There is a story in this weeks issue of "The New Yorker" about this surfer dude who has come up with the Holy Grail of Physics: a new Theory Of Everything. I would give you a link to it, but it isn't available online, at least not yet. Maybe later. I don't know what The New Yorker's policy is here.
Anyhoo, if you have any interest in science you have probably heard of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and the theory of Quantum Mechanics (devised apparently by consensus), and you may even be aware that the two theories don't mesh too well and ever since they arrived on the scene people have been looking for a theory that would encompass these two. So it's been a while, and no one has done it. Lots of people have tried, but all theories so far have been found wanting. Super-string theory is the current fave amongst the in-crowd, but it too has it's faults, the main one being that nobody has been able to devise an experiment to test it.
But now we have this 40 year old snowboarder/surfer dude who dropped out of the physics rat race several years ago and has been working on his own pet theory ever since. And now he has written and published some stuff and lots of people in physics world are arguing about it. I like his theory and all I know is that is has 128 points (or is it 256?). The best part is that it is NOT a super-string theory.
Here's a fun video that demonstrates how wonderful this new theory is, though it doesn't really explain anything. I came across this quite a while ago. Since then a lot more people have been listening to Lisi.
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