Stone Cold Steve Jobs

*squints eyes**

...I suspect your just saying that it does, and just merely stating its the formula for "Everything."

Surely, one cannot just simply plot a mathemagic sentence to boldly claim "This here proves this here exists, and what it do."

I challenge you, Good Sirs! To explain to my thick skull what this is!

 I should warn you! I am Incredibly Thick.

The main thing is mathematics will not always prove beyond a shadow of a doubt a theory is true. Sometimes they prove the contrary. They key to a theory is it must stand the test of time. But a theory is always a theory and there’s always the chance of an error human or otherwise.

Math does, however, give us an indication of how accurate we are and how confident we should be in our equations. It can be used to “prove” a theory based on our current evidence.

But if you want to get philosophical, can you prove anything exists? I am not much of a philosopher or mathematician but that’s how I see it. Math is essential in guiding us and if we limit our use of it things become less efficient.

For instance, take a light year. A light year is the distance light travels in a year- approximately 9.5 trillion kilometers. That places Proxima Centauri approximately 40 trillion kilometers away from us.

But its easier to say “4.3 light years.”

Basically use math to strengthen your evidence as close to “I’m certain” as you can. 

That’s just how I see it. I think @Duality will be able to set me straight if I am wrong here though.

@Stone Cold Steve Tuna

The latest number I've seen was 4.6% for normal matter, but that was on Wikipedia so it could go either way.

Also, I would absolutely not mind you coming to me with more questions like this. If I ever display signs of minding I'm probably a changeling. 

@Widdershins

This formula don't prove nothing. Maths can only prove abstract statements and science can only prove concrete statements, so this here maths can't prove any concrete statements.

Instead, this darling of a formula here describes the physical universe to more precision than you or I can even remotely conceptualise. In short, if you simulated a universe filled only with particles that precisely obeyed this formula plus a suitable gravitational formula, it would look so exactly like our physical universe in all aspects that you'd need decades of research and colossal particle colliders and/or telescopes to tell the difference (which is of course why we consider it likely to be true in some sense).

The formula is incredibly condensed, though, so you'd also need decades of experience to know what every variable and symbol in this equation actually represents in terms of quantity in order to give the overall thing meaning. All I know is that the bits with W and Z describe the so-called weak field, the bits with g/G (I think) describe the strong field, the bits with the odd lowercase-y lookalike symbol describe the electromagnetic field, and the bits with H describe the Higgs field - and, by extension, those four fields plus gravity/dark matter/dark energy are all that are needed to describe the physical universe on a fundamental level. Fun times with quantum physics.