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Fermilab To Test Holographic Universe Theory
eldavojohn writes "Scientists at Fermilab have decided that it's high time they build a 'holometer' to test the smoothness of space-time. Theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking have proposed that space-time is not smooth but it's been a lot of math and no actual data. The Fermilab team plans to build two relatively small devices that act as 'holographic interferometers' to measure the shaking or vibration in split beams of light traveling through a vacuum. If the team finds the shaking in their measurements and records them, the theory of a holographic universe will have some evidence of non-smoothness in space-time and perhaps a foothold in bringing light to the heavily debated theoretical physics."
Wouldn't LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) be a good place to test this? It's much larger and already built. It seems like this is something they would have noticed by now.
Isaac Asimov wrote a short story (one of my least favorites, as its premise was entirely false) similar to that. In the story, a scientist tries to find out why people laugh, discovers that there's no such thing as an original joke (the false premise), and the end of the story finds that humor is just aliens running a lab experiment on us. The story ends with the characters waiting to see what it's replaced with.
There is a similar snippet in HHGTG. I'd look them both up, but I don't have my library with me.
What TFA didn't say was, could this holographic universe be an artificial creation? It somehow seems to toy with the idea without actually coming out and saying it.
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Yeah... i did a school speech on that in public school. Everyone else did speeches about their summer vacations or their dogs and such.
Back then i was a bit weird... now i'm mildly autistic (although my wife says i'm getting weirder as i get older).
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That might be true or it might just be that we as humans are so far away from being able to grasp the Universe's true nature and reason that we cannot believe it even has one. Similarly to monkeys or dogs not even thinking about physics or anything rational when they see us do stuff with electricity.
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The holographic universe theory is a return to beautiful simplicity.. the concepts are simple enough to understand and that math is really not all that hard either.
But apparently too difficult for the author of the article to understand. Otherwise they wouldn't write gibberish like this: In this two-dimensional cartoon of a universe, what we perceive as a third dimension would actually be a projection of time intertwined with depth.
And would instead write something like: In the holographic universe all of the dynamics in three dimensions can be fully accounted for by the boundary condition on a two-dimensional surface. The third dimension is a result of a perfectly real, actual, objective, existing process. It is not in any sense "unreal" or "an illusion", since it obviously exists and it is by studying it that we have come to the conclusion that the real, objective, existing three dimensional universe might arise from a two-dimensional boundary plus some really cool physics!"
The use of gibberish language, in which perfectly ordinary, real, objective physical phenomena like the third spatial dimension are describe as "an illusion" and "not real" won't help anyone understand the holographic universe theory, which is extremely beautiful, elegant and might even be true.
The use of such gibberish language will only create barriers to understanding in the minds of lay-people, and only people who have no clue what reality is would ever use such language unless they cared more about confusing people than enlightening them.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.