TIME was when physicists dreamed of a final theory, a perfect set of equations that would describe every force and particle in nature. Today that dream is being overtaken by the suspicion that there is no such thing as a theory of everything (see “Are we nearly there yet?”). Some even fear that all our attempts at a deeper understanding of nature, even string theory, are dead ends.
This will be grist to the mill for those who have long claimed fundamental physics is a waste of time and money. Projects such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which…
