Study reveals substantial evidence of holographic universe

Possibly dumb question, but I know my niece is going to ask me about this, and I&#x27;d like to be able to give her a solid response: does this mean that most distances within our universe are illusory? If not, why not?<p>To expand on that thought a little bit, with a hologram, the projected object is an illusion, and can be made to appear to move at arbitrary speed by e.g. rotating the projection apparatus. On a larger scale, it&#x27;s possible to create the illusion of FTL movement by e.g. rapidly rotating a laser projector in space and then traveling a long distance from it, so that at a certain distance from the source, it appears that there is a projection from the source which is rotating faster than light.<p>If this theory models the universe as a 3D (or more) projection from a 2D surface, why is it not possible to cause objects within our perceived 3D+ universe to appear to move faster than light by causing some sort of change to the 2D surface itself? I assume there is a reason this is not possible within the bounds of this theory, but I have no idea what that reason might be.

I&#x27;ve recently been thinking on how our human definition of intelligence might relate to holographic principles, particularly in regards to information theory.<p>We are small creatures, but our networks -- our brains and societies -- represent the most complex information-encoding geometries we&#x27;ve yet seen in the universe.<p>And I see the way that our curiosity reaches upward in scale, documenting the far corners and folds of the universe; and deeper, interrogating the tiny subatomic spaces; and forward and back, building models of the future and past of this point in time.<p>And we capture this knowledge and bring it into our tiny space, information encoded in structures along the skin of this rock floating in space.<p>And I wonder if that&#x27;s not holographic in some way: That insatiable drive to compress information from massive scales of space and time into the tiniest of spaces...<p>But of course, this is just armchair philosophizing ;)

First, here is a link that is not hidden behind a paywall: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;1607.04878v2.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;1607.04878v2.pdf</a><p>&gt; there is substantial evidence supporting a holographic explanation of the universe—in fact, as much as there is for the traditional explanation of these irregularities using the theory of cosmic inflation.<p>This is a bit misleading, especially the phrase &quot;substantial evidence&quot;. I bet that the authors of the paper would not have used this phrasing. From the paper:<p>&gt; We emphasise that the application of holography to cosmology is conjectural, the theoretical validity of such dualities is still open and different authors approach the topic in different ways.<p>Essentially, their paper shows that a holographic model cannot be ruled out simply by comparing the predictions it makes for the CMB to observation. It also gives some intuition for why a holographic model might make sense - at sufficiently early times in the Universe quantum and gravitational effects begin to coincide, and in other contexts people have modeled quantum gravity using &quot;a quantum field theory with no gravity in one dimension less&quot;. The paper finds, however, that there is no empirical case to be made for discarding the standard model of inflation:<p>&gt; We see that the difference between evidence for [the standard model] and HC predictions is insignifcant, with marginal preference for HC, depending on the choice of priors.

Question, from someone who does not understand the Holographic universe idea:<p>If &#x27;true&#x27;, is the holographic universe &#x27;merely&#x27; a mathematical tool that helps us solve problems, or is it a description of an objective reality, and the universe is &#x27;really&#x27; a 2D surface, and our 3D perception is somehow illusory?<p>I understand this is partly a philosophy of science question, but would be interested to hear an expert opinion ...

I cant tell if all of the comments here are genuine, or the output of some high performance markov chains.<p>Also, i have absolutely no ability to penetrate what is being described by this article. Holograms work by applying lasers to different surfaces and re-rendering the image relative to the original laser&#x27;s point of view. How does the word &#x27;holographic&#x27; apply?

It&#x27;s crazy to think we are the universe observing and trying to understand itself. Matter organised in a certain way is able to observe itself? How weird is that!

It&#x27;s interesting that to a layman this seems like almost the exact opposite of what string theory proposes dimensionally. Holographic universe theory is stating there are effectively less dimensions, while string theory shows there could be significantly more.

This is like the wang carpets from Greg Egan&#x27;s Diaspora novel.

I&#x27;m having some trouble understanding this sentence:<p>&quot; [...] our 3-D ‘reality’ (plus time) is contained in a 2-D surface on its boundaries.&quot;<p>What, exactly, do they mean with &#x27;on its boundries&#x27;?

I wonder if this theory supports the idea that the universe inhabits a black hole, or at least the surface of one.

Very misleading title! This article doesn&#x27;t really discuss the &quot;evidence&quot;, you will need to dig deeper. The article is a summary of what holography is, and not much more.<p>&gt; They found that some of the simplest quantum field theories could explain nearly all cosmological observations of the early universe.<p>This seems to be very, very old news. Like all theories, holography sounds very interesting. This article implies that a prediction made by holography has been observed. This is not the case, apparently. The math may a lot more elegant, but what new predictions are there, and have we observed them? This is what the article claimed to be about, alas it wasn&#x27;t.

There&#x27;s good background information in the Wikipedia article on the Holographic principle:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Holographic_principle" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Holographic_principle</a><p>The latest Scientific American has an article on why some physicists are calling for rejection of cosmic inflation theory:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;cosmic-inflation-theory-faces-challenges&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;cosmic-inflation-...</a><p>Although it seems to be paywalled.

A friend of mine has been trying convince me and my peers for like 2 years that the universe is holofractal. Holofractal is different than holographic [1] but is also an interesting idea.<p>Things like the Em Drive device and this are really making physics interesting again.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;holofractal&#x2F;comments&#x2F;5r3i83&#x2F;hologram_holographic_what_is_it&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;holofractal&#x2F;comments&#x2F;5r3i83&#x2F;hologra...</a>

This shows how philosophy is rather important when trying to come to an understanding.<p>Different philosophy can result in different theory of explanation and different direction of model building.

As a non physicist, there&#x27;s something I don&#x27;t get in the comparaison with 3d tv. From what I gathered, the only reason 3d tv is 3d is because it exploits the fact we have two eyes, distant from one another, which can provide a depth view when seeing the same thing at two different angles, or when being tricked into thinking it&#x27;s that way.<p>What would mean a &quot;holographic 2d space encoding 3d space&quot; detached from an illusion made by someone observing it?

What does this mean?<p>The universe is fake? Is this along the same lines as &quot;everything is a simulation&quot;?

The abstract of the paper about which the article reports is less dramatic:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1607.04878" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1607.04878</a><p>&quot;By comparing the Bayesian evidence for the models, we find that ΛCDM does a better job globally, while the holographic models provide a (marginally) better fit to data without very low multipoles.&quot;<p>So the non-holographic model seems to be better globally even according to the paper.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lambda-CDM_model" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lambda-CDM_model</a><p>If the further research proves that holographic models are better, it&#x27;s good too, let the best wins. But at the moment it still looks to be too early to conclude too much.

arXiv link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1607.04878" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1607.04878</a>

Consider a mathematical spherical construct that contains more than the the r^2 amount of entropy than can be described by the Holographic Principle. What makes that not possible under the theory? What breaks down? Is there a physical analogy for it?

Very relevant: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rense.com&#x2F;general69&#x2F;holoff.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rense.com&#x2F;general69&#x2F;holoff.htm</a>

IANP, but its seems as if the measurement problem will always cause us to observe, more accurately measure, a 2D projection and maximum entropy; where before the wave collapse a 3D+ universe and perhaps infinite entropy existed.<p>In the same way that two trains traveling at different speeds are warped to the observer, it would seem to me that we would need to observe the wave in real-time to accurately observe it.<p>Again, INAP.

The headline is tantalizing, but this is almost impossible to grok for a layperson like me.

Does anyone know how could affect that to wormholes? [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wormhole" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wormhole</a>

Does this mean that consciousness is a dimension? Would a (say) lifeless planet &#x27;be&#x27; 3D if not observed or would it remain encoded in 2D? (Asked by a layman).

The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality by the late Michael Talbot is a must read for those interested in exploring this topic.

So now the entire <i>universe</i> is 2D?<p>Wow, these flat-earthers are getting <i>ambitious</i>.

Maybe my clock is time-dilated, but isn&#x27;t 1st of April still months away?

Shitty scientific journalism. Abstract says something else but who cares.

Is this actually evidence or lack of proof against?

You cannot code a particle simulator that perfectly mimics 3D space despite each particle only having two spatial location variables.<p>We all have that new agey friend on FB who will inevitably share this nonsense. Do we really need to be dealing with it on HN? What&#x27;s next, Minion memes?

How a simulation could reveal anything? A simulation has no connection to reality whatsoever. One single major (or even minor) factor missed in the model, and the whole thing is a bullshit. Imaginable factors with real weights - same kind of result.<p>Simulations and probabilistic estimations could be applied only to fully observable environments.

While not conclusive, does this not sound like support for what could be Intelligent Design - ID?<p>&#x27;Patterns imprinted in it carry information about the very early Universe and seed the development of structures of stars and galaxies in the late time Universe.&#x27; [From the Bulletin]<p>If the universe is encoded on a 2d surface and has been projected on 3d, doesn&#x27;t that sound like some design&#x2F;intentional purpose encoded on the 2d surface?