We have all heard of the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each touches a different part of the elephant and determines the whole animal to be made of the one part they felt. For example, the man who touched the tail decided the whole thing was a rope. The man who touched the ear claimed he was feeling a fan, etc.

Now, imagine us (theoretical physicists) as the blind men and the elephant to be the unified theory of everything.  As Einstein put it, “Nature only shows us the tail of the lion (or the elephant in our analogy). But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.”

Though unlike the blind men in the elephant tale, physicists are starting to realize that the individual pieces of the lion they have each discovered are not the actual lion, itself. This realization has opened our eyes to the idea that we are all fish in a fish bowl, looking at it from a distorted perspective. Each perspective, not technically wrong, is just a piece of the puzzle…

It is actually the astounding physicist and futurist, Michio Kaku, who demonstrates to us the progress of physicists in M-theory through the analogy of the lion.

On his website, lies an informative article about M-theory and its implications:  http://mkaku.org/home/?page_id=262

Michio describes M-theroy as follows:

“Think of the blind men on the trail of the lion. Hearing it race by, they chase after it and desperately grab onto its tail (a one-brane). Hanging onto the tail for dear life, they feel its one- dimensional form and loudly proclaim “It’s a string! It’s a string!” But then one blind man goes beyond the tail and grabs onto the ear of the lion. Feeling a two-dimensional surface (a membrane), the blind man proclaims, “No, it’s really a two-brane!” Then another blind man is able to grab onto the leg of the lion. Sensing a three-dimensional solid, he shouts, “No, you’re both wrong. It’s really a three-brane!” Actually, they are all right. Just as the tail, ear, and leg are different parts of the same lion, the string and various p- branes appear to be different limits of the same theory: M- theory.”

The reason we can tell that each of these theories is a piece of the larger puzzle is due to something called dualities. A duality is where one aspect of one theory overlays with another. For example, magnetism can be explained from both the perspective of quantum physics and relativity. This duality is described very well by the youtube channel, Veritasium:

This video has not much to do with M-theory, it simply shows a perspective-based duality. The bottom line is, perspective-based dualities are what comprise the entirety of M-theory.

So even though you may have no clue what strings, branes, or any of that junk may be (it is okay, I do not quiet get it, yet, either) you can now at least grasp how we can start to assemble a so-called Theory of Everything.