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 ...

String theory aims to explain all fundamental forces and particles in the universe—essentially, how the world operates on the smallest scales. Though it has not yet been experimentally verified, work ...

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 ...

Steve Giddings is a University of California, Santa Barbara string theorist. A provocative branch of physics called string theory might explain everything in the universe, such as how matter came into ...