He is also the host of the wildly successful and popular weekly radio program Science Fantastic. If there is anyone who can demystify the esoteric mathematics and physics of string theory, it is he. And in this wonderful little book, that is precisely what he does—explain in clear and simple terms the conceptual breakthroughs, the blind alleys and the unanswered questions—in the search for a grand unified theory of everything. Most of all, what I like best is that he remains open to the possibility that there may ultimately not be a single unifying theory after all, encoded into a single tidy equation.
The dream to synthesize all known physical forces has been a longstanding challenge; many physicists, including Einstein, have embarked on the pursuit and failed. The four fundamental forces of nature are gravity, electromagnetism, the “weak force” responsible for radioactive decay of some nuclei, and the “strong force” binding the atomic nucleus together.
When Newton discovered the laws of gravity, he accomplished the phenomenal task of connecting the celestial and terrestrial with a universal theory of gravitation that accounted both for a falling apple and the orbit of the Earth around the sun. Subsequently, as physicists uncovered additional fundamental forces in nature—electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force—they set about combining all of them into ever-grander theories.
The dream to synthesize all known physical forces has been a longstanding challenge; many physicists, including Einstein, have embarked on the pursuit and failed. The four fundamental forces of nature are gravity, electromagnetism, the “weak force” responsible for radioactive decay of some nuclei, and the “strong force” binding the atomic nucleus together.
When Newton discovered the laws of gravity, he accomplished the phenomenal task of connecting the celestial and terrestrial with a universal theory of gravitation that accounted both for a falling apple and the orbit of the Earth around the sun. Subsequently, as physicists uncovered additional fundamental forces in nature—electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force—they set about combining all of them into ever-grander theories.
Mr. Kaku traces each of these pivotal moments of unification, describing the key insights that permitted those breakthroughs and bringing us to the precipice, where we currently stand, stymied. The ultimate challenge—to unify gravity and quantum mechanics—is yet to be accomplished. To highlight how momentous unification would be, Mr. Kaku ends the book with a quote from Stephen Hawking: “it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God”—hence, I suppose, the God equation. READ MORE
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