Aug 052010
 

Perhaps one of my favorite opening paragraphs to a book…

There is a theory in physics that explains, at the deepest level, nearly all of the phenomena that rule our daily lives. It summarizes everything we know about the fundamental structure of matter and energy. It provides a detailed picture of the basic building blocks from which everything is made. It describes the reactions that power the sun and the interactions that cause fluorescent lights to glow. It explains the behavior of light, radio waves, and X rays. It has implications for our understanding of the very first moments of the universe’s existence, and for how matter itself came into being. It surpasses in precision, in universality, in its range of applicability from the very small to the astronomically large, every scientific theory that has ever existed. This theory bears the unassuming name “The Standard Model of Elementary Particles,” or the “Standard Model, for short. I call it “The Theory of Almost Everything.” It is the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement to date.

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