Could some observations from a faraway galaxy add up to a refutation of string theory? Researchers who study data from NASA’s Chandra Observatory think so. It’s difficult to prove something’s absence ...

Physicists searching for a better understanding of quantum gravity stumbled upon something unexpected: the defining signatures of string theory.

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 ...

If you could take an apple and break it into smaller and smaller parts, you would find molecules, then atoms, followed by subatomic particles like protons and the quarks and gluons that make them up.

Brian Greene is one of the foremost scientists and science communicators of our time. Greene, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, has been working for decades to advance our understanding ...

String theory proposes that the fundamental constituents of the universe are one-dimensional “strings” rather than point-like particles. What we perceive as particles are actually vibrations in loops ...