Are there any physical or chemical laws science doesn't know?

Great Debates
1

I’ve been taken to school on a couple different threads (here and here for claiming there are no laws of physics or chemistry that science is ignorant of.

Within over a billion miles in any direction, ten billion years into the past, and ten billion years hence? Ten.

In Chemistry, we have found all the quarks. We know how they go together to construct all particles. We know how the particles go together to form matter and anti-matter. We have a detailed understanding of all types of atoms and can theorize and even build atoms which do not exist in nature but for fractions of a second.

We understand how different types of atoms go together to form molecules via bonding of electrons. Given any set of molecules, we can predict how they would react together and under what conditions they would interact with certainty – and we we don’t know we can easily find out. No explantion of how a molecule or set of molecules functioning under chemical laws might attain consciousness is given or required for these laws to have a testable certainty

Physics does not yet have a Grand Unified Theorem, but it is fully aware of the strong and weak nuclear forces, magnetism, and gravity and possesses a set of laws predicting how quarks, particles, atoms, and molecules acts within these laws specificly on the quantuum scale, with general rules predicting behavior on a macro scale.

Such laws have no known exceptions, nor is there any reason to expect any exceptions will ever be found. There are a handful of competing theories relating to singularities, such as black holes or the first few seconds of the universe’s existence, and a few untested theories about the mass of some very rare particles and some theoretical work involving unknown objects whose mass or lack thereof might effect the ultimate outcome of the universe. There is no explanation of human consciousness in any of the competing theories in these areas. There is no reason to believe one of the current existing theories won’t be proven valid once experimental data can be aquired. Thus these areas are known, all that remains to be seen is which knowledge is correct.

One Cell continued:

Very well. I call on anyone to dispute my claim.

Yes. It has been a steady progression for millenia. Unless anyone can sanely claim that the secret to human consciousness will be found when examining partical interactions at the start of the big bang or how matter works in a black hole – and none of the competeing theoretical explanations, one of which existing is likely valid, have such a postulate – science effectively understands the mundane universe for billions of cubed miles around without an explanation of consciousness.

I may take One Cell’s advice and go on sabbatical for a while soon. I encourage chemists and physicists to express their views on the progess of their respective disciplines

2

You seem to mistake having fundamental theories for particle interaction with having complete understanding of all complex processes. A few of the things which science does not yet (AFAIK) understand:

How DNA sequences encode information. (i.e., the translation of the genetic code, rather than the recording of it.)
What the predictions of quantum mechanics imply about the nature of reality.
Whether human travel into the past is a practical possibility.
How gravity works at the most basic level.
Whether virtual particle pair materialization has a “cause”.
How to generate an arbitrarily large prime number.
How language capacity is encoded/developed in human beings.
How to read Minoan.
How to decipher the vocal signals of cetacians.
How life began on this planet.
How the human body “decides” to regulate hormone release.
What is the shape of the Universe.
Is the material Universe deterministic at the macroscopic scale.

3

As a physicist, I must argue that the state of our knowledge is not quite as complete as seems to be being implied here. The problem, fundamentally, comes down to reductionism—It does not seem true that knowing the fundamental forces allows us to easily figure out how, say, a high-temperature superconductor behaves. It is not to say that we can’t in principle figure it out, but in practice that is highly non-trivial to do.

I saw a talk back in March 1999 by Bob Laughlin, who shared the physics Nobel prize that year for his explanation of the fractional quantum hall effect. You have to understand that Laughlin is as much a streetfighter as a physicist and had taken offense to a talk earlier in the meeting by Steven Weinberg, who while trying to be nice to physicists not studying high-energy physics, had still ended up insulting us. (“Yes, there are other important issues in physics…but these are the really important, fundamental ones.”)

So, Laughlin began his talk by putting up a slide that said “Things that will not be explained by the final theory of everything.” The list begin, “earth, air, fire, water” and went on to include hippos, chocolate, and a number of other random things! The basic point of Laughlin’s talk is that one could never predict the fractional quantum hall effect, which is a collective effect when you get many electrons together, from just reducing it to its independent constituents. At the end of his talk, Laughlin said something like, “So, as we close out the 20th century, reductionism is finally dead!”

Now, I think Laughlin may have been a bit on the melodramatic side, but his point is a good one.

4

Feeling daunted and rather ignorant

Well, I would say that there are lots of things that we don’t understand but have a general sense about. Like computers for example. Even Cecil says that we don’t know how computers work.

Im sure that there are a myriad of examples similar to this.

5

Oops…

What I really meant by that was that Science isn’t really a single person. And since there aren’t that many people that Know and understand every aspect of science, they cannot always get a full understand of things enough to grasp certain subjects…

Hence, we have alot we don’t know. But if perhaps we were Borg, we would know it.

Of course the question wasn’t “Are there any physical or chemical laws Cecil doesnt know” was it.

6

To: jmullaney

Although some of the participants in this forum may miss you, I think the idea of taking a sabbatical is an excellent one. I recommend that towards the end of your sabbatical, you examine all the 2300 threads you participated, filter the riffraff, and take a hard look at your own belief system prior to October 1999, and at the end of your sabbatical. If you find that your belief system has not changed an iota, then maybe you should continue the sabbatical.

Now regarding this thread. As you know, for the past decades, there has been Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry every year. I submit that such prizes will continue every year as long as the academy of sciences shall exist. Suppose in year 2,000,001 AD, the academy still awards Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry. What does that imply on how much we don’t know about physics and chemistry sitting here in mere 2001 AD?

About a century ago, the director of the U.S. patent office (his name and year?) declared that everything that could possibly be invented was already invented then!! Are you now making a similar statement about our current state of knowledge in physics and chemistry? Are you serious about assigning Ten in the scale of 1 to 10? I am hoping that you will revise your number way towards the left of the scale at the end of this debate.

I was also surprised not to see any comments from you regarding the current state of our understanding about the workings of the human brain. Does this mean that you agreed with me on that point?

I still maintain that the current state of human brain capability is miniscule compared to what it will be, say, in 2,000,001 AD. We have a long way to go to understand the workings of the brain. That was why, back in November, I entered this forum as ”one cell”, and challenged Cecil Adams. See http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?thearid=50125
For some reason, you did not participate in that debate. If you had, maybe it would have impacted your belief system.

7

Fixed the link. (You misspelled “thread”.)

Were you serious when you claimed that when the human population of the Earth reaches 10,000,000,000 we will become part of some kind of giant organism?

Would you be insulted if I laughed real hard at that?

8

For a webpage devoted to unanswered questions and delimiting the edge of knowledge, see http://www.edge.org/ , especially the world question center. Contributors have included Richard Dawkins, Naomi Wolf and Abbie Hoffman.

9

I offer you this in way of dispute. Of course, it is not proof, but then, absolutely proving you wrong on this particular subject might involve a certainty somewhere between Cecil and Omniscience.

Here it is:

We still have religion.

Take the word ‘omniscience’ for example. It means all-knowing and could be thought of also as ‘all-science.’ Suggesting that we know all there is to know implies omnicience which impies we are God.

Now, I am not very religious. My personal view of ‘God’ is rather Taoist-- that the notion ‘God’ is simply the entire Cosmos. At first glance this might appear to agree with the statement “We (humans) are God” that you imply.

But all humnan scientific knowlege is not the same as omniscience or God. If a rat or a fish or a dog is part of the Cosmos then ANYTHING that they ‘know’ that we do not is part of the total cosmic knowlege, yet it lies outside of human knowlege. And so, I submit, we as humans, are not omniscient. (Sorry Cecil.)

10

OK, jmullaney, here’s a simple example of a physical process we don’t understand: protein structure.

Every DNA sequence codes for a specific sequence of amino acids. When the amino acid chain is constructed, the protein folds up into a complex three dimensional shape. This is why enzyme proteins act as catalysts for specific chemical reactions.

We can predict the shape of very small amino acid chains. But most proteins have hundreds of amino acids. And there is currently no way to calculate the eventual shape of the protein if all you know is the amino acid sequence. The only way to do it is construct the protein and watch it fold up.

Sure, quantum mechanics allows us to predict chemical reactions. But protein structure is an inherently intractable problem, and understanding the fundametal processes of chemistry doesn’t help.

11

One Cell wrote:

This is a myth. See http://www.library.umaine.edu/patents/famousquote.htm.

12

How are these two not understood?

-Ben

13

Careless phrasing on my part.

  1. I was attempting to reference such areas as “junk strands” (which may not be entirely meaningless, or so I have heard) and the exceptions to the “universal code” found in mytocondria and some eukaryotes. For that matter, we are certainly not yet at teh state of knowledge where we can be given a set of bases and “translate” them into a perfectly detailed description of the organism they represent.

  2. Even worse. Obviously primes can be calculated (either by straightforward brute division or the sieve of whatshisname). I meant to raise a question that I ran into back in discrete mathematics: is there a means of calculating primes non-recursively (i.e. without repeated comparisons/eliminations through smaller numbers). AFAIK, no such formula exists.

14

To: Jab1:

Thanks for fixing the link.

Obviously, we do not want to hijack this thread into another thread. If you are interested in debating the potential scenarios after we reach the world population of 10 billion, let’s start a new thread.

As for a “giant organism”, the amount of data and interactions among people on the Internet is already approaching “giant” proportions. Just imagine what would happen if these interactions become automatic (without using keyboards, voice I/O or screens). What kind of organism are we creating? Recommend you check the recent book by Ray Kurzweil entitled “The age of spiritual machines”. At the end of his book, Kurzweil gives 30 pages of solid and credible references including many scientific web sites to support his arguments.

To: jmullaney: You may also want to check out the Kurzweil book. It could make you realize how much we don’t know.

15

Spiritus Mundi wrote:

<nitpick>

The few organisms whose genetic material does not use the “universal nucleotide code” include some mitochondria and a few prokaryotes. All eukaryotes use the universal code. (For those of you playing along at home, eukaryotes are organisms with cells that have complex organelles and a cell nucleus. All multicellular organisms, including plants and people, are eukaryotes, as are amoebae and paramecia. Prokaryotes, on the other hand, are bacteria; they have no cell nucleus [their DNA is in a loose bundle] and lack most of the organelles found in eukaryotic cells.)

Carry on.

</nitpick>

16

**

What is not understood about the exceptions to the universal code?

What about Fermat’s Little Theorem? When people pick 100-digit primes for the RSA cryptosystem, they pick 100 digit numbers and apply tests like FLT until they find a prime.

-Benn

17

I just finished taking a Neurological Psycholgy course. We are nowhere near understanding the human brain at an atomic level. We haven’t discovered all the neurotransmiters yet or thier receptors. Our understanding of hormonal feedback loops are vauge. Language, emotion, dreams, memory, thought, mental illnesses, the list goes on and on of things we haven’t nailed down in terms of the physical workings of our brain. We have a long way to go. Yes, we seem to know most chemical and physical laws, but this does not mean we understand the human brain yet. If we did, you and I would be taking smart drugs now and downloading our favorite books right into our memory. We don’t even know why most of our antidepressants and medicines work.

18

Satasha wrote:

That sounds like a good pick-up line.

“Hey, baby, what say you and me go back to my place and increase our understanding of our hormonal feedback loops?”

19

You seem to have misunderstood the OP.

Chemically. Unless you are suggesting something outside of the known laws of chemistry is occuring here.

This is a subset of the consciousness question.

This is a subset of singularity/black hole issues, but according to Cecil time travel into the past would totally kibosh our current understanding of how the universe works. The accepted answer is no, and there is no reason to believe any new evidence will demonstrate otherwise.

As I said, there is no GUT yet. But not knowing the cause of something has nothing to do with knowing what laws it obeys. Otherwise, it is turtles, all the way down.

No, the inherently probabilistic nature of quantum theory implies there is no cause.

Find a number. Check if it is prime. If not, add one and repeat. What this has to do with physics and chemistry is anyone’s guess.

Monkey see, monkey do? Or do you mean how data is stored and fetched in the brain? I think the answer you are looking for, again, is chemically.

What’s that thing in tin-foil in the back of my freezer? Who knows? Are you suggesting Minoan violates the physical laws of the universe?

Life began via random chance and in accordance with known chemical laws. There is almost certaintly no way of knowing if it began on this planet – that is a history question.

A subset of the consciousness question.

Spherical. If you are suggesting, more specifically, that we don’t know where every atom in the universe is, again that hardly implies we don’t know what laws under which they act.

No.

Lemur866, I fail to see why computer modeling wouldn’t be able to determine protein structure. Can you provide a link which explains why this problem is intractable?

20

Yes, modeling could work. Except that it would take supercomputers crunching through all the interactions between every functional group on every amino acid. This is a problem that we can state but not solve.

And I disagree with you that we understand gravity. Yes, we have Newton’s equations. But we can’t reconcile quantum mechanics with general (I think it’s general. Or maybe I mean special) relativity. The theories are incompatible. An understanding of gravity will indeed require new physics.

I think what you’re saying is that since we have an understanding of the fundamentals, all new science will be merely working out the particulars of how those fundamentals happen to apply in each particular case. I’m not so sure. That’s like saying that all you need is the alphabet to write Shakespeare. Sure, Shakespeare consists of strings of characters in the latin alphabet. That doesn’t mean that knowing the alphabet means that Shakespeare is a mere corallary.