Physicists looking for a way to test their theory about strings might make more progress if they tangle them up. String theory — equations that aspire to explain all of nature’s particles and forces — ...

String theory, conceptualized more than 50 years ago as a framework to explain the formation of matter, remains elusive as a ...

Recent theoretical advances continue to uncover profound interconnections between string theory and disparate areas of pure mathematics, notably modular forms, finite groups and vertex operator ...

If the World Science Festival's panel on string theory tackled the question of whether the math behind it could be a reliable guide to reality, its panel on the Limits of Understanding seemed to ...

A decade ago astrophysicists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ...

String theory strutted onto the scene some 30 years ago as perfection itself, a promise of elegant simplicity that would solve knotty problems in fundamental physics—including the notoriously ...

In October 1984 I arrived at Oxford University, trailing a large steamer trunk containing a couple of changes of clothing and about five dozen textbooks. I had a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in ...

For the last 40 years, a dedicated group of theoretical physicists has been beavering away on an ambitious project to create a quantum theory of gravity and unify the four forces of nature. Using ...