Central to their findings is a phenomenon called dark energy. This was discovered in 1998, when astronomers found that the ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. String theory captured the hearts and minds of many physicists decades ago because of a beautiful simplicity. Zoom in far enough on a ...

String theory found its origins in an attempt to understand the nascent experiments revealing the strong nuclear force. Eventually another theory, one based on particles called quarks and force ...

The idea of String Theory is that our Universe came from a higher-dimensional, more symmetric, more complex state with an enormous number of degrees of freedom. In order for String Theory to be solved ...

In this video, we explore the relationship between string theory and quantum field theory (QFT). QFT is a mathematical framework that describes nearly all particles and forces in the universe but ...

Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature's forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better ...

String theory proposes that the fundamental constituents of the universe are one-dimensional “strings” rather than point-like particles. What we perceive as particles are actually vibrations in loops ...

IT IS one of the biggest questions confronting physics: why is our universe the way it is? If some of the fundamental laws were even slightly different, our universe would be a strange and lethal ...

A philandering string theorist is caught with another woman by his wife. “But darling,” he pleads, “I can explain everything!” I didn’t invent the joke; it appeared in the satirical magazine The Onion ...

While the novel theory may never live up to the early hype, its innovative tools have helped scientists for decades, and the best may be yet to come. String theory was once the hottest thing in ...