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 found its origins in an attempt to understand the nascent experiments revealing the strong nuclear force. Eventually another theory, one based on particles called quarks and force ...

The Nature Index 2025 Research Leaders — previously known as Annual Tables — reveal the leading institutions and countries/territories in the natural and health sciences, according to their output in ...

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 ...

Years ago, an audacious Fields medalist outlined a sweeping program that, he claimed, could be used to resolve a major problem in algebraic geometry. Other mathematicians had their doubts. Now he says ...

In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge. The lecture was called “Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?” Hawking, who later became my ...

Visualization of the allowed values of "dial settings" in the scattering amplitudes that describe the probability for particles to interact in the models introduced in this new work. The regions in ...

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 ...