The laws of physics underlying everyday life are, at one level of description, completely known, and can be summarized in a single elegant—if quite complex—equation. That's the claim physicist Sean Carroll, an SFI Fractal Faculty member and External Professor, makes in a recent paper.
Objects in our everyday world—people, planets, puppies—are made up of atoms and molecules. Atoms and molecules, in turn, are made of elementary particles, interacting via a set of fundamental forces. And these particles and forces are accurately—and completely, Carroll argues—described by the principles of quantum field theory, in a model known as the "Core Theory." All the things we humans experience in our day-to-day lives—the warmth of sunlight, the gravitational pull of the Earth, the kinetic energy required to move our bodies through space—are beholden to and can be explained by Core Theory.
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