It's one of the most brilliant, controversial and unproven ideas in all of physics: string theory. At the heart of string theory is the thread of an idea that's run through physics for centuries, that ...

Scientists are on the trail of a mysterious five-particle structure that could challenge one of the biggest theories in physics: string theory. This rare particle—never seen before and predicted not ...

If you could take an apple and break it into smaller and smaller parts, you would find molecules, then atoms, followed by subatomic particles like protons and the quarks and gluons that make them up.

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 ...

(Phys.org) —Scientists at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, have identified a practical, yet overlooked, test of string theory based on the motions of planets, moons and asteroids, reminiscent of ...

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 ...

String theory has so far failed to live up to its promise as a way to unite gravity and quantum mechanics. At the same time, it has blossomed into one of the most useful sets of tools in science.

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, ...

Physicists who have been roaming the “landscape” of string theory—the space of zillions and zillions of mathematical solutions of the theory, where each solution provides the kinds of equations ...