Theoretical physicists like to ask big questions. How did the universe begin? What are its fundamental constituents? And what are the laws of nature that govern those constituents? If we look back ...

Physicists speak of the world as being made of particles and force fields, but it is not at all clear what particles and force fields actually are in the quantum realm. The world may instead consist ...

A single unifying physics theory can essentially describe how animals of every ilk, from flying insects to fish, get around, researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and ...

For more than a century, gravity has been the stubborn outlier in physics, resisting every attempt to merge Einstein’s smooth space-time with the jittery world of quantum mechanics. A new wave of ...

Jacob A. Barandes is a senior preceptor in physics and associated faculty in philosophy. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. FM: You’re from New York, and you’ve since moved to ...

Bootstrapping strings Evidence that string theory could be the sole viable “theory of everything” has emerged in a new theoretical study of particle scattering. (Courtesy: iStock/Anadmist) Striking ...

String theory has finally made a prediction that can be tested with experiments -- but in a completely unexpected realm of physics. The theory has long been touted as the best hope for a unified ...

A novel computer algorithm, or set of rules, that accurately predicts the orbits of planets in the solar system could be adapted to better predict and control the behavior of the plasma that fuels ...