WE’VE RUN OUT OF EXPLANATIONS FOR THE UNIVERSE – what’s next?” is the headline on this week’s New Scientist. I bought it in Sainsbury’s in Putney yesterday. The articles inside reveal a commendable honesty, which is reflected in the astonishing headline. The fact is that top physicists today admit they don’t know why the universe began to exist. They have a lot of theories that either don’t work, or they can’t yet find a way of making them all fit with each other, or with Einstein’s discoveries. This is all explained rather well. What is striking is the huge gap between the actual state of research (if interested buy the New Scientist even though it does cost £3.70) and the man in the street, who typically says “Science has solved the problem of why the universe began to exist.”