1 February 2020 | New Scientist | 35>WHAT IS REALITY
ANYWAY?I
T IS a big and bewildering concept, reality.
An abstract way of saying “everything that
there is”. That is a lot to take in: space, time,
matter, energy, forces, consciousness, even
abstract ideas. How to even start?
Nobel-prizewinning physicist Richard
Feynman once described the quest to
understand reality as a bit like watching a
game of chess without knowing the rules.
By observing the game, we slowly get to
grips with what the pieces are and how they
are allowed to move and interact.
By roughly the middle of the 20th century,
physicists thought they had at least identified
the fundamentals of the game: particles
and quantum fields. The particles made up
the matter and energy around us, and the
quantum fields were responsible for forces,
like electromagnetism, which governed how
they interact. The rules of the game were set
by quantum theory.
This standard model has broadly stood the
test of time. The discovery of its final missing
piece, the Higgs boson, was confirmation that
it is at least on the right track.
And it arguably fulfils at least one
philosophical definition of reality: what
exists and what does it do? According to
philosopher of science Tim Maudlin of New
York University, if you have answered both
these questions, then you have essentially
cracked the problem of reality.
But the standard model is nowhere near a
complete answer. It leaves out many thingsJoin six expert speakers for a mind-melting trip through the
science of reality at our live event in London on 28 March
newscientist.com/events
TISHK
BARZ
ANJI^