Seeking the big answers

IT HAS been 17 years since the publication of John Barrow’s Theories of Everything, a noble survey of the philosophical minefield that physicists must brave in their quest for the ultimate answer. Since then we have witnessed the discovery of dark energy and the realisation that there may be a fundamental limit to the amount of information in the universe. Barrow addresses these latest developments in this updated version of his book. While the details may have changed, the big questions remain the same. What might a theory of everything actually look like? What can it – and what…