Is the grand design within our grasp?

More than a decade ago, British physicist Stephen Hawking said there was a 50-50 chance that a unified "theory of everything" would be discovered in 20 years' time. Now Hawking thinks the theory has been found.

Nova / PBSThis is a two-dimensional artistic visualization of a six-dimensional Calabi-Yau shape — an intricately folded knot of space. Such visualizations play a role in conceptualizing M-theory, which physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow say is "the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find." More than a decade ago, British physicist Stephen Hawking said there was a 50-50 chance that a unified "theory of everything" would be discovered in 20 years' time. Now Hawking thinks the theory has been found.
In "The Grand Design," he and co-author Leonard Mlodinow explain why a concept called M-theory offers the only path they can see to understanding the universe's grand design. Hawking got a lot of click traffic earlier this week for his observation that God wasn't needed to explain the origin of the universe. But his claim that "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find" could be, if anything, more scientifically controversial.
"Stephen often overstates the case, and that's fine," ...