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Scientists Discover String Theory Explains Why Biological Networks Take Their Shape For more than a hundred years, scientists have puzzled over why physical networks — such as blood vessels, neurons, tree branches and biological systems — take the shapes they do. The dominant idea was that nature designs these structures to be as efficient as possible, using the least amount of material . Yet repeated attempts to test this idea using standard mathematical optimization models consistently failed to match reality. Related science and discovery coverage A Shift in Perspective Solves a Century-Old Puzzle The flaw, it seems, was a matter of perspective . Researchers were thinking in one dimension when the problem demanded three . "We were treating these structures like wire diagrams ," explains Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute physicist Xiangyi Meng, PhD . "But they are not thin wires — they are three-dimensional physical objects with surfaces that must joi...