Our world may be a giant hologram

newscientist.com ^ | January 15, 2009 | Marcus Chown

[fieldmarshaldj]

*really weird $hit ping*

[AuH2ORepublican]

I agree; The Great Divorce is one of my favorite books (then again, I like everything that Lewis wrote).

[wolfcreek]

Isn’t the world we now preceive as real enough to deal with?

[Pietro]

Everything in life breaks down

To simple waves of light and sound

[TigersEye]

At this magnification, the fabric of space-time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton.

The Vedas described just that without a specific size comparison. Sub-atomic particles and sub-sub-atomic matter.

[SunkenCiv]

I probably should look for some news that is *actually* about string theory. ;')

[LibWhacker]

Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

Okay, I get it... I'm really just a sticky puddle of quivering sub-atomic particles glommed somewhere onto the 2D surface of the universe's boundary 19 gazillion light years away. I only imagine I exist in this holographic dream world. There's also apparently a one-to-one relationship between what is happening in the immediate vicinity of the quivering puddle and what I think is happening in this dream world.

Bizarre. No, seriously scary stuff because almost anything can happen in the various models of the universe as conceived by physicists the last 20 years or so. Well, not anything, but one of these models is going to turn out to be the right one someday and it's not going to be a nice Einstein-modified, Newtonian universe we've all been hoping for, but some weird, weird, weird, hellacious place.

[Impy]

“Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.”

I don’t know how anyone could ever reach such a conclusion. But it sounds awesome.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Of course, it might explain a lot... My projection is broken.

[NonLinear]

He showed that the physics inside a hypothetical universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking place on the four-dimensional boundary.

Wait a minute!

Last year it was, "In the beginning there were grapefruits, and grapefruits were plentiful." Now it's Pringles.

So which is it? Is the universe fundamentally made of grapefruits, or Pringles???

All this research is making me hungry. I've got to go get a pizza.

[NonLinear]

That finally explains how the big “O” got elected!

[TheOldLady]

bookmark

[Hot Tabasco]

So the Enterprise Holo-Deck was real.

Data, create a holo-deck scenario where there are no more liberals........

[Starfleet Command]

This is actually exceptionally significant. For any physicists in the FR audience:

Bohm is the bomb.

Loop quantum gravity rules, string theory drools.

Many-Worlds is correct.

Gravity is the only force that might transcend the brane barrier.

That is all.

[steve86]

And Luboš Motl’s IQ is over 165 but he doesn’t really get what you just said.

[Starfleet Command]

And Luboš Motl’s IQ is over 165 but he doesn’t really get what you just said.

Oh dear *gawd*. I have yet to overcome my frustration with high IQ's and low wisdom indices (mostly because I have yet to devise anything more quantifiable than my own anecdotal judgmentalism) combined in the same person.

Lubos is Exhibit A.

steve86, consider yourself targeted for quantification ;-)

[Grizzled Bear]

Hologram Ping...

[The Cajun]

Our world may be a giant hologram

Maybe our reality (three spatial dimensions, one temporal dimension) was just a big a$$ quantum fluctuation in 2D space that added distance/time to the works. Maybe that was the "Big Bang". I can buy that more than reality is just a holographic projection.

[Impy]

And right now mine is frozen.

[NutCrackerBoy]

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. -Marcus Chown

That's a load of BS. It is certain that underlying phenomena understood via theories of physics confound our notion of everyday life. That doesn't change anything about how we understand and experience everyday life.