Our world may be a giant hologram

[nabraxas]

15 January 2009 by Marcus Chown

According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

The "holographic principle" challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.

cherry picked from the full article:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2012....html?full=true

[faustus]

thanks for the article.

anyone read "the holographic universe" by michael talbot? it has some factual errors in it, but is still an interesting read.

[FancyPants]

Atoms are largely comprised of "empty space" where the electrons spin around the nucleus, so the possibility of everything else being simply an illusion of solidarity I guess shouldn't be too surprising.

[devance]

http://www.bautforum.com/space-astronomy-q...y-universe.html

I think the above discussion is a good visual model.

[jalien]

[devance]

And the above.

But science as the new gravity wave detector didn't detect

gravity waves but holograph waves.

Butt, for those that like asses go for taste and smell.

After licking many ass for decades one can be a old expert.

How many is that.

[devance]

For Jalien.

a assusaassicle, just get in touch with your mate.

http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtop...mp;#entry397143