What are the gods of modern physics?

[Loren Booda]

The Big Bang is like the Old Testament creation from the void, or a Brahma day, whose cycle is 4,300,000,000 years. Quantum physics might be likened to the yin-yang duality, a Pandora's box, or the genie in the bottle. The beauty experienced sometimes while studying physics can seem like a religious epiphany.

What gods have you observed arising from physics like the Phoenix these past hundred years? Do you ascribe any spiritual significance or analogy to the processes of the cosmos? If physics itself can be objectified, who or what is the ultimate Physicist?

Joseph Campbell once said of his computer: "Now I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine. It seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy."

 

[NateTG]

What gods have you observed arising from physics like the Phoenix these past hundred years? Do you ascribe any spiritual significance or analogy to the processes of the cosmos? If physics itself can be objectified, who or what is the ultimate Physicist?

I'm not sure that 'gods' is the right word. Physics seems more like a Bhudist approach where there is no god, but only a desire for enlightenment.

I think that there are commandments like the infamous rules of Thermodynamics or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Similarly, there are 'prophets' like Newton,Einstein and Hawking who are eccentric messengers from the beyond (who are more popularly known than influential figures such as Bohr, Maxwell, or Coulomb.)

There is also a dogmatic belief among physicists that physics explains why things are rather than how they are.

 

[meteor]

Well, if there's somebody that the major part of the people could consider "the" god in physics, then this somebody should be Einstein, because influence, popularity, etc. Spiritual signuficance? Ummm... not sure... But it seems that we humans are always searching happiness, no? In that sense, it strikes me that in most of the pictures Einstein appeared happy, always laughing, somehow like he knew something that the rest of the humanity was ignorant of it

 

[tribdog]

Zeus-Einstein
Bacchus-Feynman
lol, that's about all the old gods I know.
Mercury-Oppenheimer
Venus-Hubble
Mars-Newton
Saturn-Galileo
Pluto-Plato

 

[KingNothing]

I think Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Michio Kaku would definitely be a few. I don't know about any feenixers, but I think those three are probably the best in the last 100 years.

As for the other question, I don't there is an ultimate physics. In fact, I'll go one step further and say that I think it's absolutely ignorant to think there is. It's thousands of years since people began studying physics and there are just as many questions now as there were back then. There was a time when crumbs were thought to be the smallest particles. There's not one shred of evidence to suggest that we are close to a perfect 'physics', or any evidence to even suggest there is one. It defies all history; all logic.

 

[Mk]

The Big Bang is like the Old Testament creation from the void, or a Brahma day, whose cycle is 4,300,000,000 years.

Maybe the Big Bang would be a Brahma Year, of 360 Brahma Days, resulting in 1,555,200,000,000 years, 1.5552 x 10^12, since a Brahma day is 4,320,000,000 years, not 4,300,000,000 years.

 

[Gokul43201]

I think Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Michio Kaku would definitely be a few. I don't know about any feenixers, but I think those three are probably the best in the last 100 years.

This may sound weird, but "What is Michio Kaku's contribution to physics ?"

 

[The_Professional]

This may sound weird, but "What is Michio Kaku's contribution to physics ?"

He invented the time machine

 

[KingNothing]

From what I understand, he is the co-founder of String Field Theory.

 

[tribdog]

just like Al Gore is co-founder of the internet. I agree

actually I have no room to talk. I don't know what Kaku's contributions are and that is one of the first names I think of, when I think. Plus I see his name everytime I get online