Like Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking hopes for “a complete, consistent, and unified theory of the physical interactions which would describe all possible observations”, a theory for everything.
Sometimes there are contradictions in science’s greatest breakthroughs.
For example, Newton’s theories explained gravity and motion, and Maxwell’s theories explained radiation, but the two could not agree on certain properties of light.
A theory for everything must explain four main forces: gravity, electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force that holds the particles in the nucleus of an atom together, and the weak nuclear force where atoms break down into other particles (radioactivity).
The difficulty scientists are starting to have in proving theories of everything is that the amounts of energy needed for experiments cannot be created on Earth.
These amounts of energy may exist in only one place: the outer reaches of the universe.
