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The Universe As Hologram

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.

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  1. Steve Jobs plans "most unique" death ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    January 15, 2009

    Steve Jobs plans "most unique" death ever

    AIDS demise to have innovative interface

    ANUS News

    CUPERTINO, California (NNN) - Steve Jobs, the polymath CEO and star evangelist of Apple Computer, Inc., publically announced a medical leave of absence from the company, but in private promised "the best AIDS death ever" from the affliction no one will publically recognize he has.

    As HIV-positive test results leaked onto the web from the last five years of Jobs' fight for health and secrecy, former lovers raced to the clinics on Segways looking for solace. Unflappable as always, Jobs vowed to make the best of the situation.

    "There's AIDS deaths, and then there's AIDS deaths," Jobs said in his strident baritone with a slightly ironic lisp. "As with all Apple products, my demise from pneumonia brought on by full-blown AIDS will be poignant, witty, ironic, aesthetically pleasing and have an interface that breaks new ground for the industry."

    Turning to a reporter he said, "That's off the record. Officially, my hormones are unbalanced because I did not care enough about Darfur." On the news of Jobs' leave, Apple stock plunged $7.38 as people feared the cool had left their Macs, but then rebounded by almost four points once rumors of HIV-death leaked.

    "If Christ were to die today, he'd die of AIDS," said Jared Hvitles, who has owned four Macs, three iPods, an iPhone and a Steve Jobs Picking Up a Quarter blow-up doll. "He's going out like he's lived, as a Christ for the new millenium -- with a better interface."

    About ANUS:

    The American Nihilist Underground Society advocates nihilism, or a removal of interpretive layers from our perception of physical reality, as a means of transcending illusion. Nihilism denies value and purpose, which are byproducts of the human desire to judge reality and make a consensual "social reality" that by seizing on a single material factor misses the intelligible, or design-based, knowledge we need to adapt to reality. ANUS has been promoting nihilism since 1987.

    http://www.anus.com/

    About Nihilism:

    Nihilism is the belief that nothing we perceive has Absolute value; reality exists, but beyond its inherent meaning to us as the physical container of our existence, it has no significance outside of what we perceive. "The world is my representation," indeed. When we strip away all of the values projected onto physical reality and its outcomes, we are left only with personal ideal and natural ideal, and bringing the former into adaptation with the latter is the lifetime task to which nihilism is a gateway.

    http://www.nihil.org/

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