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This holographic concept could explain a mystery about black holes, but the math may not represent reality.As theoretical physics delves deeper into the fundamental nature of reality, we’re left to grapple with the questions it leaves us. For example, some physicists claim that our universe is merely an illusion, a product of quantum machinations happening in a lower-dimensional setting—in other words, a hologram. Black Holes May Be Evidence The trouble began with those bothersome boogeymen of the cosmos, black holes. On the surface (and careful readers will be rewarded later with the realization that this is a pun), black holes...

Jim Parsons shared on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon that he and husband Todd Spiewak contracted COVID-19 back in March. On Monday night Parsons told Fallon of his experience with the coronavirus. “We didn’t know what it was, we know we had colds and we lost all sense of smell and taste,” the Hollywood actor told Fallon. “It defied the descriptions for me, I didn’t realize how taste and smell could be gone.” After describing his time learning about his diagnosis, Parsons said that he and his partner grieved not being able to taste any of the food at...

Two professors are warning in a new book that TV shows like The Big Bang Theory are emblematic of a worrying trend they call “toxic geek masculinity.” The new book Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling, and Identity Politics was written by Bridget Blodgett, a professor at the University of Maryland, and Anastasia Salter, who teaches classes on digital culture at the University of Central Florida.

Few professional analysts seriously expected six months ago that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination. But after Tuesday night, it is a clear possibility. How much of a possibility? To get that answer right, it is important to understand some things about the Trump phenomenon. Perhaps most important, Trump's campaign is not a Tea Party phenomenon. While there's been a tendency to try to lump Trump in with various G.O.P. insurgencies of the last few years, that role is best filled by Sen. Ted Cruz, who really occupies the "Tea Party lane" of the G.O.P. primary more cleanly. Instead,...

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Among conservatives, Donald Trump can typically do no wrong — until he attacks Ted Cruz. On Saturday, Trump drew boos from a grassroots conservative crowd during remarks at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention for his attack on Cruz's previously undisclosed loans. "You give a campaign contribution to Ted Cruz, you get whatever the hell you want," he said, before boos erupted from the crowd. Trump went on as the boos grew louder: "Say whatever you want, it's okay, he didn't report his bank loans. He's got bank loans from Goldman Sachs, he's got bank...

IF your very candidacy and identity rest on your supposed talent for victory, can you survive a defeat? Can you continue to call yourself a winner if you’ve been a loser — and if “loser” is your favorite way of closing the book on someone, your final word, the workhorse in your brimming lexicon of slurs, exiting your mouth so reflexively that it’s essentially your exhalation, your carbon dioxide: “loser,” “loser,” “loser.” Donald Trump has a problem that the other candidates for the Republican nomination don’t. He’s put an obstacle in his path that they haven’t. He doesn’t merely assert...

As a born-and-raised New Yorker finishing up law school in the Midwest before getting ready to permanently take my oversized cowboy boot collection and Gadsden Flag paraphernalia down to Texas later this year, I want to chime in on the “New York values” feud from last night’s Republican Presidential debate. If you did not see this particular part of the Ted Cruz v. Donald Trump brawl, here you go. The media, being Acela corridor-centric, has naturally tended to take Trump’s side. And yet, as my friend Harry Enten notes at 538, an April 2015 YouGov poll showed that more Republicans...