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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The idea of String Theory is that our Universe came from a higher-dimensional, more symmetric, more complex state with an enormous number of degrees of freedom. In order for String Theory to be solved ...

In his classic book The Dragons of Eden, astronomer Carl Sagan tidily summarized the central challenge scientists face when they try to formulate grand new theories: “Remarkable claims require ...

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 ...

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 ...

String theory, conceptualized more than 50 years ago as a framework to explain the formation of matter, remains elusive as a "provable" phenomenon. But a team of physicists has now taken a significant ...

IF YOU consider them separately, these two observations are hardly going to set the scientific world on fire. But together they add up to a spectacular possibility. In a tiny region of sky, ...

Researchers are demonstrating that, in certain contexts, string theory is the only consistent theory of quantum gravity. Might this make it true? Thirty years have passed since a pair of physicists, ...

The belief that all physical matter is made up of vibrating "strings." For example, protons, electrons and neutrons are strings each with different vibrations. Officially known as "superstring theory, ...