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OPINION

DECADES LATER, STRING THEORY CONTINUES ITS MARCH TOWARD EINSTEIN’S DREAM


WHY WE MUST KEEP INVESTIGATING PHYSICS’ MOST TANTALIZING THEORY — EVEN WITHOUT
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS.

7 min
676

(Washington Post illustration; David Silverman/Getty Images; Chinese Academy of
Sciences)
By Brian Greene
September 16, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and
director of Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Physics, is the author of “The
Elegant Universe” and “Until the End of Time.”

Forty years ago this month, the physics community was electrified by a
remarkable paper that hinted at the realization of Albert Einstein’s long-held
dream: a unified theory of physical reality. The new approach, called string
theory, captured the attention of researchers worldwide, as its elegant
mathematics offered the potential to reconcile the two most successful yet
conflicting frameworks in physics: Einstein’s general theory of relativity,
which governs the vast structures of the cosmos where gravity rules, and quantum
mechanics, which governs particles populating the subatomic world.




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