Adapted excerpt from Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, by Sabine Hossenfelder. Copyright © 2018. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books ...

Abstract, mathematically complex and (so far) unsupported by direct experimental evidence, string theory attracts plenty of criticism. Yet it remains an incredibly active area of research, with ...

For more than a century, scientists have wondered why physical structures like blood vessels, neurons, tree branches, and ...

The apparent inability of physics' string theory to be proved right or wrong is one of the stickiest – and argument-generating – problems in modern science. But now researchers at the University of ...

Ever since antiquity, attempts have been made to reduce an apparently complex reality to a few elementary building blocks from which everything else is constructed. This project – now called ...

Imagine you are sitting in a big symphony hall, and you’re listening to an orchestra play for the first time. The orchestra is performing a Violin Concerto by Beethoven. As the soloist runs her hands ...

Researchers at The University of South Carolina, USC, have proposed that a link between string field theory and quantum mechanics does exist. The link assumes that string field theory is a fully ...

The physicist Subir Sachdev borrows tools from string theory to understand the puzzling behavior of superconductors. String theory was devised as a way to unite the laws of quantum mechanics with ...

String theory strutted onto the scene some 30 years ago as perfection itself, a promise of elegant simplicity that would solve knotty problems in fundamental physics—including the notoriously ...

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 ...