Few areas of current scientific investigation are as intriguing, contentious, or bizarre as physicists' search for a Grand Unified Theory that would unite all the forces and particles of nature in one coherent mathematical package. Since Einsten's time, this "theory of everything" has become the Holy Grail of physics, and its pursuit has resulted in some of the most extraordinary conceptions in the history of science. In THE SEARCH FOR SUPERSTRINGS, SYMMETRY, AND THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, bestselling science popularized John Gribbin explores the field of particle physics, the most exciting area of research in physics today and the key to uncovering the Grand Unified Theory.

Gribbin offers a clear and concise historical overview of subatomic particles, from the discovery of the electron in 1897 to some of the most exotic and dazzling unification schemes being proposed today. Following a series of major breakthroughs in the 1990s, physicists are not putting together a clearer picture of how subatomic particles work, using the radical theories of "superstrings" - the hypothesis that particles are loops of vibrating "string" - and "supersymmerty." Gribbin guides the reader through these brilliant new models and dazzling research leading up to them, as well as such other concepts as a twenty-six-dimensional universe and virtual particles. Written in clear and accessible prose, THE SEARCH FOR SUPERSTRINGS describes the hundred-year saga of particle physics, culminating in current scientific research that stands on the cusp of radically altering our conception of the universe.