Columnist Natalie Wolchover examines the latest developments in the “forever war” over whether string theory can describe the ...

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 ...

Recent theoretical advances continue to uncover profound interconnections between string theory and disparate areas of pure mathematics, notably modular forms, finite groups and vertex operator ...

Visualization of the allowed values of "dial settings" in the scattering amplitudes that describe the probability for particles to interact in the models introduced in this new work. The regions in ...

Recent decades have witnessed remarkable progress in establishing rigorous mathematical frameworks for quantum field theory (QFT), conformal field theory (CFT), quantum gravity and string theory.

For the last 40 years, a dedicated group of theoretical physicists has been beavering away on an ambitious project to create a quantum theory of gravity and unify the four forces of nature. Using ...

A decade ago astrophysicists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ...

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 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 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 ...

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 ...

After the star-studded mystery thriller The Number 23 debuted in cinemas in 2007, many people became convinced that they were seeing the eponymous number everywhere. I was in school at that time, and ...