Many physicists now believe that at a still lower level, matter consists of a network of vibrating strings. For several thousand researchers worldwide, using strings to explain complex phenomena is ...

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 ...

For a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe consisted of a hot soup of elementary particles called quarks and gluons. A few microseconds later, those particles began cooling to ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a ...

String theory is a purported theory of everything that physicists hope will one day explain … everything. All the forces, all the particles, all the constants, all the things under a single ...

Note: For a definition of unfamiliar terms, see our glossary. The fundamental particles of the universe that physicists have identified—electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and so on—are the "letters" of all ...