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.

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 ...

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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 ...

New research from a CU Boulder physicist might break open the mathematical puzzle that has stalled string theory research for decades A University of Colorado Boulder physicist is one step closer to ...

It's one of the most brilliant, controversial and unproven ideas in all of physics: string theory. At the heart of string theory is the thread of an idea that's run through physics for centuries, that ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The problem with string theory, according to some physicists, is that it makes too many universes ...

The magnum opus of particle physics is far from complete, requiring physicists to devise many alternatives—some weirder than ...

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 ...

“Not even wrong” was Wolfgang Pauli’s ultimate put-down for any theory he considered wide of the mark. Here it is adopted by Peter Woit – a mathematician at Columbia University – and aimed at the ...