The Universe As Hologram 532
Several readers sent in news of theoretical work bolstering the proposition that the universe may be a hologram. The story begins at the German experiment GEO600, a laser inteferometer looking for gravity waves. For years, researchers there have been locating and eliminating sources of interference and noise from the experiment (they have not yet seen a gravity wave). For months they have been puzzling over a source of noise they could not explain. Then Craig Hogan, a Fermilab physicist, approached them with a possible answer: that GEO600 may have stumbled upon a fundamental limit where space-time stops behaving like a smooth continuum and instead dissolves into "grains." The "holographic principle" suggests that the universe at small scales would be "blurry," its smallest features far larger than Planck scale, and possibly accessible to current technology such as the GEO600. The holographic principle, if borne out, could help distinguish among competing theories of quantum gravity, but "We think it's at least a year too early to get excited," the lead GEO600 scientist said.
Alrighty then (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Alrighty then (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need glasses to view a hologram. Unlike a stereoscopic film with two almost identical pictures, a transmission hologram (we learned about it in an undergrad physics class in college) is a single image that looks like nothing but an interference pattern, which is exactly what it is. When laser light is passed through a lens so that it is not a straight narrow beam, but gets wider as it gets more distant, the image appears in true 3-D on the film. If you move to the side you can see around objects in the picture.
To make one of these, you need two lasers and a large photographic film. One laser is shined on the subject and the other at the film, and it records the interference between the two lasers.
Of course, if you're nearsighted you'll need glasses to see it clearly. Or maybe contact lenses. If you have serious stabismus (crossed eyes) or are blind in one eye or for some other medical reason can't see stereoscopically, 3-D movies are no different than normal 2-D movies, but holograms are still in 3-D.
There are excellent holograms at the museum of magic and witchcraft in San Fransisco (if it's still there; I visited in the early 70s). There are also holograms at Disney World, most notably in the Haunted Mansion. There is a stereoscopic movie using polarized glasses at Epcot.
I saw a New Scientist article on the "universe may be a hologram" last week, but I think some theorists are misunderstanding what they're seeing (or reporters are misunderstanding what the theorists are saying).
Of course, our "reality" may not in fact be real. It may well be a videogame and you paid good money (or what passes for money in the real reality) to play (whoever dies with the most stuff loses), or it may be punishment for some horrible crime you commited in the real universe.
Or Morpheus may simply be looking for Neo. Or Geordi may be enjoying himself and you'll disappear when he says "end program".
Don't panic (Score:5, Interesting)
I hear Nvidia is updating the universes GPU and soon we will get less grains. Mac Users will be able to switch between GPU, one with faster performance and shorter lifespan and one grainier but longer lasting.
it is interesting to note that the universe is mainly built out of second order laws. This means that in many cases there are a small number of poles or zeros that can control macroscopic behaviour and often analytic solutions exist. This would be how a desiginer would do it. given a choice one chooses a qaudradic over a 6th order polynomial since an anytic solution to the zeros exits.
Likewise when things in a game are not observed you don't keep maintaining them. You just recreate them when needed. That is you keep the wireframe but don't texturize it till it is on screen. This is analgous to the way in QM the details are not predictcable till you look, and when you do the details of other things not simultaneously observed can change at a distance.
simmilarly in optics resolution behaves the way it does in video games. pixelation means that the farther something is away the less resolved it appears. There is constant angular resoltuion not spatial.
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Funny)
To say that certain aspects of the universe can be modeled using elegant mathematics, and that this implies a designer is a non sequitor. If I was God, I would have used 6th order equations, all the way down, just to show how awesome at math I was.
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Funny)
If I was God, I would have used 6th order equations, all the way down, just to show how awesome at math I was.
What's wrong with the turtles?
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What's wrong with the turtles?
Turtles can't do algebra.
But they can do geometry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_graphics [wikipedia.org]
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Interesting)
This is analgous to the way in QM the details are not predictcable till you look, and when you do the details of other things not simultaneously observed can change at a distance.
See http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/05/collapse-postul.html [overcomingbias.com]
Back when people didn't know about macroscopic decoherence aka many-worlds - before it occurred to anyone that the laws deduced with such precision for microscopic physics, might apply universally at all levels - what did people think was going on?
The initial reasoning seems to have gone something like:
to
to
Read literally, this implies that knowledge itself - or even conscious awareness - causes the collapse. Which was in fact the form of the theory put forth by Werner Heisenberg!
[...]
If collapse actually worked the way its adherents say it does, it would be:
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For instance, it's not like a particle might have some particular momentum and velocity, but somehow the universe is just being lazy about deciding their values. Rather, the notion of having a definite momentum and definite position is contradictory.
QM is much weirder than you think.
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So it's not necessarily that reality is fuzzy and indistinct, more that our knowledge of it is limited.
This is a popular and comforting notion that has long been dis-proved by empirical evidence: the double slit experiment is the classic example that shows that a particle is fuzzy, it's not just our knowledge of it. Heck, this even the point of the cat in a box. Schroedinger didn't say that the cat's state was indeterminable, he said it was in an indeterminate state.
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it is interesting to note that the universe is mainly built out of second order laws. This means that in many cases there are a small number of poles or zeros that can control macroscopic behaviour and often analytic solutions exist. This would be how a designer would do it.
Nope. It is just that scientists use simple models like harmonic oscillator for most systems, simply because they are easy to solve. That doesn't mean that the universe is 'built' from second order laws. The rest of your post is also similar misinterpretations of QM, optics etc
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Exactly. The intelligent designer concept is only working if you can't think 'til the next step:
1 Where is that designer?
2 What is he in?
3 Who created the designer?
4 Who created, whatever the designer is in?
5 GOTO 1
Here is a better explaination (Score:3, Funny)
Did that clear things up?
Re:Don't panic (Score:4, Funny)
Evolution.
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explain please how an entity can design itself. Just because what you typed reads like valid english, doesn't make it a profound truth. In your case, you're just blabbering nonsense.
Does this mean ... (Score:3, Funny)
And so... (Score:4, Funny)
The small anti-counterfeiting patch on my MasterCard could be...
One tiny little universe.
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If you cut it in half, do you get two half-assed universes? (I know it renders the card invalid, at least when you try to use it in person, or it should.)
Re:Does this mean ... (Score:5, Funny)
That we're all living on a small anti-counterfeiting patch on God's MasterCard?
You know He's omnipresent, right? God doesn't use MasterCard. He uses Visa since it's everywhere He wants to be.
Oh, my. Sorry. That was really bad.
Re:Does this mean ... (Score:5, Funny)
Plato (Score:3, Insightful)
Was in Plato who suggested that people were only seeing a shadow of reality and it was up to philosophers to see the reality and describe it to the masses? It has been years since I studied philosophy, but I seem to recall something like this. I also seem to recall one of his lesser-known disciples, Aristotle discounting this altogether and starting his own school of thought.
Amazing how things come full circle.
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Actually this isn't a bad tie in.
Plato wasn't discussing human perception as in each person's perception is different but that we only see a shadow of truth.
If we're living 'in a hologram' where we are unable to perceive an extra dimension that exists and affects us, then is it really that different from Plato's example?
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
And as for the comments below about the distinction between philosophy and physics, both Descartes and Newton were considered philosophers. Most contemporary philosophy, though, relies heavily on the natural sciences to support or confute philosophical theories. Philosophy of mind works with cognitive science, philosophy of language with various natural sciences, and metaphysics with chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc... I prefer Wittgenstein's definition of philosophy from the Tractatus. He calls philosophy an "activity" that is meant to sharpen and hone the critical thinking necessary in scientific inquiry. There are many cases where philosophical theories have been supported by scientific investigation just as many have been thrown out because certain scientific hypotheses do not support them.
Re:Plato (Score:4, Informative)
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Mixing philosophy and physics is actually a good idea.
Philosophy is actually a good study for the mind, it actually helps you to see other options.
If you can Philosophically ask yourself what if everything I know is wrong, then how might the universe behave to match my perceptions, without following what I expect to be true.
Sometimes Science comes up with an answer that fits that available data, which is actually incorrect. Which is normally found by finding new data that the original answer doesn't work. H
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Physics is a subset of philosophy.
No, it's really not.
If you can't tie them together, you've missed something.
What you're missing is the fundamental difference between philosophy and science (including physics.) Philosophy starts with axioms. Science starts with observations. From there on out, the logical reasoning processes of philosophers and scientists are very similar, but the fact that axioms are not subject to modification based on observation makes the results of the fields entirely different.
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
In science, our assumptions are based on experimentation.
Not true. Several assumptions have to be made before experimentation is possible. The scientifc method itself is an assumption.
Re:Plato (Score:4, Informative)
How the hell does
Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
get modded insightful 3??? It isn't insightful, it's an avoidance of the question being asked. Even if you read into the comment meaning that isn't there, but might reasonably be thought to have been intended, it still isn't insightful. Sheesh.
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How the hell does
Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
get modded insightful 3??? It isn't insightful, it's an avoidance of the question being asked. Even if you read into the comment meaning that isn't there, but might reasonably be thought to have been intended, it still isn't insightful. Sheesh.
I suppose maybe because it's an acknowledgment, however unsubtly expressed, that there's a degree of impracticality inherent in the notion of questioning fundamental principles of our existence and universe that doesn't really help the advancement of hard science. For instance, questions such as whether or not the universe actually exists, or whether I'm the only real being in the universe and all of you are illusions or very clever algorithms don't have much practical application when you get right down t
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
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Science starts with the proposition that the Universe is rational and can be observed in a rational and repeatable manner.
This is not so much a "proposition" as it is the baseline, default, common-sense observation based on our own experiences. I pick up the rock, I drop it, the rock falls to the ground. I pick it up and drop it again, and again it falls to the ground. Etc. We learn this from infancy, long before either "science" or "philosophy" enter our heads. Everything else -- all the layers of mys
No, it doesn't. (Score:5, Informative)
No it doesn't. Science intentionally limits itself to that which can be observed and tested in a rational manner. Science does not and cannot say that the Universe is actually like that. Some philosophers say that, most scientists say that, and all athiests say that, but Science itself does not make that assumption.
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
Philosophy starts with axioms. Science starts with observations.
No, science starts with the acceptance of the scientific method as a way to determine the "truth". It presupposes the accuracy of our senses, the non-arbitrariness of the universe, and even the notion that there is an external universe to study at all.
While many philosophic systems rest on axioms, those axioms are not arbitrary. They are invented, or discovered, because they logically explain the experiences of the philosopher. Philosophers use the scientific method to determine the axioms which underlie their systems. Without philosophy, there would be no way to argue that the scientific method was valid at all.
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No, science starts with the acceptance of the scientific method as a way to determine the "truth".
When you say "the scientific method," you're sweeping under the rug a whole collection of methods, all of which have been tested and modified for centuries, many of which have been discarded along the way when something better comes along, and which vary greatly from field to field. IOW, there is no "scientific method" -- there is a collection of methods generally agreed upon by scientists as the result of lon
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When you say "the scientific method," you're sweeping under the rug a whole collection of methods, all of which have been tested and modified for centuries, many of which have been discarded along the way when something better comes along, and which vary greatly from field to field.
How can the scientific method be tested and modified without some external framework in which to value them? How can you evaluate which method is "better" without some way to rank them? To do this, you need a philosophical underpinning to make that value judgment.
As I replied to another poster in the thread, this is the default assumption based on our experiences from infancy, and there is no reason to assume otherwise.
Just because it is the default assumption, doesn't mean its correct. Should we be limited in all our endeavors, to the basic and oversimplified infantile way of thinking? Are you saying its not even worth thinking about?
Philosophers' axioms may make sense to them and to people who think like them, but they fail in general applicability.
I don't know what it is you
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You can test the scientific method with the scientific method.
You sure can. But, it seems a little circular. If you trust the scientific method to tell you whether the scientific method is valid or not, you probably should trust it for physical sciences. I don't see how that really confirms anything.
Easy. Which process yields the most useful results? Rank them accordingly.
That's called pragmatism. Its a school of philosophy. See that? You just used philosophy to determine how you should go about doing science. See, its not so scary.
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No, science starts with the acceptance of the scientific method as a way to determine the "truth". It presupposes the accuracy of our senses, the non-arbitrariness of the universe, and even the notion that there is an external universe to study at all.
No it doesn't. The accuracy of our senses is a conclusion we reach after many repeated observations that yield the same result. In fact, science has shown that in many cases our senses aren't accurate.
Further, science would work just as well if the universe
Re:Plato (Score:4, Insightful)
Physics is a subset of philosophy.
No, it's really not.
Yes, it really is. There's a reason that almost all nonmedical doctorate degrees carry the same title: Doctor of Philosophy. In its highest form, all human knowledge is similar--it requires human thought, and as such is inherently philosophy.
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Doctoral degrees carry the title "PhD" as a result of a historical artifact. That's all. "Bachelor" and "Master" are equally artifactual.
If you define all human thought as philosophy, then the word is so broad as to be meaningless. What do you call that field which is practiced by the people we generally call "philosophers?"
Re:Plato (Score:5, Funny)
What do you call that field which is practiced by the people we generally call "philosophers?"
I think the current parlance is "food preparation technicians."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Science starts with the axiom that something objectively exists to observe. It further presupposes both causality and (except for some of the most out-there interpretations of the quantum world) locality.
Try as you might to avoid it, you need axioms. Without a few basic assumptions about our world, you end up with solipsism.
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That basic assumption of science, as I've explained elsewhere in this thread, is our default view of the world, based on our experiences from the moment we're born. Any other assumption, such as the non-observability or non-causality, is an extraordinary claim which needs to be backed up by some pretty solid evidence -- something which philosophers and other mystics are notoriously unwilling to provide.
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying "We basically experience the world as it really exists" amounts to one pretty serious assumption, whether or not you want to call it that.
Re:Plato (Score:5, Informative)
Science as we know it today was pretty much invented by Sir Francis Bacon, a philosopher. It unifies large swaths of epistemology and ontology, thereby rendering much of the field of philosophy entirely obsolete. That the vast majority of so-called philosophers haven't figured this out after 400+ years is one of my largest peeves with academia because, as a direct result of their masturbatory inertia, philosophy has been pushed into an intellectual corner.
So I don't blame you for not understanding that all science is properly a subset of philosophy. Most philosophy professors I've met don't really understand that either. :(
Re:Plato (Score:4, Insightful)
While I won't argue with you that science was largely invented by philosophers (and of course I agree entirely that it has rendered large swathes of previously philosophy obsolete) I disagree entirely that this historical curiosity makes it a subset of philosophy. Like many intellectual fields, it's grown far beyond its roots. By way of analogy, modern science is no more a subset of philosophy than modern literature is a subset of epic poetry.
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
Physics is a subset of philosophy.
No, it's really not.
I hate to be so blunt, but you don't know what you are talking about. Until very recently, science was called natural philosophy. All the sciences have their origins in philosophy, and anyone who ignores this does so at their own peril (and shows their ignorance of both science and philosophy).
I say peril because it is easy to take empirical science for granted. Empiricism is an epistemological position that must be defended, and to ignore the fact that science is a branch of philosophy is to forget how fundamental epistemological assumptions are to science.
Knowledge in science doesn't just happen. You don't observe theories or laws, and even observation itself is tricky. To say that science is about observation is to be way too glib about science. Science is much, much more complicated than that, and deserves much more respect and reflection than you give it.
You see, most philosophers understand that. Many scientists don't. Even fewer nonscientists understand it.
I don't say any of this to belittle science; I am a scientist. I say it because science is much more complicated than "observation," and seeing it as a proper branch of philosophy recognizes that.
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Until very recently, science was called natural philosophy.
And now it's not.
All the sciences have their origins in philosophy, and anyone who ignores this does so at their own peril (and shows their ignorance of both science and philosophy).
The historical roots really aren't the point; as I pointed out to another poster in the thread, many intellectual fields have outgrown their roots, and modern science is no more a subset of philosophy than modern literature is a subset of epic poetry.
I'd be rather carefu
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
Until very recently, science was called natural philosophy.
And now it's not.
You missed the point. I wasn't making the claim that just because it was called "natural philosophy" that means science is philosophy. My point was that you should think about the REASONS why it was called natural philosophy. Who cares what we call it now?
Observation is not the core of any science. Although observation is important, it is not a sufficient condition for science. To understand science, you have to understand how theories are built and defended. We don't OBSERVE the laws of motion. We don't observe natural selection. We don't observe relativity. These are theories to explain observations. How we go from observation to real, meaty scientific knowledge is where the real interesting part is, and that requires philosophy. You can't just take it for granted because it "works" (after all, that would be circular, wouldn't it?)
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably doesn't matter in this forum which definition you use; what matters most on the internet is that the other guy is wrong. (And if you think I'm talking about you, I'm not. It's the other guy who's actually wrong. We are right-on here. Yes sir! Go us. we rock.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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That got hijacked by the neocons:
people were only seeing a shadow of reality and it was up to politicians to see the reality and describe it to the masses?
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Nothing has come full circle, as this idea hasn't been confirmed by rigorous experimentation.
Re:Plato (Score:5, Insightful)
> Amazing how things come full circle.
If by a 'full circle' you mean that you are able to identify one of the millions of ideas from the past that has, when interpreted in a certain way, certain superficial similarities with a theory in modern physics, then yes, amazing!
Re:Plato (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would they need to? There were "experiments" going on all the time in the ancient world, just as there are in refrigerators all over the planet today. A piece of food would get left somewhere, and when it was found again, it would be covered with mold, maggots and flies. It was obvious.
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Bose-Einstein condensates? Superfluids? Amorphous solids? There's at least a dozen states of matter.
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Let's see if it's true... (Score:4, Funny)
Nope, not a hologram.
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"Computer, arch"
Nope, not a hologram.
Who said you had access rights?
"Computer, end simulation."
Always wanted to be a BOFH.
Re:Let's see if it's true... (Score:4, Funny)
Or the Holodeck is just broken.
Again.
Re:Let's see if it's true... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what would have been awesome? If we had discovered that the universe is really a holodeck simulation when the actor playing Moriarty in that episode said the line "Computer, arch" and an arch really did appear there in the studio. It just would have been so meta.
Obligatory Star Trek Reference. (Score:2, Funny)
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Of course they can't.
The only way to get out is to complete the program. As anything else the Holodeck will interfere with all and only technology used for getting them out. After the program completes everything starts working fine again, so no need to fix it.
So... (Score:4, Funny)
There is no spoon?
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Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
[checks calendar] No, it's not April yet... that settles it then -- we must be living on a giant potato chip! Precisely the type of universe one would expect a Flying Spaghetti Monster to design!
Okay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Translating dense physics-speak is not my forte, but as I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong -- here goes. Einstein said that gravity is a linear (not discrete) force. What that means is that while it might decrease over distance, the effect never truly becomes zero. I think these guys are saying that it does, in fact, become zero. That is, gravity, contrary to Einstein's relativity equations... is discrete, like a particle, and not all like a wave (that can continue forever). Is that about right?
Re:Okay... (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds like a credible description of Quantum Gravity, or rather the big question of quantum gravity, namely, IS gravity a continuous force or is it quantized? Nobody knows if "gravitons" exist.
The issue in this article is that these discontinuous "blurry" fluctuations are much (much much much) larger than a planck length, and this agrees with the assumptions of the so-called holographic principle, and this experiment may not be picking up gravitons so much as it's detecting the blurryness you would expect from a 2-dimensional hologram projected into 3-space. Since the 2-dimensional "horizon" of the universe can only encode information on the scale of a planck length, thus the projection in 3-space within is going to have a much lower information density. I think. I'm not a physicist...
This is all, of course, impossible. [wikipedia.org]
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It's more of a fundamental statement about the nature of horizons of any kind - whether that be the event horizon of a black hole, the horizon around an accelerating observer caused by the Unruh effect [wikipedia.org], or the horizon formed by the limit of the observable Universe. Any horizon implies that the information is constrained by the area of that horizon, and therefore whatever is inside the horizon must be specified by the exact same amount of information, which means things must be fuzzier than just plain quantu
Re:Okay... (Score:5, Informative)
You might be right, but your explanation is not what I understood from the article (but translating dense physics-speak isn't my forte either;-)). What I understood from it is that they've still not been able to measure gravity waves, so we still don't know if gravity behaves like a particle or not. What they're saying, is that space and time might be grainy, and even more grainy than was previously thought and possibly even so grainy that it renders our current attempt of measuring gravity waves futile.
So it's not about gravity being discrete, it's about space and time being discrete, which shows up as a jitter-like noise in the gravity-wave measuring experiment.
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So it's not about gravity being discrete, it's about space and time being discrete, which shows up as a jitter-like noise in the gravity-wave measuring experiment.
So the universe isn't actually analog at all...It's digital. It just looks analog to us due to all the anti-aliasing.
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GR works great at the macroscopic level, but is lousy at the subatomic level, which is pretty much what you'd expect whether space/time was quantized or continuous. The scale of GR is so fantastically large compared to the granularity, that everything is essentially continuous. In GR, space/time is indeed curved and one of the huge problems with QM gravity is that it cannot be reconciled with GR gravity at the present time. The reconciliation of the two is considered essential for a Grand Unified Theory to
Anti-science (Score:2, Interesting)
Does this sound to anyone a little like the argument for intelligent design? "We can't explain why animals are the way they are because an intelligent creator that we don't understand has made them this way," to me sounds a lot like "We've gotten to the highest possible resolution of the nanoscale universe, because it's a hologram and that's it's highest resolution. It's okay that we can't see what we want to see, because it's not actually there."
I'm not a physicist so I might be missing the real testable
Re:Anti-science (Score:5, Insightful)
"Elements" are called elements because EARLY chemistry believed that all things were made up of a combination of elements in nature (earth, fire, water, etc). Of course over the years this was refined, and then refined again, and then once again refined some more. Atomic theory has come a LONG way from the expectation that all things were made out of the "elements of nature" through these constant refinements and NOT finding what we expected to find.
Re:Anti-science (Score:5, Interesting)
The deeper we look the more layers we find. It's like finding out that your Commodore-64 is really an 8086-PC emulating the C64, but that the 8086 is really a 286 emulating the 8086. But the 286 is really a 386 emulating a 286, which is really a Pentium emulating a 386 emulating a 286 emulating a 8086 emulating a C64, and new evidence suggests that the Pentium is being emulated also.
God, knock it off already! It's not funny anymore.
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"Elements" are called elements because EARLY chemistry believed that all things were made up of a combination of elements in nature (earth, fire, water, etc).
Their four elements were earth, wind, fire, and water. I believe we simply misunderstand the ancients. The four "elements" weren't elements as we know them (hydrogen, helium, etc) but the four states of matter: solid, gaseous, plasma, and liquid.
Of course, they misunderstood the universe. But of course we do, too, although we misunderstand it less and
Re:Anti-science (Score:4, Informative)
> Does this sound to anyone a little like the argument for intelligent design?
No.
Take a look at one of the earlier papers on the holographic hypothesis here [arxiv.org]. It comes about, not because some physicist has simply thought "what happens if the universe is a giant hologram". It's implicit, in an incredibly surprising and beautiful way, in general relativity, a well tested physical model.
Hints can also been seen in a bunch of other independent physical results like the Bekenstein bound [wikipedia.org] which point towards the 'granularity' of the 2D surface.
Nobody's copping out. People aren't even making up that much new stuff. They're working out the details of what's already contained within existing (and in some cases, well tested) physical theories.
It's probably worth remembering that for every press release made by a physics department there are probably years of work and thought by multiple physicists.
Holograms! (Score:3, Funny)
This just in, Red Dwarf's Rimmer and Voyager's doctor upset, complain of "hologram of a hologram" prejudice.
Flatland! (Score:5, Informative)
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Indeed! while Flatland turns out to be more of a social commentary than a scientific one (as many good sci-fi books eventually mature into), the physical concept that Spaceland is merely a 3D projection of 2D information is very interesting.
This is not the first time noise in an experiment [wikipedia.org] led to a groundbreaking discovery (if this indeed turns out to be one). Kudos to the scientists - often times the compulsive search for signal obscures the importance of noise.
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Re:Flatland! (Score:4, Informative)
Or download:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/97
They found the Matrix? (Score:2)
If the 3-dimensional universe is actually a 2-dimensional hologram, then maybe the whole thing is stored in RAM in some computer?
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Having said that, allow me to point out that if the universe has a resolution limit, then it is effectively "pixellated". One thing that produces pixellation effects is digitization. Therefore it is possible that the pixellation we observe in the universe is caused because it is digital in nature.
Actually, anytime you record anything it becomes "pixelated", although sometimes other terms are used. The exception of course being when you know the actual formula and inputs used to generate the original in which case you can merely store the formula and inputs and then recreate the original at any point from that.
Take for instance a picture of something (for now assume we're using a traditional film camera and not a digital one). Generally we don't notice because our senses aren't that fine, but even
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
"A Year Too Early?" (Score:5, Funny)
Screw that! I'm getting drunk NOW!
Woohoo!
Perhaps the ancients had it right ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I, for one, welcome our new Matrix overlords, and will be on the holodeck if you need me.
Black holes (Score:3, Interesting)
This theory was stimulated by research suggesting the information about a collapsed star is stored in quantum fluctuations of the black hole's horizon. However, when applied to the universe as a whole, to quote the NewScientist article: "the cosmos has a horizon too - the boundary from beyond which light has not had time to reach us in the 13.7-billion-year lifespan of the universe." I had some questions resulting from my own dim understanding of black holes and having read only the NewScientist article, not the published paper.
Matter that falls into a black hole, from the perspective of a faraway observer at rest w/ respect to the black hole, appears to slow down and the light reflected becomes redshifted - the object appears to be almost frozen in time just before the redshifting becomes so great that the object becomes invisible. The object never appears to actually go in but is stuck forever at the event horizon. This suggests to me that information about infalling matter is also stored in the black hole's horizon. So what I'd like to know - is the surface area of all the black holes within the visible universe included in their calculations along with the surface area of the visible universe? If not, are even black holes simply holograms of the visible universe's surface area, thus making the information encoded in the black hole horizons redundant? Would including the black hole surface area significantly change the expected frequency of the holographic noise?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
10^(-16) meters? (Score:4, Interesting)
The article states that the uncertaintly at the Planck scale at the (hypothetical) border could translate to something like 10^(-16)m scale in "our world"? But some 10 years ago when I was at some research facility near Padua, they had a gravitational wave detector which they claimed could detect movement on the scale of 10^(-21)m so that would suggest we can already make much more precise measurements. How would that be possible?
(Disclaimer if I'm missing something obvious: I'm not a physicist)
Scientific American said about it in 2003 (Score:3, Informative)
I remember reading about the same proposition in a Scientific American article about 3 years ago (I used to read my national edition and there is a lag). However, they were basing the proposition on the analysis of the thermodynamical properties of black holes. Apparently the maximum entropy of a system is determined by the surface area of a sphere that encloses it. Above this limit the matter collapses into a black hole, which has an entropy proportional to its surface area.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=information-in-the-hologr-2003-08 [sciam.com]
Heim Theory (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if there is any relation at all to the "grains" and Heim's "metrons".
A single elementary particle is characterized not only by and the limiting distances R+- of its gravitational field, but also by its Compton wavelength. R- vanishes in empty space when the mass of the field source approaches zero, while R+, , and the Compton wavelength all diverge. However, since the smallest geometrical unit must be a real number and a property of empty space its value has to remain finite. As shown in [1], only a single product having this property can be formed from the 4 characteristic lengths above. The result is an area, , bounded on all sides by geodesics, whose present numerical value is = ca. 6.15x10-70 m2. This quantity, called a metron, represents the smallest area existing in empty space and requires the differential calculus to be replaced by a calculus of finite areas. Accordingly, a whole chapter in [1] is devoted to the development of a difference calculus considering the finite area of . This enables any differential expression to be metronized. It follows that in any subspace Rn, whose dimensionality n is divisible by 2, the geometrical continuum is replaced by a metronic lattice formed by n-dimensional volumes bounded on all sides by metrons. Thus, R6 and R12 are 6-dimensional and 12-dimensional metronic lattices, respectively. Since all dimensions are metronized, even time proceeds in finite, calculable steps. By the use of a difference calculus it becomes possible to consider in the nonlinear system of geometric structures in R6. - Bastic Thoughts of Heim's Theory [engon.de]
Wonderful Book (Score:3, Interesting)
I highly recommend "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot, which talks a great deal on the topic. It takes the work of physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, and goes on to explain how the holographic model can easily explain paranormal and psychic phenomenon. I've studied mysticism, spirituality, physics, and neuroscience for ten years, and the holographic model fits perfectly with what people experience during waking life, in dreams, at near-death, and during other mystical experiences.
I realize that most Slashdot readers will look upon this with skepticism, but after all these years of research and study, I can honestly say that if this isn't the way the universe works, it's the way it should work.
I see Star Trek possibilities... (Score:4, Funny)
From Me: Universe, please start beach babe program 101.
From Universe: Fatal error in beach babe execution. Dork array value out of range.
*sigh*
Nevermind...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You could try starting by reading the article, which is mostly about experimental verification of previously untested theories.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But generally speaking, how confident are we (read: Science) that we are actually describing the way the universe truly works, i.e., that we are not simply playing tremendously sophisticated math games?
It's not a dumb question at all, and it's one that scientists in all fields ask themselves often. IANAP, but my field, bioinformatics, is one that is also often accused of "playing math games" without producing testable hypotheses as well, so I'll take a stab at the answer:
We're as confident as we can be giv
Re:finite-resolution != hologram (Score:5, Insightful)
This, along with Dark Matter, Dark Energy and String theory are typical untestable theories which scientists lately have been using to fill in holes in their own understanding of the nature of the universe. Rather than going back to the drawing board when a model does not work, they use a cop out like this one to fill in the blanks.
Actually, this theory was a predicted consequence of a combination of information theory, relativity and quantum theory before there was any evidence for it. This is not a "model didn't work, so let's invent something to account for it" scenario: this is a "model predicted something and it looks like we might have found it" scenario.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And John G. Cramer has an article here [washington.edu] (and in the December issue of Analog, if anyone has that and hasn't read it yet). This is a very cool theory, indeed, and I'm glad to see it getting more mainstream attention.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Physics involving cats is bad enough, but now the all cats are holograms..?
If you look inside Schrödinger's Fridge [angryflower.com] there may or may not be a beer.
Maybe the cat drank them.