Albert Einstein is known for his haircut, theories of relativity and belief that “the fact that [the physical world] is comprehensible is a miracle.”
What he meant was that via science, math and our own neurons, humans can deduce physical laws that the universe seems to obey. Those laws explain the phenomena we see around us—bulbs lighting up, hammers coming down or atoms sticking together and splitting apart—and let us predict future events such as the merging of galaxies, explosion of stars or creation of extreme conditions in particle accelerators.
But even with these laws and a lot of expertise, scientists don’t truly comprehend the universe yet—they’re not even close. What is dark matter, the invisible substance that serves as gravitational scaffolding for galaxies, or dark energy, the enigmatic force that powers the accelerating expansion of the universe? Both terms share their common gloom because physicists (and everybody else) are in the dark about whatever’s behind them. But such mysteries only add urgency to the incremental quest for a fuller understanding of what makes the cosmos tick.
Some physicists believe this fuller understanding might involve a “theory of everything” (TOE): a single underlying theoretical framework that governs the universe. Other physicists, meanwhile, don’t believe the universe is quite as comprehensible as Einstein implied, and, in their opinion, this makes the search for a TOE a waste of time.
Both sides agree that humans won’t ever find a theory of everything everything. No matter how successful a TOE might be at explaining the universe from first principles, it is unlikely to ever account for why you prefer extra pickles on your cheeseburgers or have an irrational fear of clowns. When physicists wax poetic (or shake their fists) about a TOE, they mean something very specific. “What they’re talking about is unifying all the forces of nature into a single one,” says physicist Katherine…
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