Columnist Natalie Wolchover examines the latest developments in the “forever war” over whether string theory can describe the ...

Children frequently trouble their parents with questions such as: "What is space?" "What is the world made of?" "Can time travel backwards?" "How fast can the fastest thing go?" People who never grow ...

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 ...

On a more serious note, the title of the article says "Requiem". I was expecting it to pronounce String Theory dead, but the conclusion seems a little bit ambiguous. Are people still working at it ...

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 ...

For decades, scientists have taken issue with “string theory” — a theory of the universe which contends that the fundamental forces and matter of nature can be reduced to tiny one-dimensional ...

A theory of everything was all the rage in the 1980s. So where did it go? It is only the optimists who achieve anything in this world—theorist John Ellis once read this adage on a candy wrapper. It ...

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Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to perform one of the first astrophysical tests of string theory. Nicknamed the "theory of everything," string theory is a set of models that ...

It is far worse than that. Most physicists working on string theory don't even care if what they are working on represents reality. What they care about is getting the next paper out the door and ...