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

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.

"When I was growing up, there were local heroes like Satyendra Nath Bose and Meghnad Saha who everyone in Kolkata knew," Professor Ashoke Sen recalls. Today, the 69-year-old is one of India's most ...

Tenets of quantum mechanics and special relativity, among other theoretical ideas, lead inexorably to string theory.

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 ...

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 ...

Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe ...