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Dates: during 1990-1999
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In so doing, Einstein hoped also to resolve the conflict between two competing visions of the universe: the smooth continuum of space-time, where stars and planets reign, as described by his general theory of relativity, and the unseemly jitteriness of the submicroscopic quantum world, where particles hold sway.
Einstein worked hard on the problem, but success eluded him. That was no surprise to his contemporaries, who saw his quest as a quixotic indulgence. They were sure that the greatest of all their colleagues was simply wasting his time, relying on a conceptual approach that was precisely backward. In...
We know now, however, that it is Einstein's theory that ultimately fails. On extremely fine scales, space-time, and thus reality itself, becomes grainy and discontinuous, like a badly overmagnified newspaper photograph. The equations of general relativity simply can't handle such a situation, where the laws of cause...
Einstein could never accept that the universe was at its heart a cosmic crapshoot, so that today his papers on unified field theory seem hopelessly archaic. But the puzzle they tried to solve is utterly fundamental. In simply recognizing the problem, Einstein was so daringly far-sighted that only now...
The trouble is, neither Witten nor anyone else knows how many other pieces must fall into place before scientists succeed in solving this greatest of all puzzles. One major reason, observes Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, is that string theory developed backward. "In most theories, physicists first see an overarching...