I am half way through The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology, celebrating Hawking’s 60th birthday, a tome edited by Gibbons, Shellard and Rankin. It is a compilation of formal conference presentations by the leading theoretical physicists who may be described as the main stream of theoretical conjecture, the cream de la cream of academics. While most of it I do not understand, two things seem apparent: The various conjectures fall short of reconciling quantum mechanics, field theory and gravity with relativity. And, there is little if any empirical data to support the conjectures. In contrast, Heim has achieved some experimental support for his; can we call it a theory?

Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton were not the mainstream of theoretical speculation of their day. All were doubted and suffered ostracism for their politically incorrect assertions. They came from obscurity to ultimately to prove their point.

The Heim conjecture has a similar ring of truth, marginalized by the mainstream intelligentsia. --- I recall the Deacon of our church saying we must sell our MACs and buy PCs that Apple would be out of business shortly. I bought AAPL that week. If I were investing in Physicists, I might be tempted to sell Hawking and buy Heim on a hunch.

The following is cut from Wikipedia which journals it well. I am obsessed with the possibility of some insight into the reality of the world we live in and the possibility of actually penetrating the dimensions of Space-Time, which Heim Theory suggests.

Burkhard Heim (February 9, 1925 – January 14, 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. He devoted a large portion of his life to the pursuit of his unified field theory; Heim theory. One of his childhood ambitions was to develop a method of space travel, which contributed to his motivation to find such a theory.

During World War II, Heim was recruited as a soldier in the air force; however, a previous essay about explosives led to him work briefly in a chemical laboratory as an explosives technician instead. An explosion in the laboratory caused by the mishandling of unstable compounds left him with debilitating handicaps. The accident left him without hands, mostly deaf and blind when he was only19. He concentrated on theoretical physics as an escape and means of overcoming pain. His behavior subsequently became eccentric and reclusive. Eventually, he retreated into almost total seclusion, concentrating on developing and refining his theory of everything. His disabilities and brilliance have led some to dub him "the German Hawking"

In 1982 Heim's mass formula was programmed on a computer at DESY with the assistance of some resident scientists. The mass formula accurately predicted the behavior of particles.

Up to this point, Heim had not yet confided in other theoretical physicists the details of his mass formula derivation. Hence, the DESY results were not widely published and disseminated for academic scrutiny. Fortuitously in the same year, Walter Dröscher, a theorist at the Vienna Patent Office, began to work with Heim. The first result of their collaboration cumulated into the second volume of Heim's major work, appearing in 1984. It is almost error-free, in contrast to the first volume which was not reviewed to this extent.

There is debate among physicists as to whether the ideas of Heim achieved his goals. Those who have collaborated with Heim generally believe that he may have succeeded. Most other physicists have not held the theory in as high a regard, primarily because a significant portion of Heim's work had not been published in rigorously peer-reviewed journals. Other factors limiting the acceptance of Heim's theory include its complex mathematical formalism (such as its use of selector calculus), as well as its lengthy nature. In particular, the theory was initially published in German and had notations, which were not in widespread use. For these reasons, Heim's theory has attracted a limited audience and appeal in today's theoretical physics community. As a result, he is not as well known now as most prominent physicists, though in the 1950s and 1960s he was prominent in the media and amongst distinguished physicists.