[AccessD] The coming in-memory database tipping point. - SQL Server Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Kenneth Ismert kismert at gmail.com
Tue Apr 17 11:14:36 CDT 2012


As we get more general and better knowledge, it increasingly comes at the
expense of believability.

Newtonian mechanics were straightforward, and comforting in their
determinism. The mathematics are approachable by anyone who has taken a
college calculus course.

Einstein's relativistic universe is much harder to get an intuitive grasp
on, and the mathematics are much harder, too: mastery is an accomplishment
for a mathematics or physics major. Proof was hard to come by, but
relativity is incontestably true.

Then came the quantum revolution. Nature isn't predictable; worse, it can't
ever be completely measured; worse still, it behaves in ways that are
utterly bizarre. Einstein rebelled against the idea. Bohr said: "If quantum
mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."
Still, the theory of Quantum Electrodynamics, by Feynman et al, is the
best-proved theory in the history of science. The mathematics are just
barely tenable: a monkey puzzle of infinite series that cancel each other
out, they are graspable only by physics graduate students and professors.

Now we have reached the string theory stage, an attempt to tame quantum
strangeness, inhabited by things called 'superstrings' and 'branes' living
in something between 7 and 11 dimensions, the extra ones 'curled up into
little balls' so small that they are undetectable. A unified, satisfactory
description of the mathematics has defied the best mathematical and physics
minds for decades, and remains an ongoing puzzle for researchers. In fact,
string theory has yet to produce a single experimentally testable
assertion! It can't be proved. It can't be disproved. It just is.

Of course, the implications of string theory are even more strange. Some
theorists look at it and say there must be a parallel universe. Others
claim that is insufficient, and the number of universes is infinite. Still
others say the concept of a universe is irrelevant. Science has narrowed
down the number of universes to a range between 0 and infinity.

So, we have come to this fuzzy boundary between science and belief. Will
the current efforts produce satisfactory science? Are we missing something
simple? It is anyone's guess.

A postscript:
There is an experiment at Fermilab which aims to examine the fabric of
space-time at its smallest detail, to determine if it is digital or not. It
is inspired by the famous double-interferometer experiment, performed over
a century ago, which aimed to measure changes in the velocity of light
through its supposed transmission medium, the ether. That experiment
famously failed to find variation in the speed of light, destroying the
theory of the ether, and deterministic physics along with it.

If this new experiment works, and nature turns out to be full of digital
jitter, or 'quantum foam', then this opens up a new possibility. Maybe God
is a programmer, and we are a computer simulation.

-Ken

> Stuart McLachlan:
>
> In this case, I don't think that "flawed" is the right word.
 "Simplistic" would be better.
>
> Newton's approach is a simplified model of reality,  which matches
 observations  within
> certain constraints.   It is only beyond those constraints that newtonian
laws break down.
>
> Einsteins approach is a more complex model, which widens those
constraints.  Current
> string/multiverse/brane approaches are more complex again and further
widen those
> constraints.
>
> Each appears to be getting closer to reality, but whether we will ever
get there is another
> matter.


More information about the AccessD mailing list