Imagine you are sitting in a big symphony hall, and you’re listening to an orchestra play for the first time. The orchestra is performing a Violin Concerto by Beethoven. As the soloist runs her hands ...

Columnist Natalie Wolchover examines the latest developments in the “forever war” over whether string theory can describe the ...

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 ...

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?" Forty-five years later, ...

The most celebrated theory in modern physics faces increasing attacks from skeptics who fear it has lured a generation of researchers down an intellectual dead end. In its original, simplified form, ...

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 ...

For decades, scientists have theorized about what lies beyond the third dimension and if there can exist a unified theory to explain all of the workings of the universe. This insurmountable task has ...

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 ...

Long touted as a theory of everything, it seems that string theory may at last succeed as a theory of something very specific — the interactions of particles under the strong nuclear force. You have ...