"There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case." -Albert Einstein
"If you go through a lot of hammers each month, I don't think it necessarily means you're a hard worker. It may just mean that you have a lot to learn about proper hammer maintenance." -Jack Handey
The most common type of question I get asked by people genuinely wanting to know more about the Universe goes something like, "Hey, I saw such-and-such-a-story about some fanciful-sounding-theory, and that could be the explanation for this-weird-thing-that-we-see. What do you think about that?"
Well, here's the thing.
"I soon became convinced. that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the Universe really consists of." -Fritz Zwicky
You very likely know that there are four fundamental forces in the Universe: gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. While only some particles experience the nuclear and electromagnetic forces, anything with mass or energy which is everything we know of is subject to gravity.
“Supposedly she’d died, but here she was again–somewhat changed, but you couldn’t kill her. Not when the truest part of her hadn’t even been born.” -Denis Johnson
Over the past 100 years, our picture of the Universe has changed dramatically, on both the largest scales and the smallest.