Could there be a theory of everything?

Science Editor
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

Could there be a theory that describes all of the fundamental laws of nature, a Theory of Everything? Einstein thought so but he never managed to prove it. Mathematical physicist Yang-Hui He guides us through the quest to fulfil Einstein’s dream.

As Albert Einstein lay on his deathbed in 1955, he and some of the visionaries of his time had a dream. It was a dream which Einstein had held for the last decades of his remarkable life: that there should exist a single set of equations, a single principle, which describes the fundamental laws of nature. This Theory of Everything is not as outlandish as it might first seem. By 1698, Isaac Newton had realised that the same equations governed the fall of an apple and the motions of the planets — and thus was born the unified theory of gravitation. Eighty years later, James Clerk Maxwell had established that the same equations dictated the properties of electric and magnetic fields — and thus was born the unified theory of electromagnetism…

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