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Holographic Principle Could Apply To Our Universe
New submitter citpyrc sends this news from the Vienna University of Technology: The "holographic principle" asserts that a mathematical description of the universe actually requires one fewer dimension than it seems. What we perceive as three dimensional may just be the image of two dimensional processes on a huge cosmic horizon. Up until now, this principle has only been studied in exotic spaces with negative curvature. This is interesting from a theoretical point of view, but such spaces are quite different from the space in our own universe. Results obtained by scientists at Vienna (abstract) now suggest that the holographic principle even holds in a flat spacetime, like ours.
I am pretty sure they have 3 dimensions.
The holographic universe theory has been around for at least 25+ years
When you have famous astronomers and people such as
* "The stuff of the universe is mind-stuff" - Astronomer Arthur Eddington
* "... our brains mathematically construct hard reality by interpreting frequencies from a dimension transcending time and space. The brain is a hologram, interpreting a holographic universe." - Cyberneticist David Foster
* "Today there is a wide measure of agreement... that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine" - Astronomer James Jeans
saying the universe appears to function like a holographic mind then I find ANY sort of calculations that can give credence to this theory is definitely interesting.
Just about any dimensional space can be represented in fewer dimensions, or even 1 dimension, if you accept some lossy-ness or fuzziness. Imagine a string of digits and codes with the structure: x,y,z,type;x,y,z,type;x,y,z,type;x,y,z,type, etc... Where x, y, and z are coordinates in 3D space and "type" is the type of particle. Example single particle encoding: "3629342.3442, 4872042.3987, 193203.0482, Electron". There may need to be more "state" info about a given particle to make it workable, but you get the general idea.
Table-ized A.I.
"Honey, does this projection make my ass look 4D?"
Table-ized A.I.
To most slashdotters it remains only a theory
Table-ized A.I.
I love reading about this stuff, but it's hard to understand without a background in science :(
Can someone explain it to us like we're 10?
The word "theory" implies that it is testable.
In this case it is testable, as there are a couple interferometer based experiments working toward testing it.
But it continues to witlessly push forward on the assumption that the proponents could win the argument (grant money) if it could sell enough books and achieve mainstream popularity.
You don't get a grant for just being popular. You get a grant for proposing to do something, and that something has to both fall under the directives of a particular grant program, and get good reviews about the chances of achieving something and usefulness from other scientists.
I for one don't want to give Physics research a blank check to investigate some unobservable math fantasy.
Like several other new proposed theories in physics, this is not without observation. It is an extension of already seen phenomena and theories. This is in the same way that observations confirming Newtonian mechanics also confirm relativity because it makes the same predictions in the situations tested by older experiments.
The word "theory" implies that it is testable.
"Falsifiable" is a better word here. You don't need to be able to do controlled experiments (tests) in order to have a solid theory - an influx of new observations of the universe as we find it works just as well.
And the holographic principle is certainly falsifiable.
1) It imposes a limit on the amount of entropy in any given volume - find a system which can be in more than the allowed number of states, and isn't inside a black hole, and this theory is dead.
2) It sets a really high value on the entropy of black holes. Black holes become the dominant source of entropy in our universe. This has consequences in cosmology that are fundamental, if the only reason entropy is increasing in our universe is this assigning of entropy to black holes. There are certainly physicists playing with that idea, as it could be career-making, true or false.
3) It has deep implications for the evolution of black holes - how they evaporate. This will be a lot harder to prove (I don't think we'll validate Hawking radiation in my lifetime), but might be possible to falsify by finding a black hole that's clearly not allowed by theory.
Heck, there are implications for particle physics that are still being understood, and lots there is testable now with the LHC. The more and farther you reason from a premise like this, the more likely it is to matter to something easy to measure, or at least possible to measure.
The reason the discovery of the Higgs boson was such a big deal is that it confirmed a bunch of really abstract theory in quantum mechanics that is very, very far from anything we can measure, except at the end of this very long chain of reasoning there's this prediction of this new oddball particle (that there's no other reason to expect - it come from deep in the abstract math of QM, not from anything else we measured). So finding that particle confirms that whole crazy chain of logic. Something similar will eventually happen for the holographic principle.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
God already told us about the 4 corners of the earth
Four corners?
It's all a matter of philosophy. There's been a bit of churning the past few decades, but I prefer this simple differentiation: A theory is a predictive model, an hypothesis is a testable prediction. The utility of a theory is then determined by the success of the hypotheses it generates.
Required reading for internet skeptics
It would seem that ancient wisdom triumphs and we live in a 2D world.
you don't know anything about logic at all do you? Apparently not.. because it is all latin and I don't see any latin here so you are a moron
Well, looks like I'm the only one who thought this was funny. If it was a bit shorter I'd borrow it for my sig.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So how come if I say "The Theory of creationism" on Slashdot I'll get crucified?
You'll not get crucified as such-- any more, that is only a Christian church punishment. Slashdot has never crucified anyone and physics and bandwidth limitations being what they are, Slashdot will never be able to crucify anyone. Your post will likely be ridiculed, modded down, and mostly ignored. You'll need to go elsewhere for the cross and nails.
The thing is, the "theory of creationism" is an inherently bad theory since it does not lead to hypotheses that can be tested with the scientific method. OTOH, The theory of evolution has produced innumerable hypotheses, some of which were proven wrong while others were shown to be correct, and each of these tests has been fed back into the theory to improve its accuracy of its predictions.
This does not negate the CS Lewis quote from your sig line:
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Lewis is stating that science is limited to questions of how things work, and cannot be used to address other questions, such as why they work, what purpose does the universe serve, where is the ultimate meaning. For persons who go through life with their eyes open, these are the wonderfully important questions, but they are not amenable to the scientific method.
Will
>The thing is, the "theory of creationism" is an inherently bad theory since ......
It is even worse theology. It requires belief in a deity that created everything to deliberately fool us. Once you go down that road 'died on the cross for my salvation (and yours also if you are interested,)' evaporates. Not having any of that.