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Theoretical physics
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Joe Polchinski’s Restless Pursuit of Quantum Gravity
The pot-stirring string theorist and quantum gravity theorist never sits still for long.
Eva Silverstein’s Spirals and Strings
Daily bike rides, serendipitous interactions and long periods of solo thinking inspire this string cosmologist.
Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities Are Verboten
Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths about its elusive quantum nature.
Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn, Driving Around Stanford in a Clunky Jeep
The two physicists who introduced Peccei-Quinn symmetry came up with their idea on and around Stanford University’s campus 40 years ago.
The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution
As physicists extend the 19th-century laws of thermodynamics to the quantum realm, they’re rewriting the relationships among energy, entropy and information.
Physicists Attack Math’s $1,000,000 Question
Physicists are attempting to map the distribution of the prime numbers to the energy levels of a particular quantum system.
Quantum Questions Inspire New Math
In order to fully understand the quantum world, we may have to develop a new realm of mathematics.
Inside the Knotty World of ‘Anyon’ Particles
A new class of quantum particle is about to emerge from the tangled considerations of quantum statistics.
Physicists Uncover Geometric ‘Theory Space’
A decades-old method called the “bootstrap” is enabling new discoveries about the geometry underlying all quantum theories.