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?" Forty-five years later, ...

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String theory challenges this by proposing that at the heart of every particle is a tiny, vibrating string-like filament. And, according to the theory, the differences between one particle and another ...

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 ...

Scientists are on the trail of a mysterious five-particle structure that could challenge one of the biggest theories in physics: string theory. This rare particle—never seen before and predicted not ...

At a 1990 conference on cosmology, I asked attendees, who included folks like Stephen Hawking, Michael Turner, James Peebles, Alan Guth and Andrei Linde, to nominate the smartest living physicist.

From growing up in a Kolkata shaped by legends like Satyendra Nath Bose to winning the $3 million Breakthrough Prize, physicist Ashoke Sen reflects on the ideas that transformed string theory. In this ...

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 ...

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 ...

At the turn of the century, it sounded as if string theory could give us big answers about the universe. Well… has it? String theorists, this one may be for you. The theorized object warps spacetime ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. An artist’s rendition of a multibranched network of neurons. Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter from Scientific ...