At the turn of the century, it sounded as if string theory could give us big answers about the universe. Well… has it?

Ever since antiquity, attempts have been made to reduce an apparently complex reality to a few elementary building blocks from which everything else is constructed. This project – now called ...

Stanford math professor Keith Devlin talks about two new books that call into question the entire idea of string theory. The theory states that tiny vibrating strings make up everything, but some ...

Gauge theory and string theory represent two foundational pillars in contemporary theoretical physics, offering profound insights into the nature of fundamental interactions and the structure of the ...

Moduli spaces form the mathematical framework for categorising the diverse solutions characteristic of string theory, providing a systematic means to parameterise the various vacuum configurations ...

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 ...

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 ...

Was the big bang really the beginning of time? or did the universe exist before then? Such a question seemed almost blasphemous only decades ago. Most cosmologists insisted that it simply made no ...

A philandering string theorist is caught with another woman by his wife. “But darling,” he pleads, “I can explain everything!” I didn’t invent the joke; it appeared in the satirical magazine The Onion ...

In string theory, a paradigm shift could be imminent. In June, a team of string theorists published a conjecture which sounded revolutionary: String theory is said to be fundamentally incompatible ...

The “Red String Theory” captivating social media is a belief that an invisible thread connects soul mates destined to meet and fall in love. Originating from Chinese mythology, the theory is fueled by ...