Will We Ever Prove String Theory?

On this episode

About this episode

For decades, string theory has been hailed as the leading candidate for the theory of everything in our universe. Yet despite its mathematical elegance, the theory still lacks empirical evidence. One of its most intriguing, yet vexing, implications is that if all matter and forces are composed of vibrations of tiny strands of energy, then this allows for a vast landscape of possible universes with different physical properties, varieties of particles and complex spacetimes. How, then, can we possibly pinpoint our own universe within a field of almost infinite possibilities? Since 2005, Cumrun Vafa at MIT has been working to weed out this crowded landscape by identifying which hypothetical…