(September 6, 2008 at 2:49 pm)Darwinian Wrote: If they do indeed find the elusive Higgs-Boson particle associated with the equally elusive Higgs field how much further will this take us to forming a theory of everything?
Not very close at all!
At the moment we a succesful theory of electromagnetism and the weak interaction, the imaginitively named electroweak therory.
To get to a theory of everything, the strong interaction (responsible for holding nuclei together) and gravity must be incorporated.
Supersymmetry is a nice theory that incorporates the strong interaction into the electroweak theory, unfortunately there's no experimental evidence that it's true yet.
The biggest hurdle to overcome in building a ToE is putting quantum mechanics and general relativity together in the same theoretical framework. Despite our best efforts they seem to be totally incompatible.
A way around would be to formulate a theory of quantum gravity that predicts the same as general relativity in the classical (large-scale) limit.
This takes us into the realm of quantum foam, which at the moment, is poorly understood...
Galileo was a man of science oppressed by the irrational and superstitious. Today, he is used by the irrational and superstitious who claim they are being oppressed by science - Mark Crislip
