Perceiving the Holographic Universe

A physicist known as Craig Hogan, at a particle physics labratory in Illinois, has unearthed new evidence that all of the information in the cosmos — including you and me — might be encoded on a farflung surface or ‘event horizon’, that encloses Life, the Universe, and Everything.

The theory that the universe is ‘encoded’ is meant to address a conundrum that has puzzled quantum theorists for decades: the amount of information a three-dimensional space can mathematically contain appears not to be dependent on its volume, but rather unexpectedly on its surface area. One rational explanation for this effect is that every bit of matter inside any volume of space cannot exist without having a ‘source point’ reserved for it on the surface of that space. It’s almost as if we are all in some yawning cosmological squash-court-looking-yellow-gridlined room with walls that holographically project the actual contents of world as we see it. (“Computer? Exit!”)

Thing is, if the holographic principle is true, then according to Hogan, the informational density (call it ‘pixel density’) on the surface of the universe must be greater than the density within, analogously to the way that 54 square stickers are required on a Rubik’s cube to cover up the 27 plastic cubes that can occupy its interior. So, he hypothesised, even the smallest three-dimensional ‘thing’, formerly thought to be undetectable, might actually be much larger than the smallest ‘thing’ possible as defined by physics (which you would only find at the extreme edge of the universe, on the walls of the Grand Unified Holodeck). And that would put the smallest 3D thing, surprisingly, just barely within the range of what modern technology can detect.

Based on these calculations, Hogan posited that a gravity wave detector built for an unrelated purpose in Germany would pick up a strange low level of noise, not explicable by any source of interference. And this noise would represent the jaggy pixelation of space itself — provided that space is holographic. (Guess the universe never heard of anti-aliasing!)

Not all sources of interference have yet been eliminated, but Hogan looks astonishingly to have predicted right.

It’s fascinating, the way the mathematics of the so-called three-dimensional universe may work just as well, or even better, as a projection of a two-dimensional matrix. What’s so special, one may ask, about two dimensions? Why not three? Is there something central to our experience of the world, something that exists only in two dimensions?

There is. It’s called human sensory perception.

You might think that you are perceiving the universe in three dimensions, but what you know about the world, what anyone has ever known — all of it — has been passed through two-dimensional filters on its way into your brain. Rods and cones spread over the inner surface of your eye. Vibrations vex the surface of your eardrum. Chemical receptors line the surface of your tongue, or curl scroll-like around the inside of your nose. And what about the sense of touch? Surely, that is three-dimensional! After all, you can actually put your hand to solid things, and feel them. But is it really your hand that is experiencing those things? Or is it a two-dimensional sensory surface we know as ‘skin’?

You have a 2D personal event horizon. Everything you think, know, or remember, has had to pass through it. And the volume of your mind cannot contain more information than can be decoded from your surface, over time. Sound familiar? (Some even think the brain is holographic.)

As this beautiful mathematical symphony called quantum theory — composed by exclusively two-dimensionally perceiving beings as they brilliantly interpret what crosses their event horizons — begins to approach its investigative climax, it increasingly ascribes a similar kind of event horizon to the universe itself.

Two parting questions. Is it really any wonder? And if the universe is behaving very much like a perceptive entity, what could it be perceiving?

[Submitted by The Laroquod Experiment.]