Can humans really understand the universe?

Question

I've been reading much on string theory lately and am familiar with physics as I have a minor in it from college. It seems as though everytime the particle physicists think they have it, problems arise one by one and they have to expand or change the theory. Now many are calling string theory "the theory formerly known as string theory". And now 5 dimensional models are coming up and so on.
So I'm having my doubts if they'll ever arrive at a fundamental set of rules that governs everything and has no problems with it(certain experimental observations that just don't fit into the model). It seems as though the best we can do is conceptualize and model in our heads and who knows if these things are reality or just agree very well with our experiences and experiments.
In light of this, do you think it's possible, to get to a point where we clap the dust off our hands and say, "That's it, nothing really more to learn. Just details at this point."?

Answer 1

Bertrand Russell laid the foundation upon which Kurt Gödel built his famous incompeteness theorem in which he proved mathematically that, within any consistent system of primitive recursive arithmetic (mathematics) some assertions can be formulated but can neither be proved nor disproved.

Because so much of theoretical physics rests upon mathematics, it is entirely possible that we will never completely "understand" the "universe," depending on how you define the quoted terms. Empirical, experimental approaches by themselves have no hope of providing such understanding; Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle pretty much guarantees that exceptions, however infrequent, cannot be completely ruled out by such an approach.

Answer 2

Check out this month's Scientific American special on Astrophysics. There is a great article on the possibility of creating "quantum black holes" with the LCH when it goes full capacity mid next year. If all goes well they should be able to observe the effects of the multiple dimensions predicted by string, super-string, and the current revision: M-theory. Unfortunately to actually make a real observation at the Planck scale it would take an electron microscope-like assembly roughly the size of the milky way. So we may never know. Leaps and bounds have been made in learning about the physical universe but we may NEVER have it fully understood.

Answer 3

Honestly, no, i don't see that happening. I may be wrong, but when you come down to it, the fundamental physics (unification of gravity with the other forces) is probably down at the planck scale, way way way more energy than we will ever produce in accelerators.

The best (or worst if you like doing particle physics and don't want funding to dry up) we can hope for anytime soon is if LHC finds the standard model Higgs boson and nothing else. Then we could basically clap the dust off and say "There's no reason to believe that anything interesting happens between here and Planck scale, which we'll never get to anyway." But I don't think that will happen either. We'll see.

Answer 4

I know that it sounds very arrogant but I refuse to believe that we are in a universe that is fundamentally outside our realm of understanding. It just seems that every time a new solution is found it always shows the elegance or symmetry of the universe which just indicates to me that there should be some way to make sense of it all. That being said I don't think that we are very close right now but we are making progress and maybe by the end of this century we will have most of it figured out. Just think that 100 years ago we knew nothing of quantum mechanics and used an abacus instead of a computer, imagine how quaint we'll look in another hundred years.

Answer 5

Can humans really understand the universe?

Sure they can, if they don't wipe themselves off the face of the Earth first. The old adage: give a monkey enough time, plenty of bananas, and a typewriter with lots of paper and ribbon; and he'll eventually type out Gone With the Wind.

The point is this...humankind has uncovered many of the really deep mysteries of the universe in just the last few decades of humankind's existence. What it could do in the next 1,000 years is absolutely unimaginable, but it would have to be extraordinary. Humankind is like that...extraordinarily fantastic and gifted on one side, but hideously evil and illogical on the other.

Is there a point where there is "nothing really more to learn"...maybe, but only in this universe...there may be more to explore, where the physics etc. is totally different. And, wouldn't that be a fantastic thing to uncover in the next 1,000 years?

Answer 6

The ordinary and the unknown are merely symbols for comprehension. The ordinary is increasing quicker than you may song it and that i think of the only thank you to locate the unknown is to learn the conventional, which looks impossible on the linked fee it enters creation. i think of that understand-how an all encompassing image for creation is as obtainable as the rest, yet acceptance is often after the reality and would not wisely symbolize what's clean, so understand-how the finished image on ever point feels impossible. Steven Hawkings and string theory as an entire has been created from date with the aid of Nassim Haramein's artwork. He says each thing is a black hollow and a hell of so lots greater straight forward than string theory.

Answer 7

Nearly no normal living human understands it.
There are many secrets that are hidden from us. And the Babylonian's history proves that if a human will try to know the hidden secrets then he will be shot to death or may be imprisoned for whole life. Then that knowledge will be buried deep below where no normal human will reach. So when this universal politics will be over then only its will be possible.

Answer 8

Simple answer: maybe

Complex answer: humans have a limit to what we can know, and the possibility of knowing it. This just means that we can't know EVERYTHING, but it can also mean we can know ALMOST everything.

WHY: Because the heisenberg uncertainty principle and the schrodinger wave equation give us limits and possibilities