full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Harry Cliff: Have we reached the end of physics?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


One of the most promising candidates for a ueiifnd theory is string theory, and the etesniasl idea is, if you could zoom in on the fundamental particles that make up our wrold, you'd see actually that they're not particles at all, but tiny vrbitniag strings of egenry, with each frequency of vibration corresponding to a different particle, a bit like musical notes on a guitar string.

So it's a rather elegant, almost poetic way of looking at the world, but it has one catastrophic problem. It turns out that string terohy isn't one theory at all, but a whole collection of toerheis. It's been estimated, in fact, that there are 10 to the 500 different versions of string theory. Each one would describe a different universe with different laws of physics. Now, critics say this makes string theory unscientific. You can't disprove the theory. But others actually turned this on its head and said, well, maybe this apparent failure is string theory's greatest triumph. What if all of these 10 to the 500 different possible universes actually exist out there somewhere in some grnad multiverse? sdeudlny we can understand the wdielry fine-tuned vlaues of these two dangerous numbers. In most of the multiverse, dark energy is so strong that the universe gets torn apart, or the Higgs feild is so weak that no aotms can form. We live in one of the places in the multiverse where the two numbers are just right. We live in a Goldilocks universe.

Open Cloze


One of the most promising candidates for a _______ theory is string theory, and the _________ idea is, if you could zoom in on the fundamental particles that make up our _____, you'd see actually that they're not particles at all, but tiny _________ strings of ______, with each frequency of vibration corresponding to a different particle, a bit like musical notes on a guitar string.

So it's a rather elegant, almost poetic way of looking at the world, but it has one catastrophic problem. It turns out that string ______ isn't one theory at all, but a whole collection of ________. It's been estimated, in fact, that there are 10 to the 500 different versions of string theory. Each one would describe a different universe with different laws of physics. Now, critics say this makes string theory unscientific. You can't disprove the theory. But others actually turned this on its head and said, well, maybe this apparent failure is string theory's greatest triumph. What if all of these 10 to the 500 different possible universes actually exist out there somewhere in some _____ multiverse? ________ we can understand the _______ fine-tuned ______ of these two dangerous numbers. In most of the multiverse, dark energy is so strong that the universe gets torn apart, or the Higgs _____ is so weak that no _____ can form. We live in one of the places in the multiverse where the two numbers are just right. We live in a Goldilocks universe.

Solution


  1. values
  2. field
  3. theories
  4. weirdly
  5. world
  6. unified
  7. grand
  8. vibrating
  9. theory
  10. energy
  11. atoms
  12. essential
  13. suddenly

Original Text


One of the most promising candidates for a unified theory is string theory, and the essential idea is, if you could zoom in on the fundamental particles that make up our world, you'd see actually that they're not particles at all, but tiny vibrating strings of energy, with each frequency of vibration corresponding to a different particle, a bit like musical notes on a guitar string.

So it's a rather elegant, almost poetic way of looking at the world, but it has one catastrophic problem. It turns out that string theory isn't one theory at all, but a whole collection of theories. It's been estimated, in fact, that there are 10 to the 500 different versions of string theory. Each one would describe a different universe with different laws of physics. Now, critics say this makes string theory unscientific. You can't disprove the theory. But others actually turned this on its head and said, well, maybe this apparent failure is string theory's greatest triumph. What if all of these 10 to the 500 different possible universes actually exist out there somewhere in some grand multiverse? Suddenly we can understand the weirdly fine-tuned values of these two dangerous numbers. In most of the multiverse, dark energy is so strong that the universe gets torn apart, or the Higgs field is so weak that no atoms can form. We live in one of the places in the multiverse where the two numbers are just right. We live in a Goldilocks universe.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
higgs field 8
dark energy 6
higgs boson 5
quantum mechanics 4
general theory 3
string theory 3
albert einstein 2
interesting stuff 2
extremely dangerous 2
dangerous numbers 2
large hadron 2
hadron collider 2
violent collisions 2
light switch 2
trillion times 2
big bang 2
unified theory 2
great news 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
large hadron collider 2

Important Words


  1. apparent
  2. atoms
  3. bit
  4. candidates
  5. catastrophic
  6. collection
  7. critics
  8. dangerous
  9. dark
  10. describe
  11. disprove
  12. elegant
  13. energy
  14. essential
  15. estimated
  16. exist
  17. fact
  18. failure
  19. field
  20. form
  21. frequency
  22. fundamental
  23. goldilocks
  24. grand
  25. greatest
  26. guitar
  27. head
  28. higgs
  29. idea
  30. laws
  31. live
  32. multiverse
  33. musical
  34. notes
  35. numbers
  36. particle
  37. particles
  38. physics
  39. places
  40. poetic
  41. problem
  42. promising
  43. string
  44. strings
  45. strong
  46. suddenly
  47. theories
  48. theory
  49. tiny
  50. torn
  51. triumph
  52. turned
  53. turns
  54. understand
  55. unified
  56. universe
  57. universes
  58. unscientific
  59. values
  60. versions
  61. vibrating
  62. vibration
  63. weak
  64. weirdly
  65. world
  66. zoom