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

~~~
wheels
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.

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rjprins
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
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.

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IsaacSchlueter
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.

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gojomo
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.

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

~~~
gnaritas
I also liked the tines and their group consciousness, and how the minds were
connected via sound. More interestingly that the individuals themselves
weren't really consciousness because one mind wasn't quite evolved enough.

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geuis
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
Quantum propulsion?

I missed that one. Got a link?

~~~
geuis
And I completely forgot the link, sorry.
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12429-three-ways-to-
le...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12429-three-ways-to-levitate-a-
magic-carpet.html)

------
rms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle>

And printer friendly while I'm at it:
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-
world...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-
a-giant-hologram.html?full=true)

------
SapphireSun
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...](http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/22/10/009/pdf?ejredirect=.iopscience)

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

[http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/25/3/035003/pdf?ejredire...](http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/25/3/035003/pdf?ejredirect=.iopscience)

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

[http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael-
Talbot/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael-
Talbot/dp/0060922583)

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

~~~
pmarsh
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.

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froo
[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

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

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

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

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

~~~
mlLK
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.

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rw
As opposed to a small hologram? :)

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Allocator2008
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>

