Physicists claim they may have found a long-awaited explanation for dark energy, the mysterious force that's driving the accelerated expansion of the universe, a new preprint study hints. Their ...

String theory attempts to unify all forces and particles in the universe using vibrating strings. It aims to explain the Standard Model of particle physics, which is incomplete. String theory predicts ...

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 ...

In the moments before the Big Bang, our universe was a hot, dense, and extremely high-energy place. That all changed when the universe exploded 13.8 billion years ago. Rapid inflation divided a single ...

String theory's equations give rise to a near infinite variety of potential universes in a 'landscape.' This landscape is surrounded by a 'swampland' of solutions that are incompatible with any ...

But despite its extraordinary popularity among some of the smartest people on the planet, string theory hasn’t been embraced by everyone–and now, nearly 30 years after it made its initial splash, some ...

String theory remains our best candidate for a theory of everything, but where can it be tested? By studying black holes, says Marika Taylor. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named Carolina Figueiredo stumbled onto a massive coincidence. She ...