CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Ancient light absorbed by neutral hydrogen atoms could be used to test certain predictions of string theory, say cosmologists at the University of Illinois. Making the measurements, ...

A strange cosmic object described by string theory could be mistaken for an ordinary black hole from far away. If these objects do exist, they could solve a long-standing paradox about black holes.

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 ...

According to big bang theory, for the first 10 - 43 seconds of the universe's life, all the forces of nature existed as one superforce. The universe was all energy, no matter. Physicists call this ...

Remember that time in the Lord of the Rings lore when the dwarves of Moria dug too greedily and too deep, unearthing the Balrog, an ancient horror not meant to roam free in the modern age? Cosmic ...

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.

Since the 1980s, string theory has emerged as the leading candidate for achieving every physicist’s dream: reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics and thereby finding a tidy explanation ...