Is the Universe a Hologram?

Greetings ATS,

I've done a quick search around and found some SIMILAR threads, but none linking to the source I'm about to post you. It is a very interesting read and goes on about how the quantum world relates to our universe possibly being a hologram. I enjoyed this article and it is a bit lengthy, but if you have the time you may enjoy it!

Is the Universe a Holographic Reality?

Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm?

In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts. A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

(editting bits and pieces out to paste some material....)

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This article continues to go on about how our brain is able to store immense amounts of data and it is also able to recall it VERY quickly (as we are well aware when we go about our daily lives remembering things from out "past"). The whole hologram idea is very enticing to think about, and it will crack your mind for at least a moment while thinking about what other possibilities our reality can be.

If the Universe is a hologram, it would make you a projection of thus said hologram and you wouldn't be able to accurately comprehend such astronomical anomalies.

reply to post by 9Cib27


Or is the Universe a projection of our own hologram we've created?

Just sayin'

It is interesting to think about i guess, im not a science minded person...but does that basically mean we are not actually 'here' but instead a projection of a 2d plane of some sort at the edge of the universe? and wouldn't that mean that everything is predestined? I think im confusing myself...

Originally posted by Solomons
It is interesting to think about i guess, im not a science minded person...but does that basically mean we are not actually 'here' but instead a projection of a 2d plane of some sort at the edge of the universe? and wouldn't that mean that everything is predestined? I think im confusing myself...

Wow... to be honest I never thought of that idea either...

Perhaps we exist completely outside of this universe eh? I think life is too boring if you aren't blowing your mind every once in a while!

reply to post by Myollinir


Oh yea , this is a GOOD TOPIC!
kind of gives some responses to MY topic...
I'll keep an eye on yours!
It's interesting!

3D information can be encoded onto a 2D surface or even (as is the case in a Truring machine) into a single 1D (linear) "track". We do this all the time with computer simulations. The same is true for higher dimensions too.

Holography is just one of many encoding methods; that happens to be particularly efficient.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the universe is a hologram and is actually a projection from a surface somewhere.

But what this does mean is that we could discern new rules of physics that apply to the holographic representation, and would explain/determine actions in the higher dimensional world represented by the hologram.

We could then extend these ideas in the holographic realm in such a way as to tell us things about the higher dimensional world that are too complex for us to grasp/understand and in so doing extend physical theory.

You could imagine the holographic paradigm as a tool with which we could achieve breakthroughs in our understanding.

Great thread..S&F! ..And yes the universe is a hologram..Welcome to the matrix..

reply to post by Solomons


You know , come to think of it , at every moment a human is neither in past norr in future but in a "something state" called the present...
But the future is there...
It's like driving a car :
the past is RIGHT THERE BEHIND YOU , YOU CAN SEE IT, THE PRESENT IS THERE YOU CAN FEEL IT AND THE FUTURE IS IN FRONT OF YOU !!!
Well then , if the past existed , the present is with you and future allready EXISTS then EVERYTHING IS PRE-DETERMINED RIGHT?!

I'll be "chewing" on this one for this night !

Glad everyone is enjoying the thread!

I've been reading some other people's threads about how the past present and future exist all at the same time, and this article I read kinda reinforces it at the same time.

Who's to tell us what reality really is? I think it can be what we want to make of it....

One thing for sure that we can understand is that our SELF currently exists. For a while it was hard for me to understand how other people can exist apart from me if this is my own reality... but everyone is far too colorful for my mind to create for itself, and I enjoy talkin with all of you and your very original thoughts

Peace everyone, I have to go to work!

You will never wrap your head around the concept..As it is impossible to grasp. What is not impossible to grasp is the now..That is all we truly have is the now..That is the only thing certain is NOW..what is going on this very second is the now..Welcome to the now!

reply to post by Myollinir


Nice, yea there is some very neat quantum physics experiments (double slit experiment) I have watched that kinda of provide some science to it. Particularly one where they shoot a photon, a particle of light, at two openings. The result is pretty amazing and when you try to monitor/observe the photon doing this with sensor, it doesn't happen like it has a mind of it's own, pretty facinating to say the least.

S&F

reply to post by Myollinir


I can't remember where I heard it or read it, but I remember there being a learned theoretical discussion about this sort of thing several years back and they postulated that our whole existence could be nothing more or less than a historical computer simulation on some advanced quantum computer, somewhere in the far distant future.
They considered that in this future it could be possible to create such a simulation where it evolved from scratch so they could 'witness' the birth of their/our universe, the birth of the planets, all the way to their present day in a kind of manipulative realtime.
Such a program could create such an interactive and 'real', history of the world, shedding light on previous unknowns, including everything down to a simulated individual's experiences and thoughts about certain historical events perhaps, to the extent where the simulated individuals would even be 'self aware'.

In such a scenario, I'm sure it would be possible for those simulated, self aware beings (holograms, maybe?) to accidentally lift up their metaphorical rug and spot the 'wires' hidden underneath, thereby exposing their true artificial reality by mistake.
I would also wonder on whether such entities would actually understand what they had found and if they would correctly relate that to their true reality, that being nothing but a teaching aid to a future civilisation?

If true...I hope they've solved hard drive failures by then...! :
Nevertheless, your thread made me remember this story, so I thought I'd share.

I am surprised that Craig Hogan's GEO600 prediction with further adds conjecture in favor of holographic theory hasn't been raised, or perhaps it has and I missed it.

It is quite likely that we are existing within a Universe derived from information processing. Simulation Theory and Digital Physics are intriguing. I have had a nice e-mail chat with Dr. Fred Allan Wolf in regards to being in a scaled up dreaming Universe; which if you know me is what I like to present as a hypothesis for reality theory.

Precognitive dreams in my view are the gilded swan for realizing the scaled up physical dream we exist in right now.

reply to post by OptimisticPessimist


Frank Tipler (PHd) wrote a book called "The Physics of Immortality" in which this idea was explored VERY rigorously.

Originally posted by chr0naut
reply to post by OptimisticPessimist

 

Frank Tipler (PHd) wrote a book called "The Physics of Immortality" in which this idea was explored VERY rigorously.

I was certainly impressed by the ideas behind it all. I may have to go and get that book - Thank You!

It is not that the universe is a hollogram, rather, that our minds perceive the universe in a hollogrammatic fashion.