Holographic Universe

I was just sent this article from Discovery News, not the best of sources ...http://news.discovery.com/...re-we-living-in-a-hologram.html

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Do you ever get those days when you question reality? One scientist has gone a step further; he is currently building an experiment that will hopefully answer whether or not we all exist as a result of a universal hologram.

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... Fermilab particle physicist Craig Hogan renewed interest in the holographic universe concept after investigating the noise measured by a gravitational wave detector called GEO600 in Germany.

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Gravitational waves are a consequence of Einstein's general relativity equations. Einstein's famous realization that space-time warps around massive objects (such as planets and stars) led to the prediction that any massive object moving through space should generate waves in space-time, carrying energy away from the object ...

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In Einstein's view of space-time, it is smooth and continuous. However, it is generally thought that even space-time is built from tiny pixels measuring the smallest possible scale allowed by physics: 10^{^-35} meters, known as the Planck Length. ...

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Although the hunt has been intense, little evidence for these elusive waves has presented itself, even though GEO600 can detect such a tiny shift in space-time distances.

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But, for the German gravitational wave detector, it did find something odd in its results. No gravitational wave signals, just static.

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The GEO600 experiment can probe down to scales of around 10^{^-16} meters, but if the noise it is detecting is due to the pixelated nature of space-time, what's going on? GEO600 is probing scales 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 times larger than the Planck Length, so the quantum "fuzziness" is operating at scales much larger than one would have thought (if space-time has quanta, quantum fluctuations should occur more toward Planck scales).

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If the Universe is a holographic projection from the universal event horizon, it is predicted that the projection will be fuzzy. Although all the information to create the Universe is "encoded" in Planck-scale "bits" in the universal event horizon, by the time it's projected over billions of light years to our location, these "bits" will have become enlarged -- like the light being emitted from a projector onto a wall.

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The smaller scales you probe, the more fuzzy the projection becomes. It's a bit like zooming in on a photograph or magazine text; it becomes less defined and more pixelated the closer you zoom in.

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It is this fuzziness that Hogan believes GEO600 is currently seeing as noise, possibly giving Thorn's hypothesis from the early 90's some of its first observational evidence.

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First, for the physics mavens - how legit is this article\observation\concept?Second - how does this affect dark stuffs? Does this affect relativity in any way (large lumpy image vs smooth\continuous?other references:A web page that points a browser to a different page after zero seconds

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Michael Talbot (1953-1992), was the author of a number of books highlighting parallels between ancient mysticism and quantum mechanics, and espousing a theoretical model of reality that suggests the physical universe is akin to a giant hologram. In The Holographic Universe, Talbot made many references to the work of David Bohm and Karl Pribram, and it is quite apparent that the combined work of Bohm and Karl Pribram is largely the cornerstone upon which Talbot built his ideas.
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University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.
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Articles About the Holographic Universe:
Scientific American August 2003
An astonishing theory called the holographic principle holds that the universe is like a hologram: just as a trick of light allows a fully three-dimensional image to be recorded on a flat piece of film, our seemingly three-dimensional universe could be completely equivalent to alternative quantum fields and physical laws "painted" on a distant, vast surface. ...

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Is this science?Enjoy.Is it Science forum?Edited by RAZD, : added

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Thread copied here from the Holographic Universe thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Well, first off, that Michael Talbot new-age lunacy has *nothing* to do with the concept we call the Holographic Principle - pure coincidence of titles.The Holographic Principle is speculative theoretical physics with possible observational properties and so is certainly science. Craig Hogan's ideas are interesting but not something I would get too excited over just yet. His "magnified" fuzziness of space-time caused by an actual projection is a possible extrapolation of the HP, but by no means a definite prediction, so linking this up with the observed static from the grav-wave detectors is not something on which I will be placing too much money... in gereral, at large length scales, neither are particularly affected.

Physics is not my bag, but it still sounds premature to jump from noise to theory. Don't get me wrong, there have been important discoveries that were once thought be just noise, the CMB being a perfect example. However, a highly sensitve grav-wave detector sitting a massive planet with a dynamic interior surrounded by other massive moving objects would seem to be the prime description of a noisy environment for such a piece of equipment. Sometimes the noise is just that, noise.

As I understand it, the theory is that there would be less noise than they're finding. As if they're expecting a high resolution picture, but when they zoom in its already pixelated. Since its so noisy, they're saying it ain't no high rez photo.From the OP:

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In Einstein's view of space-time, it is smooth and continuous. However, it is generally thought that even space-time is built from tiny pixels measuring the smallest possible scale allowed by physics: 10^-35 meters, known as the Planck Length. ...

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...

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The GEO600 experiment can probe down to scales of around 10^-16 meters, but if the noise it is detecting is due to the pixelated nature of space-time, what's going on? GEO600 is probing scales 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 times larger than the Planck Length, so the quantum "fuzziness" is operating at scales much larger than one would have thought

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But that noisy environment *is* what they are looking at.From the OP:

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Einstein's famous realization that space-time warps around massive objects (such as planets and stars) led to the prediction that any massive object moving through space should generate waves in space-time, carrying energy away from the object ...

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Its just noisier than they were expecting it to be. Like a blurry high-rez photo. As if they're saying someone must've taken a picture of the high-rez photo and that's what they're looking at. So they're calling it a "Halograph".Whether they're right or not, I don't know, but that's what I think they're claiming.

I'd be interested to know what other explanations there might be for this possible "fuzziness".The thing I don't like about this sort of story is the correlation to mysticism or metaphysics. This story was very recently presented in an episode of "Horizon" here in the UK (similar to the show "Nova" in the states). A particular colleague at work, who is an enjoyable conversationalist despite leaning heavily towards mysticism, took away from this programme some sort of support or confirmation of her mystical views.The thing I do like about this sort of story is that it seems interesting. It keeps people on their toes. I might even go so far as to say that these sorts of "far-out" notions promote "outside-the-box" thinking. And ultimately, I am encouraged when scientists go looking for mysterious things like this because they often stumble onto other, perhaps more significant things along the way.

Hi Briterican, nice pic. What I find amusing, is that the comparison with pictures ties in with the Buddhist concept that all is illusion, ie we are looking at a picture rather than the universe? Indeed, and the part that interests me is how this affects physics in general and quantum\relativity in particular (comments by cavediver in Message 3 notwithstanding - it would seem we have three levels now, very large, very small and what the heck is that?Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

---

Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)