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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Quantum field theory (QFT) remains the cornerstone of our understanding of particle interactions, unifying the principles of quantum mechanics with special relativity by describing particles as ...

Theoretical physicist Lennaert Huiszoon has described a new family of strings in research conducted at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics. He investigated so-called ...

Black holes, the densest objects in the universe, eat up anything that comes too close, even light. Is there anything left inside these behemoths that could reveal what they devoured in the first ...

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 ...