Status
M-theory is not yet complete, but the underlying structure of the mathematics has been established and is in agreement with all the string theories. Furthermore, it has passed many tests of internal mathematical consistency.
Until some way is found to observe the yet hypothetical higher dimensions, which are needed for consistency reasons, M-theory has a very difficult time making predictions that can be tested in a laboratory. Technologically, it may never be possible for it to be "experimentally confirmed".
Some cosmologists are drawn to M-theory because of its mathematical elegance and relative simplicity. Physicist and author Michio Kaku has remarked that M-theory may present us with a "Theory of Everything" which is so concise that its underlying formula would fit on a T-shirt. Stephen Hawking originally believed that M-theory may be the ultimate theory but later suggested that the search for understanding of mathematics and physics will never be complete.
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in the popular scientific book The Grand Design, take a philosophical position to support a view of the universe as a multiverse, and define it in the book as model-dependent realism which along with a sum over histories approach (see Path integral formulation of Quantum mechanics) to the universe as a whole, is used to claim that M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe.
Read more about this topic: Introduction To M-theory
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Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
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—Alison Clarke-Stewart (20th century)