Slashdot Mirror
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.
[pulls out 3-D glasses]
That we're all living on a small anti-counterfeiting patch on God's MasterCard?
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
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.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Nope, not a hologram.
Mine is Good
Commander Riker, this is Captain Picard. We seem to be trapped in a holodeck simulation of the Matrix, and Mr. LaForge has broken his leg because the safeties are off. Can you beam us out?
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
There is no spoon?
He showed that the physics inside a hypothetical universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking place on the four-dimensional boundary.
[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!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You could try starting by reading the article, which is mostly about experimental verification of previously untested theories.
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 hypothesis here, and I don't think the thought should be suppressed just because it's not scientific, but I think it's important to keep in mind that we're departing the realm of science here and moving towards a cop-out.
This just in, Red Dwarf's Rimmer and Voyager's doctor upset, complain of "hologram of a hologram" prejudice.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
This story reminds me of an amazing book written in the late 1800's, "Flatland", which applies today more than ever.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The small anti-counterfeiting patch on my MasterCard could be...
One tiny little universe.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe?
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Screw that! I'm getting drunk NOW!
Woohoo!
What?
I, for one, welcome our new Matrix overlords, and will be on the holodeck if you need me.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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?
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
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 given the knowledge we have, no less and no more, but it will always take time to build up confidence in today's leading-edge research, and a lot of it will inevitably be discarded along the way. The only way to judge good science is, ultimately, how well it lasts. WRT physics, we know that Newtonian physics has stood the test of centuries -- we also know that it's wrong in some very important ways, but it's right enough to describe the everyday world we live in to a high level of precision. Einsteinian physics, a hundred years old at this point, is a better approximation, and it describes many extreme conditions in the universe (high speeds, large masses, and huge distances) quite well. Quantum physics, just a little younger, does a good job at the other extreme. These three paradigms put together (often with some effort) and applied to engineering problems form the basis of pretty much our entire technological world. They're all approximations, but if the approximations are good enough, that doesn't matter.
As for string theory, holographic universe, etc. -- who knows? As again in fifty or a hundred years.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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)
It's actually a challenging and inspiring read. The holographic principles of interference fields present an incredible perspective on the world we live in. It touches on spirituality, string theory, and quantum physics as well as good old material science.
MUST READ!
Amazon Link Here
"The Borba"
This makes me take a second look at this guy's ideas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin
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.
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
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
If they prove gravitons exist I want a bowl of them, with a side of graviolis...
And John G. Cramer has an article here (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.
It's sort of the Epicycles problem again. When they assumed the Earth was the center of the universe, they modeled the solar system using circles "orbiting" circles. They kept adding complexity to the epicycle model with offset bars and more layers of circles. It indeed could be made to make accurate predictions about the movement of sky objects. However, it didn't mirror the actual model (Sun at center). Nobody really knew this until the simpler sun-center model was introduced, and everyone found it was a simpler explanation.
Thus, fitting observations and mirroring the actual underlying mechanism may not be the same thing. Mathematical regression is also an example of this: the regression formulas can be made to model almost any continuous curve if you throw enough terms into them. However, that does not mean that the resulting equation in any way matches the mechanism that generated the actual curve. (Epicycle circles-and-bars are a kind of "circular regression" in a rough sense.)
It's difficult to know if a theory such as String Theory is suffering the same problem. Its complexity does suggest this. But, until a simpler model comes along, it's the current king.
Table-ized A.I.
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
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael-Talbot/dp/0060922583 Michael Talbot wrote this book years ago. Others have had this theory since 1980-1985. Of course, if it is a hologram, those who created it might want you to read this comment. LOL! THe book itself was written in 1992.
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're right, He uses Visa, hates paypal and is considering leaving eBay for good and selling His shit elsewhere. Those pesky fees! What's a Guy gonna do...
Physics involving cats is bad enough, but now the all cats are holograms..?
If you look inside Schrödinger's Fridge there may or may not be a beer.
Maybe the cat drank them.
Free Martian Whores!
Here's a simple thought experiment. It isn't proof of anything, but it's interesting.
Let's say that we wanted to simulate the universe on a supercomputer.
The laws of physics and information theory seem to dictate that it's impossible to store that much information on a supercomputer, because you would need as much information as contained in the entire universe to do it accurately.
But what if you just simulated it roughly, unless you detected intelligence (decreased entropy) in your model? Whenever the intelligent things tried to study your model, you'd give them better and better information as they looked at smaller, and farther away things.
Eventually, though, you'd run out of information to give them, and you'd basically have to turn your pockets inside out.
For example, if they figured out how to change a texture in their world, they would notice that textures changed all over the place, seemingly randomly, because you're reusing them all over the place.
That the universe is a figment of someone's (or some THING's) imagination, to me, seems the simplest theory, not at all far out.
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...
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
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 a film camera will cause a certain amount of "pixelation" or to use the more accurate term, grain, to appear in both the negative and the final print. The quality of the image is dependent on how fine the crystal structure of the film used to take the picture is. There's nothing that makes digital information special in this regard, it's merely that the way more traditional analog information is stored and played tends to flatten out artifacts so that they're less noticeable in the reproduction.
As another example take sound recordings. No recording is ever a perfect 100% reproduction of the sounds at the point it was produced. That's not really a problem though, as we don't care about all the sounds, or even most of the sounds, so the lack of them in the final recording does not detract from its purpose. Further quite a bit of the sound we can't even perceive, so even if it was recorded we wouldn't know about it (its beyond the limits of our hearing).
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
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.
All is revealed here.
Did that clear things up?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.