For decades, scientists have taken issue with “string theory” — a theory of the universe which contends that the fundamental forces and matter of nature can be reduced to tiny one-dimensional ...

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 ...

String theory is a purported theory of everything that physicists hope will one day explain … everything. All the forces, all the particles, all the constants, all the things under a single ...

String theory found its origins in an attempt to understand the nascent experiments revealing the strong nuclear force. Eventually another theory, one based on particles called quarks and force ...

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 ...

In this video, we explore the relationship between string theory and quantum field theory (QFT). QFT is a mathematical framework that describes nearly all particles and forces in the universe but ...

String theory is perhaps the most high-profile candidate for what physicists call a theory of everything – a single mathematical framework capable of describing the entirety of the known universe. The ...

All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Gizmodo may earn an affiliate commission. Reading time 7 minutes ...

British physicist Stephen Hawking may claim that extra dimensions provide the key to understanding the "grand design" of the universe, but it's Chinese-American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau who ...

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 ...

At the turn of the century, it sounded as if string theory could give us big answers about the universe. Well… has it? String theorists, this one may be for you. The theorized object warps spacetime ...