3 ms·
The holographic principle states that all the information contained within a region of space can be determined by the information on the surface containing it.
by fernly 12y ago
The holographic principle states that all the information contained within a region of space can be determined by the information on the surface containing it. Mathematically, this means the volume of space can be represented as a hologram of the surface, hence the idea’s name.
I find this extremely hard to accept. His simplified example -- a hotel doorman can know the number of people entering and leaving, hence the surface (doorman) can encode information about the volume (hotel) -- does not help. For the doorman/surface to know everything about the volume/hotel, she would require (1) to have been continuously present from the inception of the volume and (2) to have some means or medium of encoding the information about everything that entered or left the volume. Such a recording medium itself has to be error-free and persistent, and it would seem to me must itself have nonzero volume -- which creates an infinite regress of a recording surface on the recording surface of the...
Maybe somebody can clarify?
- StandardFuture 12y agoI have not read the article but I doubt the analogy was meant to be an exact explanation (thus the reason it is an analogy and not a mathematical definition). But for those who are familiar with calculus the notion of holography is related to the mathematical ideas and formulations of Stokes Theorem (and in fact Calculus in total) [0][1]. :) The holographic principle (iirc) is commonly discussed (in physics) in relation to / in terms of ADS/CFT duality[2]. Where the 'boundary' of some quantum gravity theory (such as formulated by a string theory) on anti-desitter (ADS) space is a conformal field theory which is equivalent to a real world quantum field theory (if in the correct number of dimensions). As far as I understand it, it allows a way for string theorists to 'map' particular string theories (in a certain dimension) to an actual quantum field theory, using the ADS/CFT duality. In other words, it provides a possible key to doing real world physics with string-theoretic methods. Some commentary from an actual physicist would be most welcome, though. :) [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes'_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes'_theorem [1] https://www.khanacademy.org/math/multivariable-calculus/surface-integrals/stokes_theorem/v/stokes-theorem-intuition https://www.khanacademy.org/math/multivariable-calculus/surf... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT_correspondence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT_correspondence