Our world may be a giant hologram

New Scientist ^ | January 15th, 2009 | Marcus Chown

[Crimson Elephant]

DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres.

For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

[Twotone]

Terrific book: The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. Worth the read.

[CapnJack]

"Arnold rimmer effect?"

Smeging Hell! Holly ... is that true?

[SuperLuminal]

Has anyone contacted albore about this for additional scientific support?

[ThomasThomas]

If the universe is a hologram why do blind people not know that nothing else is there?

[devere]

“So who or what is running the hologram generator?”

God, of course.

The holographic universe theory seems very good to me.

[Polarik]

This actually makes a lot of sense. After watching the Holodeck scenes on the original Star Trek, I often wondered if our multidimensional representation of reality is represented as two dimensions in our memory. Then, I got to wonder, "What if everything is like that?"

Fascinating...as Spock would say.

[Question_Assumptions]

They’re not talking about a literal hologram but about everything we experience as three dimensions in the middle of the universe actually being the way we perceive two dimensional effects that really occur only on the outer bubble of the expanding universe. Interesting theory that could also explain God’s place in and impact on the universe if one is inclined to look at things that way.

[Taffini]

>>Can I quit dieting?

maybe your hologram is just out of whack and you are really buff

[wally_bert]

Maybe in some alternate universe I am the equivalent of Ace Rimmer.

[Moonman62]

There are two ways to look at this. One is that our physical Universe is as it seems it is. I consider this to be the equivalent of Newtonian Physics

I'm reminded of that saying by Feynman, that those who think quantum mechanics makes sense don't really understand it (or something like that).

[spodefly]

... the physics inside a hypothetical universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking place on the four-dimensional boundary.

Mmmmmm ... Pringles.

[supremedoctrine]

I don’t know about the universe being a hologram, but I’ve recently described Obama as a hologram.

[Crimson Elephant]

Yes, I thought it was rather obvious that the word “hologram” was simply a device to explain the concept, rather than it being a hologram in the way it is presented on TV. The concept of the Holographic Universe really isn’t the same as someone projecting a “hologram” as we have come to visualize it.

I see several on the thread “get it” and others don’t. But admittedly it is a concept that you have to really be interested in to fully grasp...and even then it takes a few thought experiments.

[SunkenCiv]

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[dfwgator]

"Can I buy some pot from you?"