The gauge bosons of the standard model of particle physics are responsible for three of the four known forces in the universe, conveyed through the exchange of virtual bosons. In electromagnetism, the ...

String theory offers a unified framework in which the fundamental constituents of nature are one-dimensional objects whose vibrational modes give rise to particles and forces. By embedding gravity ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Physicists have developed a novel approach to solving one of the most persistent problems in theoretical physics: uniting gravity ...

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, ...

Physicists may have uncovered a surprising new clue that string theory—the idea that the universe is built from unimaginably tiny vibrating strings—could be more than just a mathematical fantasy.

String theory and its extensions propose that the elementary constituents of matter are not point particles but one-dimensional strings whose vibrational modes manifest as observed particles and ...

String theory attempts to unify general relativity and quantum theory. Popular in the 1990s, string theory fell out of favor as it failed to provide testable predictions and required ten dimensions ...

Physicists have put a decades-old idea about why the strange rules of quantum mechanics disappear in our everyday world to one of its toughest experimental tests yet. Deep beneath Italy’s Gran Sasso ...

Using a “bootstrap” approach, researchers show that a small set of assumptions may naturally lead to a string-theory description of certain high-energy processes. Figure 1: “Pulling oneself up by the ...

Recent research shows that gravity and quantum information are deeply connected and that the shape of spacetime can be traced back to the way information is stored in quantum fields. Einstein's theory ...

Let’s talk about quantum gravity experiments that can be done here on Earth! If we discover how to connect quantum mechanics with general relativity we’ll pretty much win physics. There are multiple ...