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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.
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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:06PM
close its the opposite (ish) of the string theory stuff that requires 26, 10, or maybe 11 dimensions.
One way to deal with different forces being much weaker or much stronger than others is to hack in some extra very large or very small dimensions for the obscure forces to travel thru.
another hack that comes in is our shitty human math doesn't "do" string theory in arbitrary dimensions, so as our math improves we get more options. You can't run the equations that work in 11 dimensional theory in 9 for the hell of it.
The way these kind of puzzles traditionally get resolved in physics is arguing is brought to a head and then someone proposes something seemingly ridiculous and simple that subverts all the argument positions. So the "truth" is likely to be there's only 1 dimension or some huge ass prime number or maybe 42 has been the answer all along, or more likely the number of dimensions varies thru space or dimensions have mass or some ridiculous thing that none the less works. I like the idea of there being more than 4 fundamental forces which has certain implications on dimensionality.
The world is weird. There's no obvious reason there couldn't have been 1234567890 subatomic particles instead of the small number we have seen so far. There's no obvious reason why there can't be a fifth sixth or thousandth fundamental force other than we've not seen them so far. All these peculiar small integer numbers, why? Why not an Ackerman function number of distinct particles or similar? Usually physicists won't stand for "just because".
Another personality quirk of physicists is much like Generals and Admirals always fight the last war, just because quantum theory and relativity are beautiful and small (ish) and work so well, is no obligation on the universe for the future not to be much worse. See my traditional bias above. If you want to seriously troll physicists ask them if maybe the universe is just a sucky PITA and there is no unified theory and the topic is just done other than adding decimal places. Famously someone claimed that like a century ago and was wrong, but sooner or later he will be right...