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String theory is unravelling - it shouldn't monopolise funding

Since the late 1960’s, string theory - which conceives of fundamental particles, such as electrons or quarks, not as point-like objects but rather as minuscule filaments of energy called "strings" - has gained in acceptance among scientists. Initially a marginalised area of study, it has now attracted many of the world's leading quantum physicists. They believe that string theory could provide the answers to some of the biggest remaining questions in physics, revealing what the universe is made of, bringing together the fields of relativity and quantum mechanics, and thereby uniting gravity with the other forces.

Now, after three decades of tireless work on the part of more than a thousand brilliant minds, the question has become more insistent: does string theory actually work?