You couldn’t be faulted for thinking that our increasing knowledge of the universe yields only a universe of ever-increasing complexity. It sure looks that way.
An atom, once a promise of fundamental simplicity, is really a nucleus within a cloud of electrons dictated by probability. A nucleus is really some protons and neutrons crushed together by the nuclear force. A proton is really some quarks held together by some gluons, which are themselves really the quantized manifestations of the strong force. A gluon is really one of several “colors” of gluon, but it also has the simultaneous property of anti-color. Gluons mediate the interaction between quarks, but they also mediate the interaction between themselves and quarks.
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(That’s right: Gluons are the strong force, but they also experience the strong force. It’s fucked up.)
It’s the damnedest thing though. Our picture of the universe seems to get more and more crowded, but at the same time, physicists are finding deep simplicity. Here, physicist and Perimeter Institute director Neil Turok offers an hour on the subject for the Institute’s public lecture series. “Simple concepts are the ones that allow us to explain the most we possibly can from the least possible number of assumptions,” he begins. That number may be rather small, as it turns out.
