"I hold it a noble task to rescue from oblivion those who deserve to be eternally remembered"- Pliny 

Meet the M-1 Theory 

20th century discovery: the atom- long believed to be the smallest building-blocks of matter - was proven to consist of even smaller componets called protons, neutrons and electrons, which are known as subatomic particles. 

Early 1960-1980's discovery: protons, neutrons and haydrons are themselves made up of smaller particles called quarks. The New Quantum Theory is launched which is the set of rules that describes the interactions of these particles and the new mathematical model of theoretical physics called string theory emerged. It showed how all the particles, and all of the forms of energy in the universe, could be constructed by hypothetical one-dimensional "strings," infinitely small building-blocks that have only the dimension of length, but not height or width. Further, string theory suggested that the universe is made up of multiple dimensions. We are familiar with height, width, and length as three dimensional space, and time gives a total of four observable dimensions. However, string theories supported the possibility of ten dimensions--the remaining 6 of which we can't detect directly. These "strings" vibrate in multiple dimensions, and depending on how they vibrate, they might be seen in 3-dimensional space as matter, light, or gravity.

It is the vibration of the string which determines whether it appears to be matter or energy, and every form of matter or energy is the result of the vibration of strings.

String theory then ran into a problem: another version of the equations was discovered; then another, and then another.