Three decades ago, a British documentary series named Connections aired, which showed viewers how various scientific achievements and discoveries were really interrelated, no matter how disparate they ...

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 ...

String theory posits that the universe’s fundamental components are not pointlike particles, but rather one-dimensional vibrating strands of energy called strings. MikeCS Images When asked why he ...

Elise LePage, a Junior Fellow of the Simons Society of Fellows, is a postdoctoral research scientist forging new mathematics driven by string theory. Hatnim Lee/Simons Foundation String theory ...

You may not have heard of knot theory. But take it from Bill Menasco, a knot theorist of 35 years: This field of mathematics, rich in aesthetic beauty and intellectual challenges, has come a long way ...

String theory aims to explain all fundamental forces and particles in the universe—essentially, how the world operates on the smallest scales. Though it has not yet been experimentally verified, work ...

We face a skeletal, triangular pyramid with a platform at the summit; the three vertices are three sets of steps leading up to it, hinting at the history, wonder and timelessness of mathematics before ...

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 ...

Eight decades have passed since physicists realized that the theories of quantum mechanics and gravity don’t fit together, and the puzzle of how to combine the two remains unsolved. In the last few ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. There are a lot of different ways to define science, but perhaps one ...