The God Equation summary

Let’s say you’re riding a train, but not just any old train. This is a special train that can reach the speed of light. Now, imagine that while you're chugging along at top speed, you encounter a beam of light traveling in the same direction as you. If you look out of the window, what do you see?

Well, it depends. According to Newton, since you and the light beam are traveling at the same speed, you’ll both appear motionless to the other. However, Maxwell’s equations give a different answer. They say that the beam wouldn’t appear stationary. Instead, it would move away from you at the speed of light.

In 1910, the physicist Ernest Rutherford put a chunk of radium in a lead box. The container had a small opening which faced a thin sheet of gold. Rutherford expected the radium to fire a beam of radiation through the hole and onto the sheet, creating a pattern.

But, instead of a pattern, there was nothing. The radiation passed right through the gold. As Rutherford continued the experiment, he came to a startling conclusion. Atoms, the building blocks of matter, were not as solid as previously thought. In actuality, they consisted of a tiny nucleus orbited by even tinier electrons. They were mostly empty space.

According to physicists, our universe contains four fundamental forces. First, there’s gravity, the space-time warping effect described by Einstein. Next, there’s electromagnetism, which accounts for the behavior of light and electrons and is detailed by Maxwell’s equations and quantum theory. And finally, there is the strong force, which binds the nuclei of atoms together, and the weak force, which drives their decay.

While these various forces are understood in isolation, scientists believe that each is just one piece of a larger puzzle. To truly grasp the underlying structure of the universe, there must be a theory which unites all these elements into one system, a so-called theory of everything, or God equation.

Let’s take a trip 53 million light-years from Earth. Out here, deep within the center of a galaxy called M87, is a monster. Weighing in at five billion times the mass of the sun, this gargantuan entity has enough gravity to consume anything that comes near.

We are, of course, talking about a black hole. These strange phenomena occur when objects become so massive and so dense that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. The forces present in a black hole are so extreme that even Einstein originally dismissed them as impossible. Yet, we now know the universe is full of them.

For the past century, Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum mechanics have stood side by side. These two fundamental theories are both useful, yet deeply incompatible.

The problem is, combining them requires a particle that carries gravity, called a graviton. Yet, any calculation including a graviton produces meaningless results. The math just doesn’t add up. But, beginning in the late 70s, a handful of scientists took a new approach.

In his later years, Einstein remained a towering intellectual celebrity. Due to his notoriety, he received a constant stream of mail from admirers. Most of the letters didn’t concern physics, though – many just asked if he believed in God.

As it happens, Einstein didn’t believe in the biblical God. That is, he didn’t see God as a benevolent deity concerned with human affairs. But, he did believe in God as described by the philosopher Spinoza. This God is more of an idea. It’s the very concept that the universe has a deep, lasting, and beautiful order.