The fundamental particles of the universe that physicists have identified—electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and so on—are the "letters" of all matter. Just like their linguistic counterparts, they appear ...

String theory began over 50 years ago as a way to understand the strong nuclear force. Since then, it’s grown to become a theory of everything, capable of explaining the nature of every particle, ...

Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe ...