No meaningful overlap exists between these vastly disparate domains. Or does it? A new paper, published last week in Nature, posits that some of the arcane math of string theory actually helps explain the wiring of a brain’s neurons—as well as the branching of other “physical networks” such as tree limbs, blood vessels and anthills. “The work,” trumpets one institutional press release, “represents the first time string theory ... has successfully described real biological structures.”