The largest-ever survey of physicists found they disagree on some of science’s greatest questions.

Popular understanding of science thinks of the Big Bang as the moment time itself started, but only 20% agreed with that; 68% thought it was just a hot, dense state.

They also disagreed over whether Schrödinger’s cat would really be both alive and dead until we open the box, or whether the universe is constantly splitting in two, and we only find out which universe we are in when we open the box — a plurality thought the former.

And string theory was the leading candidate for uniting physics’ two brilliant but mutually incompatible frameworks, relativity and quantum mechanics, although just 19% backed it.