See the serendipitous steps that led from a forgotten mathematical formula to the first glimmerings of strings.

Greene describes the serendipitous steps that led from a forgotten 200-year-old mathematical formula to the first glimmerings of strings — quivering strands of energy whose different vibrations give rise to quarks, electrons, photons and all other elementary particles. Strings are truly tiny — smaller than an atom by the same factor that a tree is smaller than the entire universe. But, as Greene explains, it is possible — for the first time — to combine the laws of the large and the laws of the small into a proposal for a single, harmonious Theory of Everything.