Paul M. Sutter
How Supersymmetry Saved String Theory
String theory, like most revolutions, had humble origins. It started all the way back in the 1960’s as an attempt…
Holograms Might Save Physics
Even though the guts of General Relativity are obtusely mathematical, and for decades was relegated to math departments rather than…
Why the Universe Might be a Hologram
A quarter century ago, physicist Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence, an intriguing holographic connection between gravity in a three-dimensional…
The Strangest Coincidence in Physics: The AdS/CFT Correspondence
Attempts to turn string theory into a workable theory of nature have led to the potential conclusion that our universe…
Why String Theory Requires Extra Dimensions
String theory found its origins in an attempt to understand the nascent experiments revealing the strong nuclear force. Eventually another…
The Holographic Secret of Black Holes
As weird as it might sound, black holes appear to be holograms. (more…)
How Black Holes Consume Entropy
Entropy is one of those fearsomely deep concepts that form the core of entire fields of physics (in this case,…
The Origins of the Black Hole Information Paradox
While physics tells us that information can neither be created nor destroyed (if information could be created or destroyed, then…
The Maddening Simplicity of Black Holes
Black holes. The name is said to come from the Black Hole of Calcutta, an infamous prison that you cannot…
Why Even Einstein Couldn’t Unite Physics
Near the end of his life Einstein worked tirelessly to find a way to unite electromagnetism with gravity. He could…