From the ancient Greeks first speculated that everything we observe in reality was the result of the interaction of tiny particles called atoms that great thinkers have tried to find a mathematical formula that governs and explains the workings of the universe.
So far, however, even such brilliant minds as Albert Einstein and physicists Stephen Hawking have been unable to reach that large of all single equation, also known as the theory of everything, or the final theory. However, keep trying, because without the final piece of the puzzle that is reality, the sum total of what we know is a little short to make sense.
Perhaps the most famous form of the equation of all that was the physicist Albert Einstein, who spent the last 35 years of his life trying to find a general explanation. Einstein’s theory of general relativity, published in 1916, explained gravity, one of the great forces of the universe, as the curvature of spacetime by matter. But general relativity does not explain electromagnetism, the other major force that is more powerful than gravity.
Einstein was not willing to accept that these two forces had no relationship, and sought a single explanation – a unified field theory – showing how electromagnetism, gravity and spacetime interact. I see in Nature a magnificent structure that must fill a thinking person with a sense of humility, once explained. But despite a series of articles published on his ideas about unified field theory, who died in 1955 without resolving the problem to the satisfaction of other theorists. List of all episodes here: through the hole.
