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
Nope, not a hologram.
Mine is Good
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
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.
> 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!
You need to read up more on the ideas surrounding a holographic universe. There are plenty of things on that that actually suggest that model as a reason for many of the phenomenon we observe. It isn't anti-science at all. Science generally advances quite a bit when "well, we can't see what we wanted to...we must have been wrong...we should try something else".
"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.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
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
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's incredible to my mind (inconceivable! :-P) that for all the intelligence and know-how of the ancient world, no one worked out a simple experiment to prove or disprove spontaneous generation!
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Axioms are necessary before observation can even be trusted. How do you know what your observing isn't all an illusion?
Science starts with the proposition that the Universe is rational and can be observed in a rational and repeatable manner. Then the observations are worth making.
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.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
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.
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)
I think what you are referring to is Plato's "forms". The objects we encounter merely participate in the -ness of the perfect forms which reside in what is playfully (or pejoratively) called Plato's Heaven. So my chair is a chair because it has the property "chairness", that is, there is a perfect chair that resides outside of our perceptual reality that lends its form to my chair. It is a bit more detailed but that is the gist. Aristotle was right to abandon it.
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.
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. :(
> 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. 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 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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
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.
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.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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."
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
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.
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.
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.
Plato had a thought experiment, to which the previous poster was referring. Imagine prisoners chained to a wall. They've been there their entire lives, and all they can see is the shifting shadows on the wall as people move across the light leading into their dungeon. Those shadows are a reflection of reality, but they themselves aren't reality. One day, one of the prisoners gets free and is able to go outside. He comes back in, describing the world outside to his brethren, but they consider his story to be fictional. After all, everyone can see that reality is made up of shadows shifting on the wall.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
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.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
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! ~~
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?)
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.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
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.