Our world may be a giant hologram

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

by troystribling • 18 years ago

73 27 18 years ago

newscientist.com

IsaacSchlueter• 18 years ago

At first, I thought this was another iteration of the "You can't prove we're not inside a computer" meme, and thought Oh, jezus christ, not again with this bloody tripe.

Turns out, it's actually quite an interesting development.

mlLK2• 18 years ago

You physicists should really read up on your PKD novels. He was onto this years ago.

Eliezer• 18 years ago

I can't even find words to describe how wrong this comment is.

mlLK2• 18 years ago

You either haven't got around to reading his VALIS trilogy or even heard of his last work, Exegesis. While you probably dismiss him as paranoid-schizophrenic or a hack of a sci-fi writer, it is this dismissal for why you can not logical contest this statement. PKD was far from a physicist but more of a mystic, much like Einstein whom was physicist.

rjprins• 18 years ago

As best as I can tell, it says the universe is holographic because all the information on the inside (a volume) is reflected by (or a reflection of) the information on the edge of the universe (a plane). This makes it "holographic" because our 3-dimensional world is also expressed in 2-dimensions.

river_styx• 18 years ago

And the contention is that we can observe this because certain high-precision experiments might be picking up anomalies on the scale of a Planck length, whereas we shouldn't theoretically be able to detect anything so small. Therefore, what we're detecting must be an enlarged projection of what's actually there.

geuis3• 18 years ago

Seems interesting that we're seeing several findings all coming out around the same time that revolve around detecting and using quantum-scale principles. The first is the idea of quantum propulsion that was described in a previous link here on HN, and now this. I wonder, if this pans out as a verifiable way to detect the quantum "foam" of imaginary particles if it could also be used to to detect evidence of the extra microscopic dimensions predicted in string theory.

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

Quantum propulsion?

I missed that one. Got a link?

geuis3• 18 years ago

I read so much stuff I got my sites mixed up. It wasn't here on HN. There were 2 stories I read in the last week that kind of tied together. The first one(can't remember where) was describing a hypothetical way to use the Casimir effect to propel something through space. There was a more detailed story in New Scientist that talks about using metamaterials and the Casimir effect to induce levitation at extremely small scales. The link I made in my mind was between those two stories and a third, which was about artificial gecko feet. The gecko has an extremely powerful grip because its feet have tiny hairs that extend down to the level where they are able to interact with the van der waals force of molecules on something they are touching. I think the stray thought I had was a) we can build metamaterials(think invisibility), b) we can build artifical materials that mimic and work like gecko's feet, c) if you can actually induce the casimir effect and generate propulsion-ish forces then: Make millions of the little microscopic propulsion thingies, attached to structures like the gecko's, scale that up so you have trillions of little propulsors, and you might have some new fangled kind of engine. I'm a web designer, not a physicist. But it sounds cool. =)

geuis3• 18 years ago

And I completely forgot the link, sorry. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12429-three-ways-to-le...

robg• 18 years ago

One of the wildest books I read, maybe ten years ago, is The Holographic Universe.

http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael-Talbot/dp...

It's a quick, interesting read, but also gets unscientific, to me, in second half.

pmarsh• 18 years ago

Yeah, it starts out ok, but then just desolves into a bunch of random ideas and the author saying "See that could be due to a holograhpic universe"

I was expecting a lot more science. Would've been a much better book.

Not to mention if you look up some of the quacks he lists out you'll find most are just charlatans.

rms• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

And printer friendly while I'm at it: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world...

gojomo• 18 years ago

The theory seems to suggest that the universe's 'resolution' will be coarser closer to its center. That's vaguely like the physics of Vernor Vinge's 'Fire Upon The Deep'/'Deepness in the Sky' universe -- where you have to move away from the galactic centers to achieve faster computation and FTL travel.

gnaritas2• 18 years ago

Those are some great books, just finished them a few months ago. I really liked the idea that all the higher life forms actually lived outside the galaxy rather than in it as well as the higher technology that only worked well outside it as well. Go too far into the deep and shit stops working, the speed of light is too limiting.

I do wish there were more about the godlike intelligences that emerge. The godshatter idea was pretty cool too.

awt• 18 years ago

I liked A Deepness in he Sky for its unique perspective on the lifespan of civilizations.

eru• 18 years ago

There is no center of the universe.

mnemonicsloth• 18 years ago

There is, and I occupy it.

rw• 18 years ago

As opposed to a small hologram? :)

FlorinAndrei• 18 years ago

If you break a hologram to pieces, every piece retains the original image.

Sweet, so if you break the Universe... oh wait.

SapphireSun• 18 years ago

Wow. This is a really awesome development! This would change our conception of the universe drastically.

However, I don't really see it impacting our day to day conception of life, because even if we live in a 4 dimensional boundary of a 5 dimensional space, we are still living in the same familiar 3 space plus whatever the 4th is.

Does anyone know if this research group has published yet? I'd like to see the primary source material, and I didn't see a mention of it in the article. I did find this nice link that describes the status of the GEO600 as of 2005 (you may need a subscription):

http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/22/10/009/pdf?ejredirect...

Here is a description of noise in the laser system as of 2007:

http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/25/3/035003/pdf?ejredire...

froo• 18 years ago

[bad humor contained within, you have been warned]

Hmm, so if the universe is one giant sticker on someone's credit card, then I wonder what the credit limit is on that baby - and if they can lend the auto industry a couple billion bucks to waste too

wheels2• 18 years ago

Quote from the article, "No one - including Hogan - is yet claiming that GEO600 has found evidence that we live in a holographic universe."

Cover of the magazine, "YOU ARE A HOLOGRAM".

New Scientist is weird. They're like 90% groovy scientific journalism and 10% shitty tabloid.

dcminter• 18 years ago

Hmm. I would say more like 50/50 these days sadly. Quite a few of the issues over the last couple of years have had borderline crank science articles as the main feature. They also now have lots of dull ID v. Science articles, plus other non-science columns cluttering up the limited space. The amount of space wasted on consciously artistic illustrations of articles for which a damn photograph would be far more informative is also vexing.

I'm thinking of cancelling the subscription and swapping back over to Nature. The content's far less accessible in Nature but more pithy.

wheels2• 18 years ago

Yeah, Nature's great. I really think it's the best general science magazine / journal out there. I feel like they've managed to hit a nice level of accessibility in that if you've got a scientific background you can still get a whole lot of what's in there even if it's in a field you don't know well. I've debated subscribing several times, but can't justify the relatively high cost given the amount that I'd have time to read. I used to religiously read their feature of the week during the years that it was online for download.

Allocator2008• 18 years ago

You know, if this article was trying to say they had found a possible way to verify Ads/Cft correspondence, really, all it had to do was say so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldacena_duality

Our world may be a giant hologram

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