String theory has long been presented as physicists' best candidate for describing the fundamental nature of the Universe. Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century, it became apparent that most ...

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 ...

In 1998, astronomers discovered dark energy. The finding, which transformed our conception of the cosmos, came with a little-known consequence: It threw a wrench into the already daunting task of ...

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, ...

String theory's equations give rise to a near infinite variety of potential universes in a 'landscape.' This landscape is surrounded by a 'swampland' of solutions that are incompatible with any ...

It was mighty quiet in our Universe: devoid of all matter and energy. Then another universe collided with it. Suddenly space became a searing soup of particles and radiation, far hotter and denser ...

Some celestial bodies are so cold that methane freezes; others are so hot that nuclear reactions occur. And then there’s Earth, with a benign temperature hovering in the narrow range between freezing ...

Biological systems are notoriously tough to model, especially when it comes to figuring out the axons, neurons, blood vessels, and other structural components of gray matter, or the tissue that makes ...

String theory found its origins in an attempt to understand the nascent experiments revealing the strong nuclear force. Eventually another theory, one based on particles called quarks and force ...