Theory of everything

A theory of everything (TOE) is a theory of theoretical physics and mathematics that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena. Initially, the term was used with an ironic connotation to refer to various overgeneralized theories. For example, a great-grandfather of Ijon Tichy — a character from a cycle of Stanis?aw Lem's science fiction stories of 1960s — was known to work on "General Theory of Everything" (Polish: "Ogólna Teoria Wszystkiego"). Over time, the term stuck in popularizations of quantum physics to describe a theory that would unify the theories of the four fundamental interactions of nature.

Related Topics:
Theoretical physics - Ijon Tichy - Stanis?aw Lem - Science fiction - Polish - Quantum physics - Fundamental interaction

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There have been numerous theories of everything proposed by theoretical physicists over the last century, but as yet none has been able to stand up to experimental scrutiny or there is tremendous difficulty in getting the theories to produce even experimentally testable results. The primary problem in producing a TOE is that quantum mechanics and general relativity have radically different descriptions of the universe, and the obvious ways of combining the two lead quickly to the renormalization problem in which the theory does not give finite results for experimentally testable quantities.

Related Topics:
Quantum mechanics - General relativity - Universe - Renormalization

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