williams@kirk.DEC (John Williams 223-3402) (11/26/85)
Personally, I don't see any inconsistency between a unified theory and Godel's Theorem. As a matter of fact, physicists have developed a model which is exactly that. I read it in Science 85, and it concerned superstrings and supersymmetry with a total of nine dimensions, with a feature size of 10^-33 cm. Does anyone know more on this subject? One of striking things that makes Godel's Theorem irrelevent as far as physics goes is that physics is based almost purely on inductive logic, which means that although there is no proof for anything, a unified field theory could be consistently demonstrated. Also, there is no theory that states that there is a limit to feature, meaning that it is essentially possible to have feature throughout scale. As I understand it, the new theories account for alot of the anomalities in quantum mechanics, primarily by allowing time travel. In my opinion ( notice how I qualify this jump in reasoning ), the strings, which are supposed to have zero thickness, probably have some finite thickness, the features of which we still have yet to explore. The effects these strings have on each other are supposedly due to oscillation, and that quantum arises because guage particles are required to be exchanged in phase. I also understand they are planning on building a 20 mi. radius synchrotron accelerator. Again, does anyone know anything about this? John