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 ...

In the instants after the Big Bang, black holes might have formed in the extreme conditions at the birth of our universe. The ...

Physicists have proposed a new model of space-time based on string theory to explain dark energy. Their hypothesis suggests that, at extremely small scales, space and time behave differently from how ...

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 ...

Some celestial bodies are so cold that methane freezes; others are so hot that nuclear reactions occur. And then there’s Earth, with a benign temperature hovering in the narrow range between freezing ...

Or is it that our brains are simply incapable of imagining additional dimensions—dimensions that may turn out to be as real ...

Everything in the universe is made of just one single string. Can you imagine such a thing?This is a concept called "superstring theory." We often hear the name, but what exactly is a string? Not much ...

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 ...

The accelerating expansion of the Universe might not be just an unexplained phenomenon — according to a new proposal by theoretical physicists, it could be a fundamental feature woven into the very ...

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There is a parlor game physics students play: Who was the greater genius? Galileo or Kepler? (Galileo.) Maxwell or Bohr?