Our world may be a giant hologram

Quote from the article, "No one - including Hogan - is yet claiming that GEO600 has found evidence that we live in a holographic universe."<p>Cover of the magazine, "YOU ARE A HOLOGRAM".<p>New Scientist is weird. They're like 90% groovy scientific journalism and 10% shitty tabloid.

As best as I can tell, it says the universe is holographic because all the information on the inside (a volume) is reflected by (or a reflection of) the information on the edge of the universe (a plane). This makes it "holographic" because our 3-dimensional world is also expressed in 2-dimensions.

At first, I thought this was another iteration of the "You can't prove we're not inside a computer" meme, and thought <i>Oh, jezus christ, not again with this bloody tripe.</i><p>Turns out, it's actually quite an interesting development.

The theory seems to suggest that the universe's 'resolution' will be coarser closer to its center. That's vaguely like the physics of Vernor Vinge's 'Fire Upon The Deep'/'Deepness in the Sky' universe -- where you have to move away from the galactic centers to achieve faster computation and FTL travel.

Seems interesting that we're seeing several findings all coming out around the same time that revolve around detecting and using quantum-scale principles. The first is the idea of quantum propulsion that was described in a previous link here on HN, and now this. I wonder, if this pans out as a verifiable way to detect the quantum "foam" of imaginary particles if it could also be used to to detect evidence of the extra microscopic dimensions predicted in string theory.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle</a><p>And printer friendly while I'm at it: <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true" rel="nofollow">http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world...</a>

Wow. This is a really awesome development! This would change our conception of the universe drastically.<p>However, I don't really see it impacting our day to day conception of life, because even if we live in a 4 dimensional boundary of a 5 dimensional space, we are still living in the same familiar 3 space plus whatever the 4th is.<p>Does anyone know if this research group has published yet? I'd like to see the primary source material, and I didn't see a mention of it in the article. I did find this nice link that describes the status of the GEO600 as of 2005 (you may need a subscription):<p><a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/22/10/009/pdf?ejredirect=.iopscience" rel="nofollow">http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/22/10/009/pdf?ejredirect...</a><p>Here is a description of noise in the laser system as of 2007:<p><a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/25/3/035003/pdf?ejredirect=.iopscience" rel="nofollow">http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/25/3/035003/pdf?ejredire...</a>

One of the wildest books I read, maybe ten years ago, is The Holographic Universe.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael-Talbot/dp/0060922583" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael-Talbot/dp...</a><p>It's a quick, interesting read, but also gets unscientific, to me, in second half.

[bad humor contained within, you have been warned]<p>Hmm, so if the universe is one giant sticker on someone's credit card, then I wonder what the credit limit is on that baby - and if they can lend the auto industry a couple billion bucks to waste too

If you break a hologram to pieces, every piece retains the original image.<p>Sweet, so if you break the Universe... oh wait.

You physicists should really read up on your PKD novels. He was onto this years ago.

As opposed to a small hologram? :)

You know, if this article was trying to say they had found a possible way to verify Ads/Cft correspondence, really, all it had to do was say so.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldacena_duality" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldacena_duality</a>