As someone who has formally studied physics, and has degrees in astronomy and math, I find it impossible to go where science is now going.

1) I don't have the technical training to follow the discussions except at the most superficial, Sunday supplement level.

2) It may already be the case where what we need to know to understand the universe may be beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend, that is, our brains are just not complex enough to deal with the concepts and computations. After all, the mind is a subset of the universe, and therefore, by definition, less complex.

3) We simply don't have the experimental or observational evidence to propose any meaningful, or even testable, theories. We are forced to do nothing but speculate.

4) We may never have that evidence, we may have reached natural barriers to the acquisition of that evidence; i.e., the necessary experiments and observations require apparatus which is not possible to construct due to physical law, or will require capabilities which are forbidden due to violations of physical law, or due to quantum indeterminacy. Physical barriers like the speed of light or the Uncertainty Principle may simply not permit us to make the required measurements.

5) There may be something in physics comparable to the Incompleteness Theorem in Mathematics. Some questions may have no answers because they are not valid questions in the first place.

So what remains, except to plunge into the nonsense of unfounded speculation and pop metaphysics? We are faced with one final reality, one which we can know, and one which we can understand: the reality revealed by our own senses, analyzable by our own reason and open to our own understanding. It may not be all there is to the entire universe, but it is the only part of the universe we have any guaranteed access to. All the rest is shadows.