Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit ...

80 years ago, Gödel demonstrated that formal systems that can perform math can't generate the certainty we'd like. That hasn't stopped math from helping us understand the natural world.

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After the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in Iceland in 2010, flight cancellations left Miranda Cheng stranded in Paris. While waiting for the ash to clear, Cheng, then a postdoctoral researcher at ...

You may not have heard of knot theory. But take it from Bill Menasco, a knot theorist of 35 years: This field of mathematics, rich in aesthetic beauty and intellectual challenges, has come a long way ...

Physicists have proposed a new model of space-time based on string theory to explain dark energy. Their hypothesis suggests that, at extremely small scales, space and time behave differently from how ...

In October 1984 I arrived at Oxford University, trailing a large steamer trunk containing a couple of changes of clothing and about five dozen textbooks. I had a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in ...

Imagine a world unified by a single scientific principle, something that can explain life’s greatest mysteries, from the origin of space and time to gravity and smaller matters, like daydreams. Now ...

A new perspective bridges two approaches to understanding quantum gravity. The modern-day theoretical physicist faces a taxing uphill climb. "As we learn more, reality becomes ever more subtle; the ...

QUANTA MAGAZINE: You do string theory on so-called K3 surfaces. What are they, and why are they important? MIRANDA CHENG: String theory says there are 10 space-time dimensions. Since we only perceive ...