we don’t know the state of the universe at the beginning because relativity and quantum mechanics clash at that scale
• Einstein sought a theory that would explain everything in the universe, this is called unified theory
• This could be superstring theory which indicates that particles like electrons and quarks are actually strings and depending on how a string vibrates it might be a quark or an electron
• To unify theories superstring theory demands 10 or 11 dimensions of spacetime
• These extra dimensions beyond the four (3 directional and 1 time) we know could be either too small or too large to see