String Theory

"Natalie Paquette spends her time thinking about how to grow an extra dimension. Start with little circles, scattered across every point in space and time—a curlicue dimension, looped back onto itself. Then shrink those circles down, smaller and smaller, tightening the loop, until a curious transformation occurs: the dimension stops seeming tiny and instead becomes enormous, like when you realize something that looks small and nearby is actually huge and distant."

"Edward Witten has spent almost 50 years at the forefront of theoretical and mathematical physics. Here he describes how the LHC and other recent results have impacted his view on nature, and asks whether naturalness is still a useful guide for the field."

The Strings 2018 conference, which convened international experts and researchers to discuss string theory, took place from June 25–29, 2018, in Okinawa, Japan. The annual international Strings conferences, which have been held every year since 1995...