Quantum theory and Einstein's theory of general relativity are two of the greatest successes in modern physics. Each works ...

Physicists have spent decades treating mass as something the universe simply hands to particles, a property encoded in ...

An illustration conveying the idea of a space-based quantum internet, which would seem, like the hypothetical particle of a tachyon, to outpace light. An illustration ...

"Dark photon" theory says light's interference patterns may emerge from quantum particles, not waves, upending centuries of physics.

Scientists are on the trail of a mysterious five-particle structure that could challenge one of the biggest theories in physics: string theory. This rare particle—never seen before and predicted not ...

The force we experience most intimately remains the most mysterious. Physicists understand how vast migrations of particles called photons light up our homes, and how swarms of “gluon” particles hold ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: String theory—the idea that particles are not point-like, but instead one-dimensional strings—is a popular theoretical framework that attempts to ...

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, ...

On a quiet pandemic afternoon in 2021, Zhiyuan Wang, then a graduate student at Rice University, was alleviating his boredom by working on a weird mathematical problem. After he found an exotic ...