## 2 Theories of Something, Everything & Nothing  
A number of models have been suggested for our world. They range from generally accepted to increasingly speculative to outright unacceptable. For the purpose of this work it doesn't matter where you personally draw the line. Many now generally accepted theories have once been regarded as insane, so using the scientific community or general public as a judge is problematic and can lead to endless discussions: for instance, the historic geo\(\leftrightarrow\)heliocentric battle; and the ongoing discussion of whether string theory is a theory of everything or more a theory of nothing. In a sense this paper is about a formal rational criterion to determine whether a model makes sense or not. In order to make the main point of this paper clear, below I will briefly traverse a number of models. Space constraints prevent to explain these models properly, but most of them are commonly known; see e.g. [10,11] for surveys. The presented bogus models help to make clear the necessity of observer localization and hence the importance of this work. **(G) Geocentric model. ** In the well-known geocentric model, the Earth is at the center of the universe and the Sun, the Moon, and all planets and stars move around Earth. The ancient model assumed concentric spheres, but increasing precision in observations and measurements revealed a quite complex geocentric picture with planets moving with variable speed on epicycles. This Ptolemaic system predicted the celestial motions quite well for its time, but was relatively complex in the common sense and in the sense of involving many parameters that had to be fitted experimentally. **(H) Heliocentric model. ** In the modern (later) heliocentric model, the Sun is at the center of the solar system (or universe), with all planets (and stars) moving in ellipses around the Sun. [PERSON] developed a complete model, much simpler than the Ptolemaic system, which interestingly did not offer better predictions initially, but [PERSON]'s refinements ultimately outperformed all geocentric models. The price for this improvement was to expel the observers (humans) from the center of the universe to one out of 8 moving planets. While today this price seems small, historically it was quite high. Indeed we will compute the exact price later. **(E) Effective theories. ** After the celestial mechanics of planets have been understood, ever more complex phenomena could be captured with increasing coverage. [PERSON]'s mechanics unifies celestial and terrestrial gravitational phenomena. When unified with special relativity theory one arrives at [PERSON]'s general relativity, predicting large scale phenomena like black holes and the big bang. On the small scale, electrical and magnetic phenomena are unified by [PERSON]'s equations for electromagnetism. Quantum mechanics and electromagnetism have further been unified to quantum electrodynamics (QED). QED is the most powerful theory ever invented, in terms of precision and coverage of phenomena. It is a theory of all physical and chemical processes, except for radio-activity and gravity. **(P) Standard model of particle physics. ** [PERSON], [PERSON] and [PERSON] extended QED to include weak interactions, responsible for radioactive decay. Together with quantum chromo dynamic [12], which describes the nucleus, this constitutes the current standard model (SM) of particle physics. It describes all known non-gravitational phenomena in our universe. There is no experiment indicating any limitation (precision, coverage). It has about 20 unexplained parameters (mostly masses and coupling constants) that have to be (and are) experimentally determined (although some regularities can be explained [13]). The effective theories of the previous paragraph can be regarded as approximations of SM, hence SM, although founded on a subatomic level, also predicts medium scale phenomena. **(S) String theory.