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 ...

In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge. The lecture was called “Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?” Hawking, who later became my ...

Believe it or not, physicists want to keep it simple. That’s why many scientists, including Albert Einstein, believe physics could eventually converge into a single, overarching paradigm that ...

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 ...

Event display in the signal region from data taken in 2018. The pixel tracklet candidate with p T = 1.2 TeV is shown by the red solid line and other inner detector tracks by the thin orange lines.

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 ...

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 ...