Hologram Universe: Exploring Susskind & t' Hooft's Theory

[Gear300]

I took a look at the back of a book titled "The Black Hole War" by Leonard Susskind. The last sentence of the commentary or summary stated that Susskind and t' Hooft showed that everything in the physical world is actually a hologram projected from the farthest realm of space. What is the theory behind this and what is meant by it (other than what the statement explicitly states)?

 

[atyy]

This is known as the AdS/CFT or gauge/gravity conjecture. Stuff happening in a spacetime which includes (stringy) gravity can be fully described by a quantum field theory without gravity in a spacetime of fewer dimensions.

Scientific American article by the discoverer of AdS/CFT:
http://homepage.mac.com/photomorphose/documents/qpdf.pdf

Slides from Maldacena's talk at this year's Marcel Grossman Meeting:
http://www.icra.it/MG/mg12/en/..\talks_plenary\Maldacena.pdf

A more mathematical review by Horowitz and Polchinski:
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0602037

About some recent steps towards proving the conjecture:
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v2/79

 

[Naty1]

That's an excellent book ..lots of interesting insights.

The book is about Hawking "information is lost in a black hole" and Susskind and t"hooft work that says,no, the information is displayed as a hologram on a boundary just outside the event horizon. Everything inside the black hole (three space dimensions) appears on the enclosing event horizon surface (two diemensions)...as you look at ever larger and larger surfaces (horizons) out to the "edge of the universe" everything going on inside is displayed on the surface.

This is related the the Beckenstein Hawking entropy/event horizon calculations showing (heat and radiation) information (in bits) in a black hole is related to the surface area (in Planck size increments) of the event horizon. Among the implications are that information content and transfer rate is dependent on surface area and that space (and time) are discrete via Planck size units...

 

[SimonA]

One day they will teach children that the common hollogram was the clue to understanding the nature of the 'multiverse'. They will then be shown how that relates to the mysteries of quantum physics first highlighted in Youngs Slit experiment.

The emperor has no clothes, but the cult of proffesional science is too blinded by disintegration to have the ability to see. The truth can only be found in the broad horizon, the empirical data is too vast for anyone to join it all.

 

[Gear300]

The emperor has no clothes, but the cult of proffesional science is too blinded by disintegration to have the ability to see. The truth can only be found in the broad horizon, the empirical data is too vast for anyone to join it all.

Its not in my intentions to ruin any artistic intentions you had with the last two lines...but what were you trying to say there?

 

[SimonA]

Its not in my intentions to ruin any artistic intentions you had with the last two lines...but what were you trying to say there?

Only that science has become too specialised, and maybe (dare I say it), too empirical. Popper is right objectively, but researchers are by definition subjective. The only effective medicine for subjectivity is an uncompromised hunger for the truth.

Relavatism and post modern legitimalisation of everyones views and theories is damaging the once amateur persuit of science. But there is no room for amateurs anymore, perhaps partly driven by crazy people legitimised by the www.

If only we could find a way where speculation could be clearly identified as either nonsense or potentily promising, the whole process would be far easier for all of us.

The truth is the only interesting thing. The atom as a solar system was useful. But the truth is far more interesting...

 

[Naty1]

Simon did not mention other annoying aspects of "science"...politics, entrenched "experts" and funding, for example. Do you think the current Obama administration in the US, for example, will fund anything related to fossile fuels...or nuclear energy...unfortunately there are fads in science just as in other fields...fortunately a few "diehards" kept working on "silly" ideas like string theory and even general relativity when it was new and was met with violent condemnation by more traditional scientists...

When Einstein was studying in college his electromagnetics professor would not teach Maxwell's equations despite their widespread acceptance...Einstein was apopletic about that and is likely a reason he rebelled in college and became a bit of a pariah for a while...

 

[crackjack]

When high end stock trading has become very technical with black-box algorithms etc (when earlier it used to be dependent on intuition alone and anyone with a little bit of this can join the trade), it is only natural that physics also became more technical and farther from the reach of any surfer-turned-theoretical-physicist.

Also, in hindsight, it may look as though even a smart middle/high-schooler could have contributed significantly to classical mechanics and calculus, but during Newton's time these were out of reach of even some very smart colleagues of Newton.

 

[SimonA]

I don't understand your point Crackjack. You seem to have the mindset of Pope Urban VIII in trying to deal with Galileo, or maybe Lord Kelvin's reputed statement of 1900 - "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement".

From my perspective we as humans view the universe in an upside down way. Where as the hologram shows us how a type of reality can be encoded such that it can project more dimensions to one of our senses, it seems that our reality is encoded such that it can hide dimensions from our senses. Even from our measuring instruments.

We've been given such great abilities that we can see clues to these dimensions, but we still choose to see them as somehow rolled up in very small points. We're too arrogant to even imagine that it could be a conceptual problem, rather than a 'size' problem.

This Cartesian approach to dimensionality is a great example of this over specialisation of science that is damaging the pursuit of scientific truths. Minkowski/De Sitter space should have changed our thinking, not just our formulas. We should not be inventing bandages like "dark matter" and "dark energy" to explain anomalies.

Considering the way we ignore the fundamental questions posed by Young's slit experiment, and yet invent any old nonsense to explain recent anomalies (like the speed of galaxies rotation and the speed of the universes expansion), can you blame me for wondering whether the developers of my iPhone are far more talented than the whole establishment of modern physics ?

I only say that because I care more about the search for truth in physics than I do about my iPhone. But it is ridiculous that science is spending so much on trying to validate bad theories, and so little on broad spectrum enquiry.

Its clear to anyone that quantum non-locality could be explained by "hidden variables". There is also good evidence for extra dimensions, which could be the reality behind the hidden variables. And yet when we consider the anomalies that lead us to invent dark energy and dark matter, the specialists investigating it seem to completely ignore how these 'hidden from our instruments and senses' dimensions would interact with those we are more familiar with. The "hierarchy problem" where the force of gravity appears too weak is surely a key clue to the questions that lead to 'dark matter' theories.

Please give me a reason to doubt my speculation...

 

[SimonA]

No response is a kind of reply. I guess I need firm predictions

So I'll try to make some;

- the Higgs bosun will not be found. It won't turn up in the LHC nor at any other energy.
- dark matter will not be found as some kind of standard but unknown particle (crumbly or wimpy or whatever)
- the currently accepted laws of science will not explain dark matter or quantum non-locality until extra dimensions are de rigour across physics
- all extra dimension theories that postulate rolled up dimensions in a Cartesian fashion will be shown to be nonsense
- extra dimension theories that point to fundamental quantum properties will thrive.
- people who find safety in the quantum formalism, but don't strive to understand the reality behind youngs slit experiment, will never move anything forward in physics significantly.
- the nature of the big bang will confound us long after we have understood many of these things far better.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

The "The Universe as a Hologram" article is a good layman explanation by Michael Talbot.
http://twm.co.nz/hologram.html

 

[SimonA]

Many thanks Greg. Talbot takes his speculation way too far for me, but there can surely be little doubt that there is something in there that mainstream theorists are missing.

Einstein saw that Bohm was on a closer track than the Copenhagen interpretation. We even have the likes of Aspect's supposed proof of Bell's inequalities being driven by Einsteins concerns about giving up on actually understanding quantum physics.

Some things, such as the big bang, are simply unexplainable, unless you invent even more unexplainable and unverifiable theories. But there are things that we have the ability to understand logicaly, that we seem too afraid to approach.

Can anyone tell me why our first aim in particle physics is not to explain youngs slit experiment?