Years ago, an audacious Fields medalist outlined a sweeping program that, he claimed, could be used to resolve a major ...

Stop. Look around. All things, visible or not, are made of particles so tiny that many find their sizes difficult to comprehend. Far removed from our everyday experiences, they move at rapid speeds ...

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 ...

Imagine you are sitting in a big symphony hall, and you’re listening to an orchestra play for the first time. The orchestra is performing a Violin Concerto by Beethoven. As the soloist runs her hands ...

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 ...

For decades, physicists have been trying to combine quantum physics and general relativity into a single, unified theory. One of the leading contenders is string theory, an elegant vision in which ...

Marika Taylor currently receives funding from EPSRC, STFC, UK government deparments and the European Horizon programme. In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the ...

String theory strutted onto the scene some 30 years ago as perfection itself, a promise of elegant simplicity that would solve knotty problems in fundamental physics—including the notoriously ...

After 60 years, this beautiful theory hasn't produced many tangible results. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Paul M. Sutter is an ...