ba78/1232144258-576705645_97f11dde48.jpgHoly shit.

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.

…

If space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe.

Since the volume of the spherical universe is much bigger than its outer surface, how could this be true? Hogan realised that in order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. “Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry,” says Hogan.

I’m gonna go get drunk now.

23 replies on ““If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.””

  1. It only appears blurry if you’re outside it.

    In other words, drink up. Pan-galactic Gargle Blasters wait for no man.

    And there’s nothing like having your head smashed by a gold brick.

  2. This makes me feel oddly better because if we’re all just holograms, my life isn’t as crushing and sad as it seems – it’s just a hologram of something crushing and sad. Me for the win.

  7. Well, according to quantum theory, the universe IS blurry. Photons passing through two slits at once, cats existing as both alive and dead until observed, etc.

  10. The planck length is pretty damn confusing, for sure. It would be great if our Universe was a mistake by an alien child playing with a Build-Your-Own-Universe Kit, and it’s almost time for lunch, or his big sister is about to come stomping into the room where he’s lying on the floor pushing our galaxies around.

    It would explain a few things about my dating life, for sure.

  11. All states exist at once, life as we know it is an expression of the transition between each of these states and while it appears to be a long stream of being, it is actually a solid moment with no perceivable length from the outside.

    Also, you and I are passive systems that function as gears within a larger system using input to process and expend energy and output it back into the same system. The thoughts you have and the resulting energy are also passed between all other living beings. You have the same thoughts as a cat or Mann Coulter..

    Drink up!

  12. Nar, 5, I’m drunk and it doesn’t make any fucking sense at all. (Keep in mind that I’ve got an hour’s head-start on the rest of you guys thanks to the time difference.)

  13. I rather like the idea that although Bush is not so far away it’s quite possible that in reality he exists on the opposite side of the cosmos.

  21. @ 15

    They weren’t the first, either. Ever since we were sentient enough to reason there have been those of us who question our physical reality, i.e. the Hindu and Buddhist concept of maya. Plus other fun-lovin’ nutjobs throughout history and, I imagine, pre-history.

    Neat!

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