Physics is Incomplete at Every Scale of the Universe

New physics is required to describe unexplained phenomena at every scale of the universe. Cosmological-scale mysteries exist that require new particles, fields, theories, and/or significant changes to existing theories to resolve. Mysteries such as the hypothetical dark matter needed to hold galaxies together and the hypothetical dark energy needed to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe. “Dark” in both contexts means undetectable by any existing scientific instrumentation, definitive evidence that our scientific theories are incomplete. The existence of these dark phenomena has been inferred by comparing existing theories to measurements at the largest scales of the universe. The difference between theory and measurement led to the two dark hypotheses, neither of which has been resolved to this day.

To highlight the magnitude of the shortfall between theory and measurement, note that dark matter and energy represent over 95% of the matter and energy believed to exist in the universe. The scientific community has no idea what dark matter and energy are, and there is active debate about whether either one even exists. The basic problem is neither dark phenomena is detectable by any scientific instruments that exist today. The hypothesis that both exist is based on identifying significant gaps between what our current theories predict and what we can experimentally measure with scientific instruments. In a nut shell this means the entirety of known physics, from quantum physics to astrophysics, describes less than 5% of what physicists believe actually exists in our universe.

At the scales we experience in our everyday lives lie the mysteries of life and mind. The mystery of the mind can be framed by the hard problem of consciousness and illustrated by the absence of a scientific theory to explain how the human brain can possibly create the subjective conscious experiences of the human mind. The incredible complexity of cellular life also defies scientific explanation, as evidenced by the fact that no theories have been developed to explain the origin of life, embryo development, nor how cells communicate and coordinate activity with one another. Consider that scientists have been watching cells divide in their microscopes for centuries, imaging and describing the process in incredible detail. Yet despite having this front-row seat, no theory has been developed to explain how cells can create new life from a collection of non-living molecules using the laws and theories of physics and chemistry. Before we can hope to explain how the first living cells emerged from non-living matter 3 billion years ago, we first need to explain how new cells are created from non-living matter 3 million times every second inside each of our bodies. It is crystal clear that we need new biophysical theories in order to explain both life and mind.

There are also unexplained phenomena at the smallest scales of the universe. While quantum field theory is the most precise and experimentally verified theory in the history of science, it has no explanation whatsoever for the most well-known force of nature, gravity. There are many quantum scale mysteries and paradoxes that lack scientific explanation including double slit experiments, delayed choice experiments, entanglement, wave-particle duality, superposition, Schrodinger’s cat, Wigner’s friend, and more. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem suggests that mathematical models will never provide a full description of reality. The Frauchiger-Renner thought experiment illustrates that one of three core assumptions in the foundations of physics must be wrong. The bottom line is that quantum theory is far from a complete description of the universe at small scales.

One of the more perplexing mysteries is where simple observation of a quantum system causes underlying reality to shift its behavior from an ethereal quantum wave state to a concrete classical physics particle state. This transition is known as “the collapse of the wave function” and attempting to explain it has led physicists to make wild speculations about the fundamental nature of reality, from infinite versions of each of us living in parallel universes, to the moon not existing unless a conscious mind looks at it, to denying that objective reality even exists at all.

Perhaps the biggest problem raised by quantum theory is the complete absence of any causal framework to describe the behavior of matter and energy at quantum scales. It is simply not possible to predict the outcome of any experiment involving quantum scale interactions. Quantum theory only makes predictions that carry probabilities for a range of possible outcomes of experiments, suggesting that our underlying reality is indeterministic. And since everything in the universe is constructed of quantum particles and fields, this explains why causality remains an unproven assumption at every scale of the universe.

Complicating this further is quantum entanglement, an experimentally proven phenomenon that demonstrates that local causation is not built into the fabric of our universe. Local causation refers to two objects that physically interact at a specific location in space and time, where the actions of one object “causes” the other object to alter its behavior in a predictable way. Many entanglement experiments have been performed that show local causation is a myth, that objects in our universe can interact with other objects instantly, regardless of how far apart they may be.

To put this in perspective, imagine a star exploding billions of years ago in a galaxy far far away. The exploding star would emit an enormous amount of “entangled” photon pairs that travel away from the star in opposite directions. Now imagine that one of these entangled photons hits a photoreceptor in the retina of one of your eyes after traveling for billions of years through intergalactic space at the speed of light. The trajectory, spin, and momentum of the photon are suddenly changed when it crashes into your retina and is absorbed. This collision instantly influences the properties of its entangled partner photon that travelled billions of light years from the exploding star in the opposite direction. Quantum theory offers no explanation for how this happens, but it has confirmed that this is indeed the way the universe behaves. Quantum entanglement proves that local causation is a myth, and since everything in the universe is built from quantum fields and particles, causation at every scale of the universe must also be a myth. The best we can do is build mathematical models that “approximately” describe the behavior of matter and energy in the universe.

In summary, significant mysteries exist at the largest scales, smallest scales, and scales of life and mind. Resolving these mysteries will likely require identifying new fundamental properties, particles and/or fields at the quantum scale along with new laws, and/or theories that describe behavior of matter and energy in the universe. Yet before significant progress can be made in developing new science, we must first accept the fact that many of our existing scientific paradigms are largely built on unproven and unstated assumptions. Every major scientific breakthrough over the centuries have always come from challenging the status quo, from objectively assessing evidence absent the unproven metaphysical biases embedded within existing scientific paradigms.