  The major advances in physics have been through counterintuitive
breakthroughs-- ideas that seemed to go against prevailing convictions. In the
twentieth century the Special and General Theory of Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics have provided very good examples of this process. However, twentieth
century physics has led to an impasse, one of the most important unsolved
problems being the unification of gravitation with other interactions. This has
led to another sacred tenet of physics, viz., spacetime as a smooth manifold,
being questioned in latest approaches, be it Quantum Super Strings or other
Quantum Gravity and similar theories. In particular spacetime described by an
underpinning of Planck scale oscillators is investigated.
