Eight decades have passed since physicists realized that the theories of quantum mechanics and gravity don’t fit together, and the puzzle of how to combine the two remains unsolved. In the last few ...

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 ...

String theory and its extensions propose that the elementary constituents of matter are not point particles but one-dimensional strings whose vibrational modes manifest as observed particles and ...

Researchers are demonstrating that, in certain contexts, string theory is the only consistent theory of quantum gravity. Might this make it true? Thirty years have passed since a pair of physicists, ...

String field theory is a second-quantised framework that recasts the perturbative dynamics of strings in terms of field-theoretic variables on the space of string configurations. By organising ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I just won a bet I made in 2002 with ...

In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge. The lecture was called “Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?” Hawking, who later became my ...

The physicist Subir Sachdev borrows tools from string theory to understand the puzzling behavior of superconductors. String theory was devised as a way to unite the laws of quantum mechanics with ...

Note: For a definition of unfamiliar terms, see our glossary. The fundamental particles of the universe that physicists have identified—electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and so on—are the "letters" of all ...

AS THE bell rings for the final round, both fighters are in their corners. The heavyweight champion is panting, against the ropes. The underdog is sprawled on the opposite side, bruised, tired but ...