The principle of least time plays an important role in the short story titled "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang, which was made into the alien-encounter movie "Arrival." This principle, elucidated by Bernoulli, Fermat, and others, suggests that, in many cases, the quickest path from A to B is not always a straight line. This VSauce video from almost a decade ago, about brachistochrones, explains:
Imagine my surprise when I saw this Veritasium video, just today, that ties the concept of least time (or really, least action) to something close to a Theory of Everything (TOE):
We're not there yet, and I have real doubts that'd we'd recognize the correctness of a proper TOE even if we crafted it perfectly. How would you confirm it? That lies far beyond my admittedly limited imagination.
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