Recent theoretical advances continue to uncover profound interconnections between string theory and disparate areas of pure mathematics, notably modular forms, finite groups and vertex operator ...

String theory suggests that the most fundamental building blocks of the universe are not particles like electrons or quarks, ...

A decade ago astrophysicists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ...

An illustration of two black holes about to merge and emitting copious gravitational waves. And as the numbers of gravitational-wave observations have increased, physicists’ careful modeling is ...

After the star-studded mystery thriller The Number 23 debuted in cinemas in 2007, many people became convinced that they were seeing the eponymous number everywhere. I was in school at that time, and ...

For the last 40 years, a dedicated group of theoretical physicists has been beavering away on an ambitious project to create a quantum theory of gravity and unify the four forces of nature. Using ...

String theory is perhaps the most high-profile candidate for what physicists call a theory of everything – a single mathematical framework capable of describing the entirety of the known universe. The ...

After the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in Iceland in 2010, flight cancellations left Miranda Cheng stranded in Paris. While waiting for the ash to clear, Cheng, then a postdoctoral researcher at ...