ORBITER’s recent post about Edward Witten, “The High Priest of Theoretical Physics,” sparked a lot of interest here and some lively conversation on our Facebook page. So we’re just going to blog about Witten, theoretical physics, and string theory from now on . . .

But seriously, we found Natalie Wolchover’s new essay at Quanta a valuable addition to the conversation. Wolchover begins by noting that M-theory is “often described as the leading candidate for the theory of everything in our universe.” But since there’s no empirical evidence for a TOE, Wolchover wonders: “Why, then, is string/M-theory given the edge over the others?”

And she goes on to answer it in a way that theoretical physics geeks (clarification: the geeks are real, the physics are theoretical) will fully appreciate.