Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit ...

String theory's equations give rise to a near infinite variety of potential universes in a 'landscape.' This landscape is surrounded by a 'swampland' of solutions that are incompatible with any ...

80 years ago, Gödel demonstrated that formal systems that can perform math can't generate the certainty we'd like. That hasn't stopped math from helping us understand the natural world.

You may not have heard of knot theory. But take it from Bill Menasco, a knot theorist of 35 years: This field of mathematics, rich in aesthetic beauty and intellectual challenges, has come a long way ...

In October 1984 I arrived at Oxford University, trailing a large steamer trunk containing a couple of changes of clothing and about five dozen textbooks. I had a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in ...

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Mathematicians are exploring a string duality between F-theory and heterotic string theory in eight dimensions. Simply put, string theory is a proposed method of explaining everything. Actually, there ...

After the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in Iceland in 2010, flight cancellations left Miranda Cheng stranded in Paris. While waiting for the ash to clear, Cheng, then a postdoctoral researcher at ...

Some see string theory as the one great hope for a theory of everything. Some see string theory as the one great hope for a theory of everything – that it will unite quantum mechanics and gravity and ...

QUANTA MAGAZINE: You do string theory on so-called K3 surfaces. What are they, and why are they important? MIRANDA CHENG: String theory says there are 10 space-time dimensions. Since we only perceive ...

The existence of parallel universes may seem like something cooked up by science fiction writers, with little relevance to modern theoretical physics. But the idea that we live in a “multiverse” made ...