First things first. There’s a book called The Hologram. And no, this is no artificially-induced simulation of reality, but reality itself. And the upshot? That reality is much more fluid and changable. Which means, we are literally making reality as we go along by probing it and measuring it.
And then, there is the GEO600 German experiment looking for gravitational waves – ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. While no gravitational waves have been detected so far, it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century – that we could well be living in a giant cosmic hologram.
This idea is being propounded by physicist Craig Hogan, who is also the director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics. He says the hologram idea is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes in theory.
New Scientist explain this phenemenon more succintly. The medical journal says the holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.
My, my. It’s quite an idea, sirjee!
