It’s not an overstatement to describe this situation as a theoretician’s nightmare: the absence of mathematical tools with which to analyze a vital realm that lies beyond experimental accessibility. And since space and time are so thoroughly entwined with this particular inaccessible realm—the origin of the universe—understanding space and time fully requires us to find equations that can cope with the extreme conditions of huge density, energy, and temperature characteristic of the universe’s earliest moments. This is an absolutely essential goal, and one that many physicists believe requires
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