Well, that was a good afternoon’s read! There are four fundamental forces of physics at work in the universe: the strong (nuclear) force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force.
So far no one has been able to unify the mathematics governing these four forces. It was Albert Einstein that started the search for a ‘theory of everything’ and it was Douglas Adams who said the answer was 42
String Theory is one possible solution. However it is so far untestable and is controversial in some circles. The theory dates in its earliest form to 1968 as described by Gabriele Veneziano at CERN. It is the idea that the fundamental particles of the universe are not point-like dots, but rather tiny elastic strings. String Theory predicts that there are ten dimensions, although we only experience four. Think of it as though we are living in a two dimensional surface like a hologram, which can create a three dimensional space although we cannot experience it. The theory also predicts that there are many multiverses.
Michio Kaku’s book, The God Equation, suggests that it could all boil down to this equation.
L = Φ† [∂−] Φ + Φ† ∗ Φ ∗ Φ
Neither his own explanations nor my understanding of maths can confirm this!
That said, Kaku’s book reads like a thriller, with a lucid history of the discoveries of physics from Newton then Maxwell, Faraday and Einstein, via Dirac and Schrödinger and onto Stephen Hawkins.
Fascinating stuff!