Is Our Universe One Gigantic Hologram?

It's an intriguing question, isn't it? One that has recently made the press after findings were published in the Physics Review Letters journal by an international team of physicists.

But what do they mean by this? Do they mean we and everything we see around us is nothing but a Matrix style illusion and we are controlled by nefarious forces beyond our comprehension? This view being one pushed by some of the more sensationalist newspapers Our entire existence is an ILLUSION asks the British Sun newspaper.

Well thankfully no, that isn't the case. So for now at least we can put our tinfoil hats away at least until our holiday to the edge of the earth rolls round later this year.

The 'holographic principle' as it is called is by no means new, having first been touted as early as the nineties. The latest findings from the team were released after studying the cosmic microwave background radiation (the left-over radiation from the time of the big bang). They found that utilising information gained from modern high power telescopes and sensing equipment and analysing the data from these that the holographic theory fits observations made of the early universe just as well as the widely accepted Big Bang theory.

"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," explained Kostas Skenderis from the University of Southampton.

But if all this isn't real then should I tell my boss to stuff his job?

Again no. What they are saying isn't that reality is an illusion or that none of this surrounding us is real but that the 3d universe we currently observe may, in fact, be derived from the two-dimensional surface of the boundaries of our current universe. Yes, quite the mouthful. Simply put, the information that makes up the universe that we can see and sense in three dimensions is encoded on the two dimensional surface of the universe. We are still who we are and the world still works the same. We can still touch and interact with objects around us. So nothing changes in relation to our current existence.

Whilst the team have not supplied evidence that we are living in such a hologram, what they have supplied is further evidence to support the holographic principle. The hope is that they can reconcile Einstein's theory of general relativity with that of Quantum theory where some of the concepts from the theory of general relativity do not work so well however that would have to be the subject of another article!

So don't go telling your boss to shove it just yet!

Sources:
sciencedaily
Techradar
The Independent
Phys.org
Wikipedia

All pics from pixabay, tweaked where necessary by me