What is the stuff in the universe made of? Our high-school physics tells us atoms, with 90 natural elements building the world around us. But what are these atoms made of? Over the last century, we've ...

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 ...

Bootstrapping strings Evidence that string theory could be the sole viable “theory of everything” has emerged in a new theoretical study of particle scattering. (Courtesy: iStock/Anadmist) Striking ...

String theory is perhaps the most high-profile candidate for what physicists call a theory of everything – a single mathematical framework capable of describing the entirety of the known universe. The ...

String theory, conceptualized more than 50 years ago as a framework to explain the formation of matter, remains elusive as a "provable" phenomenon. But a team of physicists has now taken a significant ...

String theory began over 50 years ago as a way to understand the strong nuclear force. Since then, it’s grown to become a theory of everything, capable of explaining the nature of every particle, ...

String theory suggests that the most fundamental building blocks of the universe are not particles like electrons or quarks, ...

String theory—the idea that particles are not point-like, but instead one-dimensional strings—is a popular theoretical framework that attempts to combine general relativity and quantum field theory ...