Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature's forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better ...

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 has long been touted as physicists' best candidate for describing the fundamental nature of the universe, with elementary particles and forces described as vibrations of tiny threads of ...

The idea of String Theory is that our Universe came from a higher-dimensional, more symmetric, more complex state with an enormous number of degrees of freedom. In order for String Theory to be solved ...

Identifying such a particle would directly contradict what current string theory models predict is possible, making the detection of this specific particle family at the LHC a high-stakes test, one ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. String theory is perhaps the most controversial big idea in all of ...

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 ...

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 ...

You may have heard the usual pop psy description of string theory. There are these tiny vibrating strings, and that's where all the force's particles, including gravity, in the entire universe come ...

In his classic book The Dragons of Eden, astronomer Carl Sagan tidily summarized the central challenge scientists face when they try to formulate grand new theories: “Remarkable claims require ...