String theory is an attempt to unite the two pillars of 20th century physics — quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity — with an overarching framework that can explain all of ...

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.

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of "Your Place in the Universe." Sutter contributed this article ...

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 ...

Physicists may have uncovered a surprising new clue that string theory—the idea that the universe is built from unimaginably tiny vibrating strings—could be more than just a mathematical fantasy.

String theory proposes that the fundamental constituents of the universe are one-dimensional “strings” rather than point-like particles. What we perceive as particles are actually vibrations in loops ...