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Holographic universe experiment begins
- buovjaga 12y agoThe article is from 2013, this is the latest: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/april-2014/searching-for-the-holographic-universe http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/april-2014/searching... Holometer site: http://holometer.fnal.gov/ http://holometer.fnal.gov/
- chton 12y agoThe Fermilab press release the article is based on is dated at today (august 26, 2014): http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/2014/2-D-Hologram-20140826.html http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/2014/2-D-Ho... I've also asked Fermilab directly and they confirm the article is from today, the holometer came online very recently: https://twitter.com/FermilabToday/status/504286464637939712 https://twitter.com/FermilabToday/status/504286464637939712
- gshubert17 12y agoThe August 2014 issue of Scientific American had an article by Afshordi, Mann, and Pourhasan entitled "The Black Hole That Birthed the Big Bang" on a holographic theory of the universe. The article [0] is paywalled, but the preview contains a note from a reader suggesting "the holographic principle shares the same problems of all Idealist notions: rather than relying on evidence, it puts the elegance of the model first as an argument in its favor." I hope the Fermilab experiments provide some useful data. [0] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-black-hole-that-birthed-the-big-bang/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-black-hole-tha...
- chton 12y agoThat's definitely a valid criticism, and one that can be levelled to a lot of popular theories like string theory (where holographic theory originates from) and quantum loop gravity. It's a short-term problem though, since we're more and more capable of searching for the needed evidence.
- xico 12y agoYeah, formalizing thoughts into models, and then testing them to validate or invalidate them is sooo idealist. I wish scientists would only rely on common sense and holy books, trusting their guts to do the right thing.
- marcosdumay 12y agoThe alternative is first collecting empirical results that current theories do not explain, and only then work on a model for explaining them.
- raldi 12y agoDid an admin change the link but forget to take "(2013)" out of the title?
- sp332 12y agoThe URL says 2013 in it, but the page says 2014.
- VLM 12y agoThe FAQ is very good. I wish the experimental section went into a discussion of error sources. There may be unexpected error sources which are just as interesting as the signal they're searching for (gravitational waves, who knows) As one example of an error source, I can predict this thing would make a beast of a seismometer. Which in itself is interesting. http://holometer.fnal.gov/faq.html#experiment http://holometer.fnal.gov/faq.html#experiment
- chton 12y agoI'm very excited about this experiment. Even if it completely fails, we're bound to learn something interesting. Spacetime fluctuations haven't been examined at this level before, so anything they find out is new.
- czbond 12y agoSomeone educate me. Isn't this farcical at the core? If we are living in a hologram, then why is our world visible inside of structures, even when devoid of light (eg: buildings, dark tunnels, etc).
- chton 12y agoThe 'hologram' in holographic physics doesn't refer to the standard 3d optical illusion things. It's a more general term for 3-dimensional information being encoded on a 2-dimensional surface. Just like the hologram you're thinking of constructs a 3d image out of a bunch of 2d dots, so the entire physics of our 3d universe are constructed out of information on an imaginary 2d surface. The optical holograms we see often are an example of holograms in general, but they're far from the only ones.
- bitJericho 12y agoA hologram is literally 3d information encoded in 2d surface. It's actually mind-boggling technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography If you cut a hologram (a real hologram), no matter how you cut it it still shows the whole image, just smaller.
- chton 12y agoIndeed, it's amazing tech. It's even better than you think: size of the image is dependent on projection, not size of the medium. If you cut it it will show the same size as before, but with lower resolution. That is one of the things that blows my mind every time: the less data points there are, the less precise it is, but it's all still complete.
- kamaal 12y agoJust asking out of curiosity. In general is it mathematically possible to encode N-dimensional information in a N-1 dimension surface. Is this true for N=2?
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- iammyIP 12y agohere is a related lecture: "Leonard Susskind on The World As Hologram": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY
- 3rd3 12y agoGreat lecture. When information moves outside of the shell of our observable universe due to expansion, shouldn't we be able to receive Hawking radiation from this process?
- lynndylanhurley 12y agoThere's also a theory that our universe is a 3-D hologram that was spawned from a black hole in a 4-D universe [1]. Would there be any way to test this theory as well? [1] http://gizmodo.com/our-universe-might-just-be-fourth-dimensional-black-hol-1410271260 http://gizmodo.com/our-universe-might-just-be-fourth-dimensi...
- tfb 12y agoThat actually makes a lot of sense. For quite a while, I've been trying to imagine some rules for how some parent system might guide the laws of physics behind our universe, and your comment seems to have lit a bulb in my head. I haven't yet read the source link and I wish I could offer more input on it right now, but I'll have to check it out later.
- dchichkov 12y agoSeems to be a bit dangerous experiment. I remember reading something in some kind of a manual that it is definitely dangerous to put to much information in one place. It gets hungry for more information and then things get complicated pretty quickly.
- dlsym 12y agoSounds like some pretty good description of the library in Pratchett's discworld universe to me.
- dchichkov 12y agoI was referring to a physics textbook, Bekenstein Bound [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound ] and a gravitational collapse. Doesn't look like downvoters had gotten the point through though ;)
- trhway 12y agoand there is kind of option in between - we can be a fractal foam with 2.781 (or 3.083 or whatever) Hausdorff dimension.
- smanuel 12y agoI really enjoyed reading "The holographic universe" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062014102 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062014102) some time ago but how can an experiment which is entirely based on science, physical laws, empirical evidences and so on, prove something which would make all these means... meaningless. This looks like a paradox to me.
- SeeThroughCloth 12y agoNo one has experienced security so, its not like anyone actually cares if its any dimension at all.
- colanderman 12y agoI've never understood why proof that the universe is "holographic" (= 2+1 dimensions of information projected as 3+1) does not fall out of the Schrödinger’s/Maxwell’s field equations. After all, the equations, by their very nature as equations, constrain the dimensionality of possible universes (field configurations) by one, from 4 down to 3. The fourth is always derivable from the other three (e.g., X-Y-Z intial conditions at T=0 define X-Y-Z-T fields for all T). To believe that the universe contains four dimensions of information (i.e., is not a hologram), would imply that the field equations do not universally hold. So what this experiment is actually testing is the truth of QED, which implies holography. Does anyone know why this is not so? (I tried asking a while ago on Physics StackExchange and only got flippant responses.) (As an analogy for CS types: consider the game of Life. It is 3-dimensional (2 space + 1 time), but constrained by the Life equation. So it cannot contain three dimensions full of arbitrary information; only a two-dimensional slice can be arbitrarily instantiated. The analogy is not perfect, as Life is neither reversible nor fully observable from any 2D slice, but it is close.)
- joe_the_user 12y agoGiven that according to quantum mechanics, empty space continually experiences small, random fluctuations[1], I think you can argue that in the normal space, information does on average expand proportionally to the volume encompassed, even if the proportionality constant is rather low (edit: this applies to space-time volume too since the fluctuations are random, distinct on each timeslice). Indeed, I think quantum mechanics would be the only system that guarantees this. I suppose a purely classical system that was entirely reversible couldn't contain information in the time dimension because each moment would imply every other moment. But claiming that any system determined by classical differential equations is "holographic" might be a stretch. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
- cgs1019 12y agoI may be off base here, but I think the distinction is between number of degrees of freedom (what you describe) and density of bits of information. Bekenstein's result showed that the information in a black hole is proportional to its surface area, not its volume. This seems unintuitive in the sense that if you, e.g., stuff more ram chips into a box, its information content seems to increase as a function of volume; the disparity lies in the fact that bits in ram are not as densely packed as in a black hole. EDIT: misspelled Bekenstein
- seoguru 12y agoreminded me of this Michael Talbot interview, author of "The Holographic Universe": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rgYz_BU2Ew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rgYz_BU2Ew Sadly, Mr. Talbot died in 1992, six months after this interview.