Until recently, string theory — long heralded as a 'theory of everything' — hadn't been particularly good at explaining anything. But at a workshop this month at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical ...

Years ago, an audacious Fields medalist outlined a sweeping program that, he claimed, could be used to resolve a major ...

Albert Einstein famously devoted the later part of his life to seeking a theory that would offer, at least in principle, a comprehensive description of the laws of nature. This ‘unified field theory’, ...

The physicist Subir Sachdev borrows tools from string theory to understand the puzzling behavior of superconductors. String theory was devised as a way to unite the laws of quantum mechanics with ...

But despite its extraordinary popularity among some of the smartest people on the planet, string theory hasn’t been embraced by everyone–and now, nearly 30 years after it made its initial splash, some ...

A central goal that modern physicists share is finding a single theory that can explain the entire universe and unite the forces of nature. The standard model, for example, leaves , , and even gravity ...

Dean Rickles receives funding from the ARC. String theory entered the public arena in 1988 when a BBC radio series Desperately Seeking Superstrings was broadcast. Thanks to good marketing and its ...

String theory attempts to unify all forces and particles in the universe using vibrating strings. It aims to explain the Standard Model of particle physics, which is incomplete. String theory predicts ...

String theory's equations give rise to a near infinite variety of potential universes in a 'landscape.' This landscape is surrounded by a 'swampland' of solutions that are incompatible with any ...

Stop. Look around. All things, visible or not, are made of particles so tiny that many find their sizes difficult to comprehend. Far removed from our everyday experiences, they move at rapid speeds ...

String theory used to get everyone all tied up in knots. Even its practitioners fretted about how complicated it was, while other physicists mocked its lack of experimental predictions. The rest of ...

String theorists are shifting focus to solve some rather sticky problems in physics. Over the past few years, string theory has been less about trying to find a unifying description of all forces and ...