Sublime

as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force, which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.1

The astrophysicist Martin Rees has speculated that somewhere in the universe ‘there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.’ But that cannot be so.

In the twentieth century, scientists identified the elementary building blocks of nature: particles, atoms, and molecules are the constituents of all matter; genes, proteins, and cells are the components of life; bits, codes, and networked systems underpin intelligence and information. In this century we will begin to engineer new realities with

The first fully universal theory – which I shall call the Theory of Everything – will, like all our theories before and after it, be neither perfectly true nor infinitely deep, and so will eventually be superseded. But it will not be superseded through unifications with theories about other subjects, for it will already be a theory of all subjects.

Conditions are still more extreme in the black hole’s interior (within the surface of no return known as the ‘event horizon’), where the very fabric of space and time may be being ripped apart. All this is happening in a relentlessly expanding universe that began about fourteen billion years ago with an all-encompassing explosion, the Big Bang,