The Holographic Universe And You | Society for Scientific Exploration

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Nov.30.2016 03:11

John Prytz (John Prytz)

The Holographic Universe And You

If the Universe is actually a hologram (a 3-D image residing on a 2-D surface), and we’re part of the Universe, then we too are but part of a holographic 3-D image on a 2-D surface! If you are a 3-D hologram, then your brain too is a hologram. Perhaps some of the properties of holograms might be relevant in explaining some of the neurological mysteries of that wetware brain thingy of yours – like memory. You might think it intuitive that a volume could contain more bits of information than the area that surrounds that volume. But a 2-D (area) can store all the information of the 3-D (volume) it represents. Think of it this way, the contents of your immediate 3-D surroundings can not fit into your brain. That 3-D image is being viewed instead on a little 2-D TV screen inside your head. That’s a considerable savings – a compression of information from a large volume to a small area. Our human brain can store lots and lots and lots of bits and pieces (like perceptions and memories) in a relatively little space. It has been scientifically guesstimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorise something on the order of 10 billion bits of information all inputted during the average human lifetime – that’s a lot of bits. Similarly, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage. It’s been shown that one cubic centimetre of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information. So, our amazing ability to rapidly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles.

So if 2-D is reality and 3-D is illusion then that has various implications for life, the Universe and everything. So climb aboard this magical carpet ride; this magical mystery tour into the holographic Universe and the holographic you. Let the game begin.

For starters, you are not inside the Universe, be it a really 3-D or just a holographic 3-D Universe. The Universe is inside you. The Universe is inside you since the ‘reality’ of everything external to you (i.e. – the Universe), is ultimately transmitted to you (to your mind) via your five senses. The Universe or your Universe is therefore only perceived and interpreted by and within your mind – via your brain’s biochemistry. But that brain thingy of yours isn’t big enough to house anything larger than it is – as noted above. Since your mind doesn’t have the room to incorporate the reality of the entire Universe within it, the apparent and alleged 3-D aspect of it is reduced (compressed) to 2-D by your brain projecting it onto an internal mental screen as it were, a screen that exists solely within your mind. Any 3-D image (that’s what you see) that resides on a 2-D surface (the screen within your mind) is just a hologram by any other name.

But wait; in addition to the Universe existing within you, you must also exist within the Universe! That’s because the Universe provides you with all those essentials you need to keep that brain thingy alive and ticking and perceiving. These essentials include such things as food and water and oxygen and gravity and a reasonable temperature range, etc. This is no chicken and egg puzzle since in order for you to house the Universe within your mind; the Universe had to exist to give you existence.

So, we have a real duality going here!

Actually one might argue that one doesn’t need a real Universe, 2-D, 3-D or otherwise at all – you in it and/or it in you. You’re mind can by itself provide all the rich, if imaginary, details needed to keep you occupied and amused. You don’t need any input from your five senses, from the outside world, to conjure up some sort of picture(s) on that 2-D silver screen within your brain. It’s what’s known as an active imagination which operates awake or asleep. Trouble is, the odds are good that imaginary food, water, oxygen, room temperatures, etc. won’t sustain your be-all-and-end-all mind for very long. But then again, if your mind is the be-all-and-end-all of all things, maybe it doesn’t need anything else since there isn’t anything else! Let’s assume that’s not a viable option.

So we have to have a real Universe. The question is, is it actually 3-D or an illusionary 3-D?

DIMENSIONALITY: We go through our entire lives absolutely convinced we exist in a 4-D Universe. 4-D is also known collectively as ‘space-time’ after Einstein merged the concepts of 1-D time and 3-D space with his theories of relativity (general and special). You need a total of four space-time dimensions to specify where you are. There’s the 3-D of space (longitude, latitude and altitude), plus the 1-D of what time is it? It makes a great big difference to your plans whether it’s 10 am or 10 pm; the 13th or the 14th; March or April; 2010 or 2011. But is it really so? With respect to the 3-D of space, there’s left – right; up – down; and forward – back. Time however is only one way and therefore time is somehow different, but that’s another topic entirely*.

Leaving time out of the picture, it’s relatively easy to imagine less than the 3-D of space. 0-D is a point; 1-D is a line (length); 2-D is a square (area); and our familiar 3-D is a cube (volume).

It’s harder to imagine more than 3-D (again, leaving time out of the matrix) although the maths is straight forward enough. The highly theoretical ‘string theory’ or ‘superstring theory’ or ‘M-Theory’ has to invoke a 9-D to 10-D Universe (plus the extra 1-D for time) in order for it to make any sense. Needless to say, it’s remained theoretical-only for decades now! There’s zip, zero, zilch evidence for a more than a tri-dimensional (3-D) Universe (plus the extra 1-D for time).

Rather than invoke more than 3-D; can we postulate our existence in fewer dimensions? Well 0-D is absolutely ridiculous; 1-D isn’t any better. Can we contemplate a 2-D existence - in a 2-D Universe? We’re of course familiar with many 2-D facets in our world.

EXAMPLES: I don’t know what, academically at least, is so odd, or hard to understand about, the idea of ‘Universe as hologram’. Holograms are now a familiar part of our society and our technology.

As an aside, regardless whether or not our apparent 3-D Universe is hologram, is there anything, any phenomena here on Planet Earth that can be interpreted as a hologram? Well I suppose a rainbow might qualify except it doesn’t appear very 3-D like. Mirages come to mind. The one other thing that immediately springs to mind, are ghosts (and all manner of associated ghostly images). I’ve often wondered how it could be that ghosts can apparently walk through walls, but never seem to sink through the floor! Of course if they were some sort of mirage-like hologram that might explain that. But that’s getting off topic.

Anyway, that aside, many ancient civilisations often viewed the sky as 2-D, a sky composed of celestial crystalline spheres that surrounded their world and on the 2-D surfaces of those spheres were embedded the various celestial orbs that rotated around the Earth because the spheres rotated around the Earth.

Some what similar, albeit more current, most people have attended planetarium sessions (themselves an example of simulated reality and pseudo time travel) which project celestial objects onto a 2-D hemisphere above the audience’s heads – now just add holographic technology for a greater illusion of depth.

Artistic paintings are normally 2-D, but good artists provide the illusion of perspective, of depth, to give the impression that you’re looking at 3-D.

Our TV and computer monitors give a 2-D image, as does the big version – the silver screen. Yet you have no trouble interpreting the images as 3-D.

You can see your reflection, and things in the background, in a pane of glass, while at the same time seeing things that are outside that window pane. The window pane, a 2-D surface, is sort of like a hologram – you’re seeing a 3-D picture while looking at a 2-D surface.

If you could ask the characters in an interactive video game or those in your dreams if they are 3-D or 2-D and interact within a 3-D or 2-D (simulated) environment, they’d say ‘3-D’ – but you know better! The characters in your dream don’t walk the 3-D landscape from say the front of your brain to the rear of your brain for the duration. No, the dream drama is played out on the 2-D screen within your mind. They’d also no doubt tell you that they were acting on their own accord (they would insist they had free will) – but again, you’d know better. Your mind is controlling them and their actions. Now you however would also insist that you exist as a 3-D individual within a 3-D Universe and that you have free will. But does that make it so? Go back again and talk to your video or dream characters!

Or, thinking a farther into the future, there’s those “Star Trek” holodecks or holosuites. It isn’t too difficult that idea coming to fruition in the not all that distant future. Maybe not in your lifetime, but not many millennium away either.

Speaking of holograms in the cinema, take a ride back in time to that hologram of Princess Leia and her plea for help, all witnessed by Luke Skywalker, and started the plot ball rolling for that very first “Star Wars” film. Holograms are now taken for granted in many sci-fi features. They were fairly common for example in the “Stargate: SG-1” TV series.

But back to the here and now and in reality, on most credit cards, sometimes as an part of monetary banknotes (as an anti-counterfeiting security measure), sometimes used as a DVD cover, and a lot of other things (greeting cards, etc.) as well, you have the hologram, which again is basically an illusionary appearing 3-D image arising from a special technologically adapted or treated 2-D surface. Various manipulations using lasers also are used to generate illusionary 3-D holographic images. Now apply these now well known holographic technologies – those principles – to the Universe as a whole. If you wish to think of a hologram Universe this way, just imagine super-sizing your “Star Trek” holodeck up to the scale of an entire Universe. But you first have to start with Black Holes.

THE PHYSICS OF IT ALL: It’s suggested that information going into a Black Hole is actually ‘stored’ in the Event Horizon, that two dimensional (2-D) ‘surface’ marking the point of no return that surrounds the Black Hole’s Singularity – whatever that actually is. The Event Horizon concept isn’t difficult to envision – Earth’s crust/oceans is a 2-D surface surrounding the spherical 3-D planet.

Now as more and more stuff enters a Black Hole, the Event Horizon expands accordingly – obviously - just like our crust (area) would get bigger if Earth’s volume increased. The Event Horizon is also the area where Hawking radiation is emitted from. The interesting bit is that information ‘stored’ in 2-D form that is a representation of 3-D information, has a name – we call that form a hologram!

Now say you are inside a Black Hole’s Event Horizon – that’s the wrong side to be on, but this is just a thought experiment. There’s lots of trapped radiation (photons) in there with you. Those photons can struggle up, losing energy with each unit of distance gained, to reach the Event Horizon, but no farther. Their energy has exhausted itself. I gather they can just barely touch and ‘reflect’ off the underside of the Event Horizon and come back down again (in a direction towards the Singularity), picking up the energy again that they expended in their futile gesture of escape. So, you, being also beneath the Event Horizon can see the Event Horizon from the inside via these trapped photons. You can also see beyond the Event Horizon via new photons entering the Black Hole from outside the Event Horizon – photons that will join their trapped or prisoner kin. This is a situation akin – as noted in the ‘examples’ section - to seeing your reflection, and things in the background, in a pane of glass, while at the same time seeing things that are outside that window pane. The window pane, a 2-D surface, is sort of like a hologram – you’re seeing a 3-D picture by looking at a 2-D surface.

Now one could (and people have) suggested that one could consider the entire Universe as being the inside of a Black Hole – after all, nothing can escape from the Universe. You’re as trapped inside our Universe as you would be living on the inside of a traditionally thought of Black Hole. Like a Black Hole, or our Earth, our Universe has a crust or a surface or boundary or an horizon – a rose by any other name…

You can see where this is going! The upshot is that our apparent information rich 3-D environment is actually information somehow stored on the Universe’s 2-D boundary or horizon. In short, the Universe is a hologram.

Anyway, our Universe doesn’t exactly mirror a real Black Hole unless there is an outside to our Universe – a beyond the boundary or horizon that allows stuff to get into our Universe, ultimately trapping it. That actually would be a Universe more akin to the window pane analogy. But even if there is no beyond the boundary of our Universe, our Universe can still be thought of as a hologram – it applies in either case, just like an Event Horizon is a hologram to mythical inhabitants inside a Black Hole.

So, Black Holes residing inside a Black Hole Universe, which maybe residing inside…

Russian dolls within Russian dolls within Russian dolls within Russian dolls.

As an aside, the Universe as hologram scenario doesn’t invalidate the expanding Universe scenario, as one can have an expanding area as opposed to an expanding volume.

QUESTIONS (AND ANSWERS): If the Universe is a hologram, then presumably our Moon, the planets Mars and Venus, as well as Titan (moon of Saturn) are holograms too. So, how can one land space probes, as we’ve done, on a hologram? The answer, I suspect, is that our space probes too were holograms, so it wasn’t as if you had a solid 3-D object land on an illusionary 3-D planet or moon. Both the probes and the planets were illusionary 3-D objects; or conversely, both were (or are) solid albeit 2-D objects.

How can you have a solid 2-D surface when anything that’s solid must have a third dimension to it? The answer seems to be that the operative word here is ‘surface’ and the surface, itself, is 2-D even if there is structure beneath it.

EVIDENCE: You’d be aware that if you examine an image at an every closer and closer detail, the image will become fuzzier and fuzzier or grainier and grainer. The newspaper picture breaks up into little individual black and white dots – granulation, or noise in the signal; the TV picture is just a series of pixels at high magnification. So too, if our Universe is a hologram image, that image should get ever fuzzier and start to break up when resolving it to an every greater and greater level of magnification. Unfortunately, ordinary astronomical instruments aren’t powerful enough to see the required level of magnified detail that would suggest whether the Universe’s alleged hologram imagery begins to break down and become granulated. But, one type of instrument just might have (the required resolution), and just might have (found evidence that the Universe is a hologram).

The technique in question is instrumentation designed to detect gravitational waves, something predicted by Einstein’s excursions into relativity theory. One such instrument or research project is called GEO 600, located in Hanover, Germany. Gravitational wave detectors like GEO 600 are essentially fantastically sensitive rulers that can probe the smallest unit of space-time which brings the microscopic quantum structure of the Universe within reach of current experiments.

Now GEO 600 has detected unexplained noise in the signal it’s actually designed to detect. This noise matches the loss of resolution prediction of what one would be expected to detect if the Universe were but a holographic image viewed at extreme resolution, resolution GEO 600 is capable of. Interestingly, the prediction of this ‘holographic noise’ was made by Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, and director of the Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics. When Hogan first realised this, he wondered if any experiment might be able to detect the holographic blurriness of space-time. That's where the GEO 600 comes in. GEO 600 has come across the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time ceases behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into ‘grains’, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in.

According to Hogan, "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram." "If you lived inside a hologram, you could tell by measuring the blurring," Hogan says.

The initial match between what holographic theory suggests, and actual observation, while interesting, is still tentative enough that no one is yet claiming absolutely that GEO600 has found 100% proof positive evidence that we live in a holographic universe. It is still way too far too soon to say absolutely. A mundane source of the noise is still a very real possibility. However, further investigations are planned, so stay tuned!

CONCLUSION: I can take neither credit nor blame for such an idea as that given above. You’ll find it in many relatively recent physics, astrophysics and cosmology books and articles, often as a subject in its own right – see the further readings section. The concept of our Universe as a hologram is certainly one of those ‘far out, star scout’ ideas, but all it takes is a bit of thinking outside of the box – not that that makes the idea right. But, it’s a concept worth playing around with, just for fun if nothing else.