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Controversial Experiment Sees No Evidence That the Universe Is a Hologram (sciencemag.org)

Posted by samzenpus on from the more-real-than-real dept.

sciencehabit writes in with bad news for Holographic Universe fans. From Sciencemag: "It's a classic underdog story: Working in a disused tunnel with a couple of lasers and a few mirrors, a plucky band of physicists dreamed up a way to test one of the wildest ideas in theoretical physics--a notion from the nearly inscrutable realm of "string theory" that our universe may be like an enormous hologram. However, science doesn't indulge sentimental favorites. After years of probing the fabric of spacetime for a signal of the "holographic principle," researchers at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois have come up empty, as they will report tomorrow at the lab.

2 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Reminder: Holographic theory != Simulation by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative

    About 75% of the non-troll comments I've seen here think that this is about the theory we're all in the Matrix, or some variant.

    That's not what Holographic Theory is about. Now, I'm not a physicist and I suck at explaining things anyway, so I don't want to get too far into it, but essentially the holographic theory is that there are fewer "real" dimensions than is apparent (like a hologram is a flat sheet of paper that appears to be 3D.)

    The name is based upon the behavior of paper holograms - like the one on your credit card. Holograms themselves are able to appear 3D by using natural interference patterns and resonance to ensure that, looked at from different angles, they transmit different images. Well, that's kinda the direction you need to go in to understand the Holographic Universe theory, rather than attempts to build 3D images in space to make a virtual universe look real (as in "Holodeck")

    The point is that the universe is (d)D, but looks (d)D because of the way information is encoded. Or something. A genuine physicist can probably explain it more accurately (I'm 100% sure I've made at least one error above) and clearly than I can though. So... uh, does Phil Plait or Neil Degrasse Tyson read Slashdot?

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    1. Re:Reminder: Holographic theory != Simulation by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Informative

      The point is that the universe is (d)D, but looks (d)D because of the way information is encoded. Or something. A genuine physicist can probably explain it more accurately (I'm 100% sure I've made at least one error above) and clearly than I can though

      Uh, correction...

      The point is that the universe is (d-1)D, but looks (d)D because of the way information is encoded. Or something. A genuine physicist can probably explain it more accurately (I'm 100% sure I've made at least two errors above) and clearly than I can though

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.