Geometry is all A shape could describe the cosmos and all it
contains ONE of the mysteries of the universe is why it should
speak the language of mathematics. Numbers and the relationships
between them are, after all, just abstract reasoning. Yet
mathematics has shown itself to be particularly adept at
describing both the contents of the universe and the forces that
act on them. Now comes a paper which argues that one branch of
the subject—geometry—could form the basis of all the laws of
physics. Physicists are an overbearing bunch. They have long
sought a “theory of everything”. Such an opus would unite the
fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism and the two forces
that become apparent only at the atomic scale—with the matter on
which they act, in a single, overarching framework. It would
describe the universe as it existed at the moment of its
creation in the Big Bang. The nearest thing they have to
this—the Standard Model of particle physics—is messy in places
and partial, because it omits gravity. Th