6 ms·

What does this mean? The universe is fake? Is this along the same lines as "everything is a simulation"?

by wodencafe 10y ago

yannis 10y ago
Think of it, as if God is pulling a joke on us or the physicists.
- knightofmars 10y ago
  Why all the down-votes? I'm an atheist and I found this comment amusing.
- durango 10y ago
  Can you elaborate on this slightly? Genuinely interested
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
QuantumRoar 10y ago
Nope, not fake. Just another way to look at it. From the paper: "One of the deepest insights about quantum gravity that emerged in recent times is that it is expected to be holographic [1–3], meaning that there should be an equivalent description of the bulk physics using a quantum field theory with no gravity in one dimension less. One may thus seek to use holography to model the very early Universe."
jameskilton 10y ago
Holographic theory is not the same as the universe being a simulation. I have only done basic reading and following of the idea but as I understand things, the "holographic" universe is about figuring out how our experience is encoded in the fabric of the cosmos. It's another step in trying to find the universal equation that works at the big (gravity / relativity) and the small (quantum). If the holographic information is itself a simulation is another level of discussion entirely!
- smrtinsert 10y ago
  Does this mean it could be theoretically possible to warp between two locations utilizing the 2d properties of the unprojected universe?
hvs 10y ago
IANAP, but no, it's saying that our current 4-dimensional spacetime is a holographic projection from an earlier 2-D phase of our universe. Not that it is currently 2-dimensional.
nabla9 10y ago
Holographic means that the universe appears 3d but is actually 2d. 'appears' means that for us it is three dimensional. 'actually' means that the amount of stuff universe can hold is limited by 2d surface area, not 3d volume. Information/matter contained in universe is in '2d container surface' while interactions between them seem to happen in 3d universe. In other words, the information/matter you can keep in volume of space is limited by it's surface area and not it's volume. If you try to add more, it becomes black hole.
- allemagne 10y ago
  Is it misunderstanding things to say that we're like data on a computer? So from my perspective, two atoms on my body are right next to each other. However, they could be theoretically encoded on opposite ends of the universe's 2d surface?
  - VLM 10y ago
    The analogy no one wants to state in public (because its partially wrong) is holography is like Fourier transforms or x-ray crystallography. Today everyone is very chill with using FT to convert say a pile of voltage and time measurements into frequency/phase and power, and back again, and manipulate either side to see how the other side wiggles in response. This is all basic EE stuff this is how your DSP or software defined radio works (well, not exactly but close enough) Photo negative human scale holograms use monochromatic light to store all kinds of interference pattern stuff into splotches of black and white. If we were (are?) smart enough we could print out something on photo paper and shine a laser on it and a hologram would appear. Another analogy which is pretty decent is its like x-ray crystallography where about half a century ago a popular use of computers was to take a crystalline material and shine xrays thru it making a very modern art ish looking photo of holographic interference patterns (sorta) which would be analyzed by a computer to reverse the transform and turn it back into a 3-d model of the atoms in the crystal. So a lot of this is almost cryptographic hash like in that flipping a couple bits on one side almost always results in a huge change on the other side. So if instead of talking about atoms you take a film and laser hologram of two coffee cups the splotchy hologram film doesn't really have a concept anymore of two coffee cups next to each other, you can't point to a splotch and say thats the cup on the left. You definitely can't slice the film in half and project each and expect one cup on each half, probably you'll have two holograms each with two coffee cups and 3 dB or so worse signal to noise ratio. Badly mixing analogies its like running a crypto algo on 2 bytes of data and asking where exactly the two bytes are in the output. Well, um, if the crypto algo is anything better than ROT13 they're both kinda smeared everywhere across the output of the algo. Really badly mixing analogies its like taking a .scad file storing a 3d object (or stl or cad program of your choice) and encoding it into one of those legacy 2-D QR codes and then asking where in the QR code can you see your 3-d object ... The whole point of this is we kinda sorta have a 2-d holographic picture of the cosmic background radiation sorta. Its a very distinct picture. So whatever crazy simulations we try, we'd best make sure if you hologram-ify the cosmic background radiation, it best look similar to what our telescope have already seen. Kind of like stellar astrophysics isn't just making stuff up, your theories better match what spectrum analysis of star light often actually looks like, if your nifty stellar astrophysics theory predicts Sirius is a red giant or a black hole or something then your theory is messed up because we have lots of data about the real Sirius as opposed to theoretical models.
jbmorgado 10y ago
No, it doesn't mean anything about being a simulation or not, but it imposes lower limits in the information it can contain.

What does this mean? The universe is fake? Is this along the same lines as "everything is a simulation"?

yannis 10y ago

Think of it, as if God is pulling a joke on us or the physicists.

knightofmars 10y ago
Why all the down-votes? I'm an atheist and I found this comment amusing.
durango 10y ago
Can you elaborate on this slightly? Genuinely interested

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

QuantumRoar 10y ago

Nope, not fake. Just another way to look at it. From the paper: "One of the deepest insights about quantum gravity that emerged in recent times is that it is expected to be holographic [1–3], meaning that there should be an equivalent description of the bulk physics using a quantum field theory with no gravity in one dimension less. One may thus seek to use holography to model the very early Universe."

jameskilton 10y ago

Holographic theory is not the same as the universe being a simulation. I have only done basic reading and following of the idea but as I understand things, the "holographic" universe is about figuring out how our experience is encoded in the fabric of the cosmos. It's another step in trying to find the universal equation that works at the big (gravity / relativity) and the small (quantum). If the holographic information is itself a simulation is another level of discussion entirely!

smrtinsert 10y ago
Does this mean it could be theoretically possible to warp between two locations utilizing the 2d properties of the unprojected universe?

hvs 10y ago

IANAP, but no, it's saying that our current 4-dimensional spacetime is a holographic projection from an earlier 2-D phase of our universe. Not that it is currently 2-dimensional.

nabla9 10y ago

Holographic means that the universe appears 3d but is actually 2d. 'appears' means that for us it is three dimensional. 'actually' means that the amount of stuff universe can hold is limited by 2d surface area, not 3d volume. Information/matter contained in universe is in '2d container surface' while interactions between them seem to happen in 3d universe. In other words, the information/matter you can keep in volume of space is limited by it's surface area and not it's volume. If you try to add more, it becomes black hole.

allemagne 10y ago
Is it misunderstanding things to say that we're like data on a computer? So from my perspective, two atoms on my body are right next to each other. However, they could be theoretically encoded on opposite ends of the universe's 2d surface?
- VLM 10y ago
  The analogy no one wants to state in public (because its partially wrong) is holography is like Fourier transforms or x-ray crystallography. Today everyone is very chill with using FT to convert say a pile of voltage and time measurements into frequency/phase and power, and back again, and manipulate either side to see how the other side wiggles in response. This is all basic EE stuff this is how your DSP or software defined radio works (well, not exactly but close enough) Photo negative human scale holograms use monochromatic light to store all kinds of interference pattern stuff into splotches of black and white. If we were (are?) smart enough we could print out something on photo paper and shine a laser on it and a hologram would appear. Another analogy which is pretty decent is its like x-ray crystallography where about half a century ago a popular use of computers was to take a crystalline material and shine xrays thru it making a very modern art ish looking photo of holographic interference patterns (sorta) which would be analyzed by a computer to reverse the transform and turn it back into a 3-d model of the atoms in the crystal. So a lot of this is almost cryptographic hash like in that flipping a couple bits on one side almost always results in a huge change on the other side. So if instead of talking about atoms you take a film and laser hologram of two coffee cups the splotchy hologram film doesn't really have a concept anymore of two coffee cups next to each other, you can't point to a splotch and say thats the cup on the left. You definitely can't slice the film in half and project each and expect one cup on each half, probably you'll have two holograms each with two coffee cups and 3 dB or so worse signal to noise ratio. Badly mixing analogies its like running a crypto algo on 2 bytes of data and asking where exactly the two bytes are in the output. Well, um, if the crypto algo is anything better than ROT13 they're both kinda smeared everywhere across the output of the algo. Really badly mixing analogies its like taking a .scad file storing a 3d object (or stl or cad program of your choice) and encoding it into one of those legacy 2-D QR codes and then asking where in the QR code can you see your 3-d object ... The whole point of this is we kinda sorta have a 2-d holographic picture of the cosmic background radiation sorta. Its a very distinct picture. So whatever crazy simulations we try, we'd best make sure if you hologram-ify the cosmic background radiation, it best look similar to what our telescope have already seen. Kind of like stellar astrophysics isn't just making stuff up, your theories better match what spectrum analysis of star light often actually looks like, if your nifty stellar astrophysics theory predicts Sirius is a red giant or a black hole or something then your theory is messed up because we have lots of data about the real Sirius as opposed to theoretical models.

jbmorgado 10y ago

No, it doesn't mean anything about being a simulation or not, but it imposes lower limits in the information it can contain.