The THEORY of EVERYTHING

Earlier this year physicist Michio Kaku said he thinks we’ll have a theory of everything by 2100. But what would such a theory even look like – and how likely is that to happen?

Physicists have a good understanding of how the universe works at a large scale. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity explains the motion of the planets, the bending of light from distant stars and galaxies and the existence of black holes. We also know what’s going on at a small scale. The Standard Model of particle physics has proved itself over the last few decades with the discoveries of the fundamental particles it predicts.

But there’s a catch. These two theories don’t sit well together. And there are some places – inside a black hole, and right at the beginning of the universe – where physics as we understand it appears to break down altogether. To go deeper and really understand how the universe ticks, physicists want to combine the two theories. But that’s easier said than done.

General relativity says that the cosmos is