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posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 31 2017, @12:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the are-we-really-here? dept.

A UK, Canadian and Italian study has provided what researchers believe is the first observational evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram.

Theoretical physicists and astrophysicists, investigating irregularities in the cosmic microwave background (the 'afterglow' of the Big Bang), have found there is substantial evidence supporting a holographic explanation of the universe -- in fact, as much as there is for the traditional explanation of these irregularities using the theory of cosmic inflation.
...
A holographic universe, an idea first suggested in the 1990s, is one where all the information, which makes up our 3D 'reality' (plus time) is contained in a 2D surface on its boundaries.

Professor Kostas Skenderis of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton explains: "Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions (and your perception of time) in fact emanates from a flat two-dimensional field. The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card. However, this time, the entire universe is encoded!"

So there is a reason you feel like you're living in the Matrix.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @01:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @01:37AM (#460921)

    Has anyone actually measured this though? I don't think so. These purely deductive exercises are interesting, for sure. However, especially if we know GR is incompatible with QM, these long chains of deductions and assumptions that lead to counterintuitive results should be taken with a grain of salt.