Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Singularity-Existence of God-Part III

This time we would be going to the quantum world. However, this journey would not be easy because the air inside this world is saturated with numbers and equations. Those who are not comfortable with it will suffocate to death. Even those who love it would be having some breathing problems!
But, don’t worry. There are some who provide breathing instruments. Stephen Hawking is one of them. His book entitled Theory of Everything is pretty cool for those who normally will suffocate to death in this world. Though I must say that he not only provides those breathing instruments but is also among those who create that air!!!
So, the above statements might have cleared that I would not be teaching quantum physics here. What I want to show that scientists are only talking about god when they speak about theory of everything!
Ok, back to our discussion.
The standard model gave us the understanding of particle interaction by uniting three fundamental forces-strong, electromagnetic and weak. However, the gravitational force was still missing. So, we entered into quantum gravity. And this is what theory of everything is all about-unification of quantum mechanics with gravity.
Unfortunately, here the quantum world becomes equivalent to the problem world!
The unification of quantum mechanics with gravity leads us into renormalization problem where the particle interaction results into infinite values which are not so easy to be cancelled mathematically. WTF!!! This should be your reaction if you are new to this world. What the hell is renormalization???
For understanding renormalization, we need to have an understanding of Perturbation Theory. In Perturbation theory, we need to find an approximate solution to a problem which cannot be solved exactly. Perturbation theory is applicable if the problem can be formulated by adding a "small" term to the mathematical description of the exactly solvable problem.This will give us the desired solution in power series.

Click to enlarge image
I have given a very simple example of the application of Perturbation theory. I will not go in details of that. I will give its significance in renormalization problem and how it was kicked out in quantum gravity.
Getting suffocated? Don’t panic. You have those breathing instruments. Get some air and come back to this world. Strings are not far away!!!