Apparently good theories don't die easy.
Enter the matrix: the deep law that shapes our reality by NewScientist
SUPPOSE we had a theory that could explain everything.
Not just atoms and quarks but aspects of our everyday lives too. Sound impossible? Perhaps not.
"It really does feel like the ideas of random matrix theory are somehow buried deep in the heart of nature,"
All of this, oddly enough, emerged from an effort to turn physicists' ignorance into an advantage.
The matrix was a neat way to express the many connections between the different rungs. It also allowed Wigner to exploit the powerful mathematics of matrices in order to make predictions about the energy levels.
Bizarrely, he found this simple approach enabled him to work out the likelihood that any one level would have others nearby, in the absence of any real knowledge. Wigner's results, worked out in a few lines of algebra, were far more useful than anyone could have expected, and experiments over the next few years showed a remarkably close fit to his predictions. Why they work, though, remains a mystery even today.
What is most remarkable, though, is how Wigner's idea has been used since then. It can be applied to a host of problems involving many interlinked variables whose connections can be represented as a random matrix.
Such thinking has helped open the mind to developing nanoparticles, atomic energy and vastly improving our understanding of quantum particles.
The list has grown to incredible proportions, ranging from quantum gravity and quantum chromodynamics to the elastic properties of crystals. "The laws emerging from random matrix theory lay claim to universal validity for almost all quantum systems.
"This kind of thinking isn't common in mathematics," he notes. "Mathematicians tend to think that each of their problems has its own special, distinguishing features. But in recent years we have begun to see that problems from diverse areas, often with no discernible connections, all behave in a very similar way."
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