Are We All Holograms?
The holographic principle states that the total information contained within a volume correlates to information contained on the surface - in other words, the total amount of information a space can contain is defined by the surface area as opposed to the volume. This counter-intuitive notion is exactly what happens when trying to calculate the entropy of black holes, though, which is one major argument in favor of the principle.
A recent report in New Scientist, indicates that the German gravity wave detector GEO600 has been detecting some strange "noise." This noise has been explained by Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics director Craig Hogan as possibly resulting from us living within exactly this sort of holographic universe.
In the holographic principle, the information contained on the surface boundary of the space is in Planck length-sized squares. Hogan realized that if this boundary defines the total number of information "bits" that the space can contain, then each individual bit inside the space would have to be bigger than a Planck length ... in essence, the holographic universe is "blurry" compared to the surface.
And a blurry unit of space-time is one which could potentially be explored by experiments (as opposed to Planck-sized units of space-time, which are well outside of the range our current technology can explore). He calculated a prediction that GEO600 would be able to detect some sort of disturbance due to this ... and found out that they'd already detected exactly this problem!
This puts the mission of GEO600 in danger (the noise could prevent them from detecting the gravity waves it was designed to search for), but it allows what is likely an even more profound discovery - the potential to first detect the smallest grains of space-time itself. If this does turn out to be "holographic noise," then it could be a crucial step toward determining a correct theory of quantum gravity.
Related Articles:
- Holographic Principle
- New Scientist - Our World May Be a Giant Hologram
- Physics Review D - Measurement of quantum fluctuations in geometry
NOTE: In an e-mail on January 18, Leonard Susskind - one of the men who discovered the holographic principle - indicates that he is not clear how Dr. Hogan expects a gravity wave detector to detect holographic noise.
Comments
Andrew, Beautiful summary, well done.
I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
Andrew,
As we know, physics prohibits signals faster than the speed of light. If we look at the hologram of the Universe, papered on its outer border, it would seem to bring elements of reality into direct contact which are separated in spacetime, thus allowing signals faster than light. Am I missing something here?
Soooo— Galileo, Copernicus, etal were wrong and the Pope was right? The Earth is acually the center of the universe?
if the holographic theory proves true,then the idea of multiverses is infinite and makes the big bang theory although almost certain ,renders it meaningless to the human race