From Trial and Error to a Predetermined Path
An animation was displayed on the large screen: five identical little figures, each holding a different weapon, ran in a circle, clockwise. The five figures maintained a fixed distance from each other and ran in the circle at the same speed.
The five little figures began to accelerate, running faster and faster, brandishing their swords, spears, halberds, and forks.
There is dynamic data in the upper right corner of the screen: v=0.000001c0... v=0.0001c0... v=0.001c0...
"C0 represents the speed of light, and v represents the running speed of the little man," Shen Qi explained simultaneously.
As the value of v gets closer and closer to the speed of light, the figures of the five little people gradually blur, and a band of light gradually appears.
When v = 0.99999999...99c0, which is infinitely close to the speed of light, an epic background music, Beethoven's "Fate", plays.
The entire piece, "Fate," is quite long; this selection focuses on the climax of the final movement, where the music is powerful and resonant, conveying a strong sense of struggle.
The PPT's visual effects are impressive, but what attracts physicists even more is the intellectual content that Shen Qi Team conveyed within the cool PPT.
Every physicist has imagined some surreal things, such as the singularity inside a black hole, the properties of space with nine or more dimensions, or time travel.
The hundreds of scholars in the lecture hall spontaneously stood up, their expressions remarkably unified; they were silent, they were fervent.
Accompanied by highly ritualistic music, they once again embarked on their fantasies.
Shen Qi stood quietly in a corner of the stage, letting the PowerPoint presentation run automatically. The hidden star of the day seemed to be this very presentation.
The five little figures in the PPT disappeared as they approached the speed of light, and a black vortex appeared at the center of the light band.
Something emerged from the black vortex, and the guests held their breath.
This thing resembled a human, a god, and a demon all at once; it had a human face, black, rock-like skin, golden wings, and six arms.
It was unclear whether the being emerging from the vortex was a god or a great demon king; this creature had one head, six arms, and a pair of wings, each wielding a weapon.
Xiao Bai, a doctoral student from the School of Physics at the Yanjing University Physics Department, was utterly shocked. He muttered to himself, "This PPT must have been outsourced to an advertising agency for its animation presentation..."
Viewers in the live stream exclaimed in amazement, "This PPT is fucking amazing!"
"This is like watching a movie! The visual effects and background music are amazing!"
"It's been arranged, Professor Shen has arranged it!"
"Is this a new anime?"
"Please provide the code!"
Some people praised it, some called it amazing, and others focused on the key points in the PPT.
The six arms of the god-demon that emerged from the vortex wielded six weapons: a knife, a spear, a sword, a halberd, a trident, and a seemingly real yet illusory... conch shell.
Through the preceding animation, many people noticed that the knife, spear, sword, halberd, and fork were the weapons the five figures possessed before they disappeared. These five weapons represent Type I Superstring Theory, Type IIA Superstring Theory, Type IIB Superstring Theory, Hybrid A, and Hybrid B.
Shen Qi just explained, the five theories contained in M-theory are like the five clones of a martial arts master.
When the five clones reached speeds infinitely close to the speed of light, they merged into their true form—the six-armed demon god.
Why are there six arms instead of ten? Why is there only one head instead of five? Why did an extra conch shell appear out of nowhere? What is the synthesis process of the wings? Does this phenomenon follow the law of conservation of mass?
There's no need to get bogged down in these details, since Shen Qi's conjecture is based on high-dimensional theory.
Amateur science enthusiasts whose thinking is limited to three-dimensional space can only watch the show now, while professional physicists have entered into deeper levels of thinking.
On the large screen, the conch shell held by the six-armed demon god was magnified. Among the many gods and monsters throughout history and across the world, are there any that use conch shells as weapons?
Myths and legends are not important; what matters is this conch shell.
This is not your average grilled conch; it's a unique, academically-designed conch.
The conch shell appears as a twisted spiral. When magnified, physicists and science enthusiasts have discovered that it is not a solid conch shell, but a complex tree network composed of many numbers, letters, and symbols.
The secrets hidden within the academic conch shell have finally been discovered: it contains Newton's laws, Kepler's laws, Coulomb's law, Maxwell's Equations, Theory of Relativity, Quantum Field Theory, Navier-Stokes equations, String Theory, Superstring Theory, M-theory...
"This is... this conch shell is actually the skeleton of the entire physics system, constructed from physical formulas and equations!" Xiao Bai was both shocked and excited. Professor Shen's lecture today was wonderful. In the final stage of the lecture, Professor Shen put forward a new concept that surpassed M-theory and was enough to cause an earthquake in the Physics Community!
Wow!
The hundreds of physicists in the audience gasped in amazement; it was truly one wave after another, one climax after another! The visual and audio effects of this PPT were absolutely stunning, and the academic ideas hidden within were even more inspiring.
After the initial fervor subsided, the scholars quieted down, suppressing their many emotions and eager to hear Shen Qi's further explanation.
"Actually, the arrangement of today's report was a bit unconventional," Shen Qi said with a smile. "I spent a lot of time explaining String Theory and Superstring Theory, and in the end, it turned out to be this conch shell. I hope everyone doesn't find my report's logic too messy?"
The crowd at the scene exclaimed, "No way!"
Shen Qi continued, "That's good, thank you. Ultimately, the ultimate goal of String Theory, Superstring Theory, and M-theory is to form a unified physical theory system, thereby truly explaining the universe and helping humanity to further explore its mysteries. Until this conch shell appeared, our report content had undergone rigorous calculation and analysis. We used a new mathematical framework calculation method to completely solve the stubborn problems in Superstring Theory."
"Of course, there is still one problem to be solved between the Superstring Theory that proves the six-dimensional Kabila conjecture and the five theories in perfecting M-theory. Let's skip this problem for now and boldly predict that all five theories in M-theory are meaningful. They will return to their true form under certain conditions. This true form is located at the upper level of the conch shell and is not far from the ultimate goal of physics."
"We have built this conch-shaped physical framework, and we hope that physics can enter a new research mode, that is, from the trial and error mode to the rehearsal mode." Shen Qi looked at his watch. He had been speaking for four hours straight, and at the end of the report, he finally put forward his explosive physics conjecture.
Since the birth of physics, physicists have been using a trial-and-error approach to study and explore physics. That is, I don't know if the proposition I am studying is correct. If I prove it to be correct through a series of efforts, I will continue to follow this line of thought and enter a deeper research field.
If it is a false proposition, then it proves that this path is not viable, and I have to abandon all my efforts on this research path and choose a new research path to start new research work.
Even now, physicists still use this trial-and-error approach. They follow a fixed mindset: propose a hypothesis, prove the hypothesis, and if the hypothesis is correct, continue. If the hypothesis is wrong, find a new path.
Today, Shen Qi presented a completely new conjecture, outlining the past, present, and future of physics.
If Shen Qi's conjecture is accepted by the world, then physicists will no longer engage in trial and error, but will instead systematically fill in the remaining gaps in physics according to a pre-designed route.
Shen Qi's conjecture can be summarized in one sentence: a qualitative change from random trial and error to a pre-arranged process.
So here's the question: in the physics framework designed by Shen Qi —that is, this conch shell—what is the pit at the very top? This pit represents the ultimate destination of physics.
Physicists are re-examining this conch shell; how beautiful and magnificent it is! It is based on the classical theories of Newton mechanics and electromagnetism, and continues to spiral upwards within Einstein's theoretical framework. Superstring Theory and M-theory are placed at the higher levels of the spiral main line, and the Navier-Stokes equations look more like an important branch.
Following this logic, the subfields above M-theory came into the scholars' view. They stared wide-eyed, astonished to discover that a subfield even more advanced than M-theory had been named by Shen Qi as... Physics of Tomorrow.
Between M-theory and "Tomorrow's Physics," there is a hidden gap. No physical formulas or textual expressions representing this hidden gap can be found; we only know that this gap exists.