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 ...

Published January 7 in the journal Nature, one paper tackled the age-old problem of nature’s construction with a bit of a twist: it suggests that living networks, like our brain, may use some of the ...

String theory—the idea that particles are not point-like, but instead one-dimensional strings—is a popular theoretical framework that attempts to combine general relativity and quantum field theory ...

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 ...

One of the most striking outcomes of the surface-minimization framework is its ability to explain structural features that ...

String theory began over 50 years ago as a way to understand the strong nuclear force. Since then, it’s grown to become a theory of everything, capable of explaining the nature of every particle, ...

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 ...

Three decades ago, a British documentary series named Connections aired, which showed viewers how various scientific achievements and discoveries were really interrelated, no matter how disparate they ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: String theory—the idea that particles are not point-like, but instead one-dimensional strings—is a popular theoretical framework that attempts to ...