WHAT IS THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING?

What I mean by the theory of everything is a theory which could describe everything, from black holes to big bang; from dark energy and dark matter to us. Now if we begin our conquest to find the theory of everything, we soon start to ask ourselves: What problems do we need our theory to solve in order to gain the title of “THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING”?
To answer this question we need to look back at our thinking towards the universe throughout history.

First lets talk about Newton. Newton was the greatest thinker of the 16th Century. One day he was asleep under an Apple tree, and was suddenly woken up by an apple which had fallen on him from above. There, on that moment he questioned himself, “ What made this apple fall down to earth?” This question led him to formulate the Law of Gravitation. It explained why planets spin around the Sun, why the Moon orbits the Earth and why did the apple fall back on Earth.

People thought this to be the theory of everything as it had explained almost everything that was there to be explained. But they were wrong as it had some major flaws.

This theory could not explain why small things held themselves together as there is not much force between them due to their small mass. He could not explain the motion of Mercury around the Sun as it didn’t follow the Law of Gravitation. So it was not a universal law. Actually, it wasn’t a law at all and had to be discarded.

So if Newton was wrong, then who is right? This question takes us approximately 2 centuries later in time, to Einstein.

Einstein was pure genius, he predicted things that no one could. In 1915, he formulated the theory of general relativity, in which he tried to explain the same force which was gravitation. In his theory he implied that the fourth dimension of space was time itself, and was interwoven into the other three which were length, breadth and height and it made the fabric of space.

He called it the SPACE TIME CONTINUUEM. Now when a heavy -or as a matter of the fact any object- is placed in this space-time fabric, it somewhat bends and warps it. And thus creates a valley in the fabric, which in turn makes the other matter around it come closer to it.

So according to this theory, the Sun warps a lot of space around it and creates a large valley which makes all the planets revolve around it.

This theory has been spectacular in explaining the events of space at a giant scale. But despite its success, the theory failed when it was applied on things which were much smaller such as atoms.

So what really happens at the atomic level? Up until the 19th Century, atoms were thought to be indivisible, as the name suggests ( ‘atom’ means ‘indivisible’ in Greek ). But in late 19th century, scientists found that these indivisible structures were in fact made up of smaller particles and these were named as fundamental particles. In early 20th Century, we came to know that atoms had a structure similar to that of our solar system.

Nearly all of the mass of the atom was present at its centre in the nucleus, which contained the protons and neutrons. Smaller negatively charged particles called electrons revolved around the nucleus. But it doesn’t end here, since by this time, we knew that smashing two nuclei's together could break them apart. By doing so we found out that protons and neutrons were made of smaller particles called ‘quarks’.

Now here things become weird.

As these particles were so small in comparison to light’s wavelength, light passed around these particles without touching them which made them impossible for us to see. So in the Quantum Realm, these particles were not actually points for us, but were a fizzy cloud of influence, where the probability of finding these particles was the most. This means that this place was full of uncertainties. This is the strange theory around which the world of ‘Quantum Mechanics’ is built.

Now both Quantum Mechanics and Relativity have proven themselves tremendously accurate in their respective domains, which are the small and the big respectively. But the issue is, the two theories are not compatible with each other, so they can’t both be right. General Relativity says that objects’ behaviours can be predicted exactly, whereas Quantum Mechanics says all you can know is the probability of their existence in a certain place.

But we need them to work together in places such as the Big Bang and Black holes. So we do need a UNIFIED THEORY or THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING that can combine them. Now what we need to combine both the theories is to add GRAVITY to classic Mechanics which had the other three fundamental forces: ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE, THE STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE AND THE WEAK NUCLEAR FORCE which are carried by photons, w and z bosons respectively in the Quantum World.

In the 1960s one theory came as a major contender: THE STRING THEORY. The concept behind it was oddly simple: all particles instead of being particles were strings, and like the strings of a guitar they had tensions and when they vibrated, they produced different particles. So all the particles were essentially made up of the same strings, but when the string vibrates in a certain way, it produces electron, and when it vibrates the other way it produces something else.

It’s just that these strings are so small that from far they appear to be as points. At first this theory appears strange, but it works really well and the most essential aspect of it is that it combines the three forces with gravity. This is because it contains a particle named GRAVITRON, which has the exact properties scientists were looking for a particle that could carry gravity.

This caused enormous hype among scientists and string theory was quickly promoted as the theory of everything, but this theory comes with strings attached.

This theory needs at minimum ten dimensions to make the math involved consistent instead of working with our four. The reason why we have only heard of four of them is that scientists think that during the Big Bang only our four dimensions expanded and the other six remained so small that we don’t see or feel them. And also the math that supports the theory doesn’t look solid. Because of this and other reasons, scientists so far have resisted accepting it as the Theory of Everything.

So why aren’t we able to prove string theory to be accurate? It has a simple answer: we just don’t know enough. We still don’t know how particles behave in the Quantum Realm; we still don’t know enough math to get rid of those extra dimensions.

But it’s still the only option we have, and its ability to combine all the forces together in one theory gives it a long shot. Even if this theory is wrong, it is still exposing us to some beautiful math and showing us a form of nature we never thought could exist.

More things are to be discovered, and I believe that it would take us another 50 years to find the unified theory and I am sure that we’ll have other contenders in this race in future, but for now I have my faith in string theory.

Related posts:

The modern world relies on time. Management of time governs our lives and decides our fates. When emergencies become the difference between life and death, the art of time management becomes even…

The deplatforming of Alex Jones has me fired up. Why? I was 18 when 9–11, and I then became active in politics. I lived through the lead up to the Iraq War where I saw, and participated in, the…

I was lost in I-can-never-fall-in-love world. I never even intended to come out. But there you were standing outside with a smile and all those little things you probably don’t even care about pulled…