Theoretical physics

Nima Arkani-Hamed is championing a campaign to build the world’s largest particle collider, even as he pursues a new vision of the laws of nature.

Explore the deepest mysteries at the frontier of fundamental physics, and the most promising ideas put forth to solve them.

At super-low temperatures, a crystal called samarium hexaboride behaves in an unexplained, imagination-stretching way.

By replacing black holes with fuzzballs — dense, star-like objects from string theory — researchers think they can avoid some knotty paradoxes at the edge of physics.

Quantum theorist Christopher Fuchs explains how to solve the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. His price: physics gets personal.

Three physicists have proposed a new solution to one of the deepest mysteries in particle physics: why the Higgs boson has such a tiny mass.

A statistical anomaly in the signal from rare particle decays at the Large Hadron Collider offers hope that new discoveries might be around the corner.

If string theorists can show that their framework is the only consistent theory of quantum gravity, does that make it true even without tangible evidence?

Early in cosmic history, our universe may have bumped into another — a primordial clash that could have left traces in the Big Bang’s afterglow.