I hope the following article in not to complicated, I have made every effort to make it easy to understand. If it is too complicated, I apologize.

Will we ever know about all the different forces that control our universe? Scientists have been working toward this goal for hundreds of years and some think that we are getting closer to finding that out. When Newton discovered that an apple fell from a tree because gravity pulled it to Earth, he immediately reckoned that the force that held the Moon in orbit and the planets around the sun was that same force. Ufo buffs are constantly talking about ufos having antigravity engines that are used to travel through out the solar system. If ufos do exist, could this be true? The problem here is that gravity is one of the weakest forces in our universe, we just think it is powerful. So why do we think it is so powerful? Most of us feel this way because we know that without it, we would float off into space. We know that if we fall, we are drawn down by gravity. Both of these assumptions are true. So I must be wrong, gravity must be one of the strongest forces, right? Wrong. If gravity was truly strong, we wouldn't be able to walk upon the Earth, we would be drawn down to it's center. When we fell, we would fall to the center of the Earth. We only think that gravity is a strong force because of the huge mass of the Earth that enables us to stay put. As the mass of an object gets smaller, it is harder to stay on the surface of that object without floating off.

Einstein formulated a theory that he said proved the real reason that planets stay in orbit around the Sun and Moons stay in orbits around planets. He stated that large bodies bend space and time and that the denser the body the more the curvature. According to him, the planets go around the curve and that is what keeps them in place. He did find what he thought was a very interesting fact, that gravity waves travel as fast as light waves and that light was the fastest traveling thing in the universe. According to him, nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. But even Einstein hit a brick wall when he tried to find the common powers between everything in the universe. While he was trying to figure out an "everything" theory, many new discoveries were being made by other physicists and his theory didn't take in to account any of these new discoveries. Einstein was passed by time, the genius that gave us the theory of relativity was finished.

Neils Bohr was a bright young physicist in the time of Einstein. He had a team of other scientists that help him develop the theory of Quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics was nothing like the theory of relativity and if one was to substitute one for the other, it would give ridiculous conclusions. Quantum mechanics deals with the world of atoms and tiny particles while the theory of relativity deals with planets and stars, along with other large objects in space. Quantum mechanics states that there are are forces that are much more powerful than gravity, such as electromagnetic forces, the strong force and the weak force. Atoms are held together by the Strong force, The strong force stops us from falling to the center of the Earth because our atoms hit the atoms of the surface of the Earth. The electromagnetic force is trying to rip atoms apart but the strong force is more powerful and holds them in place. This is also another force involved, that is the weak force. The weak force may be part of a weak electromagnetic reaction. When we measure radiation, the radiation is an example of the weak force. When an interaction takes place and certain particles are involved that enter the interaction, these need not be the same particles kicked out by the weak force.

So how can all these forces, the ones on the atomic level and the ones on the planetary level be explained by one theory? Up to a few years ago, they couldn't. Some people say that they really can't even be explained today, but others think that they have found the relationship between the normal world and the tiny world. Simply put, these people have speculated that minute strings of energy are the basis for all matter. Aptly put, the theory is called the string theory. Some physicists rebel at this thought because they feel that this can never be proved and this is not physics but philosophy and that if something can not be proved, it has no place in physics. Using the string theory causes everything to work together but the string theory presents a very strange universe to us.

String theory states that there are strings floating in space time and that they are under different tensions. So how big is one of these minute strings? It is believed that the average length is 10 to the -33 power, which is near the length scale of Quantum gravity. Converting this to common terms gives us a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter in length for the average string. This is so small that there is no way to currently observe a string and thus all the controversy over the theory. Would we be able to explain the universe if we picked something instead of strings to use, say triangles? We could still say that they were energy and so tiny that they could never be seen. Until we have proof that strings exist it is going to be very hard to convince some scientists that this theory is accurate. Oh yeah, the theory also states that there are far more dimensions than we suspect.

So have we solved the construction of the universe? Only time will tell.