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 ...

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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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 ...

Cosmic strings are artifacts of what the universe looked like in the moments before it rapidly changed from a high-energy to low-energy environment—the Big Bang. Today, scientists believe cosmic ...

Theoretical physicist Lennaert Huiszoon has described a new family of strings in research conducted at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics. He investigated so-called ...