Fermilab is Building a 'Holometer' to Determine Once and For All Whether Reality Is Just an Illusion

A hologram? Really? And there serious scientists working on this??? Why is popsci even posting this?

Physics is one of my favorite subjects, but this is ridiculous! Most scientists refuse to believe in creation and would rather think the universe just happened to come together just perfectly for complex systems. And yet simultaniously they turn around and wonder whether reality is an illusion to begin with. And so what if life or the whole universe is an illusion? Did our fake existance come as part of a perfect evolution of illusion thats fooled us all along? Or did God himself make the illusion, and why? Really people, if we have to ask these kinds of questions, maybe its time to back off on the Starbucks in the morning.

Physics is one of my favorite subjects, but this is ridiculous! Most scientists refuse to believe in creation and would rather think the universe just happened to come together just perfectly for complex systems. And yet simultaniously they turn around and wonder whether reality is an illusion to begin with. And so what if life or the whole universe is an illusion? Did our fake existance come as part of a perfect evolution of illusion thats fooled us all along? Or did God himself make the illusion, and why? Really people, if we have to ask these kinds of questions, maybe its time to back off on the Starbucks in the morning.

@Blaxspear

Science is founded upon questioning everything. If you become complacent and refuse to question even the most basic and fundamental systems then you become just like a religion. Science = Fact. Religion = Faith. We must take it on faith that what the perceive is real is actually real, even though we already factually know that our senses let us down all the time.

wha.....??
I think I just heard something rupture in my head.

So, they're looking to see if spacetime interacts with the speed of light, causing fluctuations...ok, I can mostly process that.

But, what I can't comprehend (in the slightest) is the "intertwining of time and depth" to create the illusion of a 3rd dimension...isn't depth the 3rd dimension? If depth is present for time to interact with, doesn't that mean that there is a 3rd dimenstion present?

Or would this mean that, if proven, the "3rd dimension" that we experience is nothing more than a manifestation of time's effect on our visual perception? (ie, depth is our visual perception of time, and if time slows as you near a black hole, your dimensional perception would likewise be effected?)

Anyone wishing to mock me for my lack of understanding is welcome to do so, but only after explaining all of this to me in great detail. ;-)

To vertical-hover; All scientific questions should be ignored in the presence of your god, isn't that right? As far as the importance of the experiment, to know if our universe is truly a 2-dimensional membrane attached to bulk space, one would be compelled to acknowledge the existence of other universes. Some might even claim god created THEM too....

The article makes the assertion that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. For those of us who talk in real time to alien civilizations at 80,000 light years out, this comment makes no sense. Furthermore, there are other hyperspace co-dimensions with different speeds of light, such as 1 meter/second, which makes space-time very wavy like water sloshing around as you move through it. Since this subspace geometrical manifold connects all points in the universe, it is possible to bypass the speed of light and thus converse in real time. All our physics constants come from this tetrahedral geometry. For example, a circle of radius proton mass, centered on the Planck mass at the base constant (h/c) is tangent to a line, at the Cabibbo angle of 12.7 degrees, which intersects the up quark mass at the down quark wavelength at the 45 degree base line. The tetrahedron diagram also shows that the electron is the proton. In talking with the designers of the Juliet crop circle, they confirm that the electron is the proton by adding, "That is a good observation for your level of science." For them it is old hat but for us it is a step forward. And then the Collider is looking for parallel dimensions when they have already been discovered years ago. Creating wormholes into co-dimensions has been done and verified by the neighbors who live there. Dimensional relativity, with a time dilation of 200,000 to 1 has already been discovered. Teleportation has already been discovered. Space-time curvature lift and propulsion has already been discovered using low speed-of-light hyperspace energy that can be curved easily using electromagnetic fields. There is this tremendous gap between what has already been done, and what the scientists are doing. The main problem to this development is that the US government claims that hyperspace does not exist. For those of us who have been in hyperspace, this is completely false.

@ Vertical-Hover
It's not saying our existence is, it doesn't even imply it. It's saying that how we see the universe isn't how it really is. It's to help put forward the theory that the universe is one of many all layered upon each other, existing on different membranes that come into and out of contact together to form many different realities.

I WILL continue to enjoy my third dimension, thank you very much!

@JohnStClair:

My goodness. What color was it?

I really enjoy reading about new fringe sciences that nobody really believes or wants to believe. Everything we ever thought we knew about science has been evolving since we began to stare at the stars. If you can say for certain that something is lunacy then you are a better man than I. Something kind of related to this is HOLOGRAPHIC THEORY, or THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE. Me myself being a big kid at heart and wanting to believe in Santa Clause I enjoy reading this type of stuff. Check it out its pretty interesting. I would give a link to my favorite article about this but I can't find it because the IT deparment has blocked me out of the sites here at work but there are several articles about this. They aren't really all the same.

@JohnStClair

(o__o)......urm.........did the Kool-Aid taste a little strange?

You have to be a highly-trained mathematician to really understand what the article is talking about. I doubt any of us commenters, blaxpear particularly, are sufficiently trained in math to even begin to intelligently critique the ideas presented in the article. But boy howdy does it sound cool.

@SJak

"Science is founded upon questioning everything. If you become complacent and refuse to question even the most basic and fundamental systems then you become just like a religion. Science = Fact. Religion = Faith. We must take it on faith that what the perceive is real is actually real, even though we already factually know that our senses let us down all the time."

That's Rich! Too bad your first and last sentences contradict the rest of what you say. But this isn't the place for that discussion.

@ Anyone else...

Anyone know where I could look up a little more about the theory they are basing this thing off of? I bet there's a ton of topology there which would be really interesting to look at.

I would not try to make fun of holographic universe theory because it seems completely counter-intuitive.
Because the main theories in physics get more and more counter-intuitive already if you learn about the history, but nonetheless they have great evidence to back up.

For example Newton's gravity theory seemed ridiculous to people at first because of "action-at-a-distance" issue. Later Einstein's relativity seemed ridiculous because relative time, bending of space-time. Later quantum theory seemed ridiculous because of particles being multiple places at once, communicating instantly no matter the distance (entanglement) etc.

I would say just wait until the results of this experiments come out before saying it is stupid!

I understand that all of us and the universe is like a picture and what we think is time is the event of moving
from one picture to the next just as in the old days of celluloid. Perhaps we are a CD and our time is the actual track.

I'm honestly worried about JohnStClair. I'm hoping that he's "joshing" us but realizing that that kind of talk only happens in mental wards of hospitals around the world... I didnt think they allowed access to internet in mental wards...

I think a better question to ask is, who is funding this research? Once you find out, maybe you can get rich selling them some beach front property on the moon. I think this work is right up there with building dark matter detectors. First of all if you have no idea what dark matter is how can you build a detector for it? But then again, what can you expect when so many of these scientists believe that the totality of our universe started with a big bang. I'm not saying that a big bang didn't happen. It just didn't happen the way it is being portrayed. I believe whatever caused the big bang is only a small natural event in the larger scheme of things. I was taught that the universe is infinite and I still believe that it is. I also believe that the visible universe that we currently estimate to be about 14 billion years old is also about right. That means I believe there's a lot more to the universe than what we can see. After all no matter how big we perceive our visible universe to be, compared to infinity it is hardly noticeable.

Everything in nature has a life cycle. By that I mean a beginning an ending and a life in between. Stars have a life cycle, so that means our visible universe has a life cycle. At some future point all the star fuel in every galaxy will be used up. I have seen estimates that that will happen sometime between 250 – 400 billion years. Now I ask all to think about this. What about the life cycle of black holes? All those supermassive black holes at the center of every galaxy are still going strong and they will be around for such an incredible amount of time, that the complete life cycle of our visible universe would hardly be noticed as an eye blink amount of time. Have I got anybody wondering what kind of ending a black hole might come to?

How big would a black hole have to be before it destabilized into a big bang? You just have to know I am thinking all the mass of all the stars and star fuel in our visible universe. I will call that size black hole a behemoth massive black hole. A behemoth massive black hole is one that has supermassive black holes in orbit around it, and a big enough one would have hundreds of billions maybe into the trillions of supermassive black holes around it, by the time it got big enough to reach critical mass and recycle it by destabilizing into a big bang.

Lancewen: "First of all if you have no idea what dark matter is how can you build a detector for it?"

a) Even though nobody detected dark matter particles before, some of the basic properties they must have is known.
b) There are theories about what dark matter actually is.

So it is possible to build different types of detectors to test those ideas. And if any type of detector fails to find any then it would allow correcting existing theories or come up w/ better ones.

If nobody builds any detector then all ideas about dark matter would stay as unproved theories.

@Lancewen.

I don't believe your theory is 100% correct. Quantum mechanics shows us that black holes emit Hawking Radiation. They decay, albeit VERY, VERY slowly. Most matter will fall into the nearest black holes (think stars in a galaxy being pulled toward the galactic center) while becoming more and more distant from neighboring galaxies, the expansion due to dark matter. This Hawking Radiation, or, "decay of matter" and the expansion of the universe means that it will "fizz out" and become a dark and quiet place at some point (roughly 10^100 years+ from now).

Nor do I believe that black holes can "de-stabilize." Is a black hole somehow going to explode and defeat its own gravity? If light cannot escape a black hole and matter can't travel faster than the speed of light, then how will it come apart? They're not like supernovae, which rely on a collapsed iron core and the neutrons within it to "bounce" the rest of the star matter back into space.

Here's a good description of the stages of the universe and, hopefully, provides more of an answer to your theory: http://www.fathom.com/course/10701055/sessions.html

Or a shorter version if you'd like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ages_of_the_Universe

fb36,

Thank you for clarifying. There are instruments being designed right now that will be able to detect the PRESCENCE of dark matter, not to determine WHAT it is... yet.

Would you know what makes the cold air come out of the vents in your car if you've never heard of A/C before? Probably not, but you could make a damn good guess as to what's causing it by using logic and having an understanding of an engine's components. Poor analogy, I know, but there will come a time when we'll be able to "pop the hood" and take a look at dark matter. :D

Bagpipes100
See holometer.fnal.gov per the Fermilab link at the end of the article. It does a better job of explaining it than the article.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All the above lesser minds questioning the higher minds
come on guys these are ppl who's life revolves around science not ppl who read an online science magazine once in a day(ya ya u would be doing something else also apart from that)...

Even Einstein would have faced such critics like the above ones,please go thru the theories and mathematical deduction
(if u r small brains can comprehend them) then question them.

by the way hope they come up with something and The matrix may be revealed!!!!

@JohnStClair, youz be trollin'

Anyone seen this action?

www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/52664/Must_see___Project_Blue_Beam___real_time_holograms/

I'm not really up on this holographic theory of the universe, but this seems to suggest ways around things like dark mater and energy. The little I recall of this is that our 4d existence is "really" playing out on a 2 or 3 d membrane at the edge of our cosmic horizon. Or something. It seems to me that the biggest obstacles to FTL are Negative energy and how we have no idea how to make any. If it can be shown to be a "shadow" effect of this odd theory...maybe a work around is possible.

In fact, if there are only 2d separating all points in our apparent 3d space then this might allow one heck of a short-cut. Suppose any separation can be re-phrased as the 2/3 power (even 1/3)of its apparent value. Assume further the basic unit is small like the Planck scale, and a universe of distance is made thin as a sheet of paper. Far thinner. Like the classic meme of a wormhole as folded paper, but obviating the need for impossibly negative mass to form it. Or I'm only rambling.

It is the human brain who makes the illusion, this science itself is the illusion wich now is looking for a illusion....hahaha.. The truth is always here en we will find this again. Everything runs in infinite cycles with no beginning and no end. We look in the past but there is no past, everthing is always here and now. Everthing is a whole. Looking to something seperated from this whole as a whole is the illusion. Explaining something therefore is unique only fore the human, he does this with words and can only be done in comparisation to something else... but it will never be something else then what it is.
This illusions where all introduced by a disfunctioning between the left and right parts of the brain. It is due to the ''corpus callosum'' wich literally means... calcified body. There is no good communication anymore between the collective consciousness and the individual consiousness of the human brain. Because of this evolution jump we lost our roots from the whole and that's why we are looking for answers. First this was only for trying to survive, so we could make predictions and protect ourself.
Have you ever seen an animal asking himself questions of what he is doing here or how he is functioning ?
Al this was already known in the past and al this was left for the future in comparisations (holy books)... but we did not understand what was written because we projected it on ourself. This little group of people from the past who left this for us knew that this was also good because we needed to go on with trying to survive for the eternity of the kosmos. We had to grow to a human plaque on the earth to give the earth the little more energy she needed to run here cycles around the sun.
The expanding part of the kosmos is already almost on his return and this happens when the shrinking part of the cosmos is going to expand... this is what we called the Big Bang an this is what will go on in enternity.
But before this earth falls back on the sun we will give here with the last ''nuclear'' world war the energy to run here cycles for a thousand years.
If somebody wants to know the truth for himself you can visit this website whit al lot of information... I know it will at first give more questions but if you proceed you maybe finaly see the big picture and i hope it will leed to eccaptance of... It is what it is.

http://www.wetenschap-eindtijd.com/homepage_english/homepage_english.html

Its an englisch summary because the original site is in dutch...
goodbye and i will type this again in the next cycle.

The universe is a like waste management. Black holes are just the garbage men.

JohnStClair....If I am willing to believe in illusion of reality, then I believe you too. Using electromegnatic energy/field, I think space exploration is somewhat easy. People forget Tesla, if only he was allowed to do explore his brain. He could do crazy things using only earth's electromegnatic field, imagine what would our lives be like if we learned from him and used his technology in space, around our gas giants, and around the sun.

we need to figure out, if our reality is an illusion, what is the maxium pixel quality. After all, particles are pixels.

@dontbother - There is no need for people to claim that God created them as the Bible is pretty clear that he did. Genesis 1:1, Psalms 45:12, Colosians 1:16, Revelation 4:11, ect...

I Like Grapes !!!

Science = Fact? Since when? Think back on all the FACTS you were taught just a few years ago in grade school. The FACT that dinosaurs are cold-blooded reptiles for example. The new FACT is that they were warm-blooded and related to birds! Based on what so-called facts? Every 5-10 years everything we are taught based on scientific FACT is turned upside down and inside out. No,you have to have FAITH to accept all the scientific FACTS that are thrown at you every day. Wait, doesn't that make science a RELIGION?

My book says the Flying Spaghetti Monster made us. Who's book is right? Can you design a scientific experiment, such as the experiment we read about in this article, to prove or disprove the existence of your god? Perhaps you can eliminate the Flying Spaghetti Monster as the creator? RAmen.

@dontbother

Welcome, fellow pastafarian! All hail His Noodliness!!

@dontbother

Nothing good ever came out of belittling someone for believing in a single (or multiple) all powerful, omnipotent being. The fact that you think you must belittle people who believe as such reflects a flaw in your character and thus, perhaps, in your ability to be compassionate towards others.

A truly enlightend person has no need to belittle those who view the world and their existence through faith as opposed to science as such behavior is beneath them.

You know what that means if they prove it is 2 dimensions.

The World IS Flat!

@jaydub

You're being hypocritical. You can't bash JohnStClair by comparing him to someone in a mental ward and then tell another not to belittle someone else. But then again, most religious people are hypocritcal, so thus I can't really blame you :)

Anywho, what a great article! Who knows what will come of it. Without forward thinking, out of the box people like this, we wouldn't have any of the advances that we have today. I'm excited to see the end results!

@Vertical-Hover, Why be upset my man? IF they prove that this Universe is actually not all there is, but is a construct, possibly even a Hologram projection of something even MORE real, then you end up with people having to explain how it is that Moses and Paul the Apostle predicted this 5000 and 2000 years ago.

Some thoughts to consider:

In speaking of the fact that the eathly tabernacle and priests of his day were performing rituals that were "Holographic" representations of REAL Heavely realities.

Hebrews 8:5 They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."

this is addressed again in explaining both the temporal and Eternal nature of Christ’s sacrifice for sins:

Hebrews 9:23 "23It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. "

then there's this now common knowledge Scientific fact later on when Paul is explaining the nature of faith

Hebrews 11:3 3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

what is seen is in fact made of entirely invisible things (to the naked eye, just as instruments as required to see the invisible elements that comprise visible things such as atoms, electrons etc, faith is required to see the invisible force that made even those)

This isn't my personal wonky interpretation of these verses, C.S. Lewis very much held to this idea and wrote about it extensively, it's also ALL through his children’s fiction. Read the "Last Battle", it's tremendous on this point, that England wasn’t the "real" England, neither was Narnia the "real" Narnia, but instead that the joys they contained were shadows of real things, Eternal things. He called the earth the "Shadow lands".

Don’t you see that almost every single article on this site is a constant awe and wonder at some new piece of Divine Genius that Scientists are unlocking from Creation?? All advances in nano tech are based on copies of things in Creation, this is a note worthy 180 from the prevailing idea for many years(a la Darwin) that life was so simple and even simplistic that human tech would far surpass it. Anyone who says that the shift to looking INTO Creation for high tech ideas isn’t a new and utterly surprising development is just be disingenuous. Human tech is a poor, clunky shadow of Creation, and Creation a poor clunky Shadow of Heavenly things, Eternally real things!! It’s taking the most brilliant minds on the planet to unlock the mysteries found in the simplest and most humble of animals, yet men harden their hearts and refuse to give God the Glory He is due. Massively complex Information does NOT self generate. Anyway, I digress, what I’m saying is, Science is your friend, inquiry is your friend, questions are your friend.

Remember Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse”

People have choices man, some people choose not to see, don’t let it frustrate you 

How does this relate to the Double-Slit experiment?

The observer is not apart from the observation. The experimenter is not apart from the experiment.

The observer simultaneously plays a part in creating the reality he is observing. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of consciousness states that no pure measurement is possible without creation. Physicists who deal in quantum mechanics state: “You cannot (objectively) observe something without changing it in the process.”

So then, to truly conduct this experiment wouldn't you have to also not observe the experiment and also observe the experiment and see if there are any differences?

My mind is fried from thinking about this.

I think some people are confused by some of the terminology in this article. An illusion is an experience that's different from reality in some way. The idea isn't that the universe is somehow fake or nonreal. These scientists are only suggesting that space is organized differently than we experience it.

st is probably experiencing an inability to simplify complex concepts to simple terms. The hebrew work is nishtar. It's common with people who understand the unknown. A fine ilne between genius and instanity.

Holographic universe = all information is contained within every piece of matter. All matter reacts in a quantum state. (yes faster then light, no predestination, but statistical likelyhoods,and certain immuatables/unchangables)

Tryin to simplify the rest..
The universe is bangin all the time, there is no one big bang but many, we only observe the nearest such event, really? the universe is 14 billion years old is like saying it's 4000 years old. Please people, infinity is not simple.
Try a white hole theory. Or the story of the ten blind scientists and the elephant.

God always comes from the sky , in every culture, rationally what would come from the sky with lights and information unlike anything we have ever seen? If i was a caveman your suv would look like god. I wish our vehicles were of intelligent design.

good on delaterius, speed of light , twiggster, fb36!

as for god, yes aliens believe in him too. The 100-400 b stars (more like 500b) stars in the milky way have over a million species of intelligent life. We are not listed highly among them. When they show up we shoot first and steal technology later. We are fortunate they are far more forgiving and less warlike then the majority of our species.

word=nishtar

Wow! -- this blows my mind! Jitter and pixilation of "reality" - thats pure fry!

So you're trying to tell me that the Earth is actually flat? I need to go back in time and have a talk with Copernicus...

Hi. I'm typing on a keyboard. It's three-dimensional.

I'm looking at a screen. It's also three-dimensional.

Now I'm using my three-dimensional mouse to click the preview comment and post buttons.

Holograms? Really?

"You're a damn fool to think the Earth is round. *sadly shakes his head*" - Eratosthenes' neighbor

There must be enough evidence to show some truth in the matter. They don't just go around giving the kind of money it takes to build something like this to any old crackpot.

Everybody - read "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. This is nothing new.....and absolutely awesome that it will finally be seriously explored.

Excellent! A timely and valid investigation which those who have the physics and math well understand. I along with many others will be watching with great interest.

r3dh3ad

10/23/10 at 10:35 am

"Everybody - read "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. This is nothing new.....and absolutely awesome that it will finally be seriously explored."

Agreed, I've been waiting years for this. So exciting. Most people don't know that this theory comes from two absolutely genius independent theoretical physicists, among others, one of whom is Einstein's protege. Anyone seriously doubting this has absolutely no understanding of the concept.

I think this experiment is not just for Holographic Universe theory. Because most physicists today think space-time is granular in smallest (Planck) scale, according to Quantum theory.

Check Wikipedia for "quantum space-time".

@Bushmaster6.8

About Hawking Radiation, when you say proved. Are you referring to the math as proof? As I understand it the math only supports a theory and we are still waiting for proof. In any event for the sake of argument lets say it is true. Have you seen any estimates of how much mass gets radiated out of a black hole? I've looked but haven't found anything that's been posted on that subject. I can't imagine that it would be much by comparison to the total mass of a black hole. That same black hole in a dynamic universe is going to grow bigger.

The way the current big bang theory treats our universe is in my opinion way out of context with nature. It says before the big bang there was no space or time, and all reality started with the big bang. I can't tell you how much bunk that is. I believe our universe is in context with nature and therefore it needs a more advanced theory to explain all the observations now being made. Quite frankly I'm very much looking forward to the next generation of super telescopes that will be coming online sometime before 2020. Imagine a 42 meter scope with adaptive optics, also 33 and 26 meter scopes will be coming online at about the same time. Never mind what we might be putting into orbit.

Next point, the standard big bang model says it all started from a singularity. Now check me if I'm wrong, but aren't black holes referred to as singularities? Many scientists believe that the initial phase of the big bang expansion did happen at faster than light speed. I'm not going to expand on that theory, but it does make sense, because it's obvious that nothing as slow as the speed of light can escape a black hole.

Now let me ask you this question. How do you think of the singularity that started our visible universe? If you don't view it as a black hole recycling its mass, you must believe all the mass of our universe was created out of nothing. If you can't bring yourself to believe that. What do you believe? That all the mass in the visible universe somehow didn't have any gravity before the big bang?

One thing you are probably right about is that my theory is probably not 100% correct, however I think it beats whatever is in second place (yes I'm referring to the current standard model). I do have a more complete write up and anyone wanting a copy should ask and include an email ID.

"Everybody - read "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. This is nothing new.....and absolutely awesome that it will finally be seriously explored."

ANOTHER agreement here. This small book, is way easier to comprehend than anything else I've found on the subject. I'm no scientist - but i can assure you, i am DEFINITELY NOT a narrow-minded my way or the hiway CREATIONIST either.
In fact, I can't believe quotations from the bible ever make their way into a serious discussion about anything scientific - from my experience/observation (I was raised a so-called christian) these are invariably the vain attempts to prove the superiority of the authors beliefs, and generally the inferiority of everyone elses existence. Their arrogant attitudes are always "How dare you question - PERIOD; much less how dare you question THEIR ideas, THEIR god - from my estimation it's all about their IDOLS. Lest you forget, Jesus threw you out of the temple for that same, pious attitude..

And if you're so disgusted by scientific reasoning, why read 'Popular SCIENCE' magazine - or even visit the website, not to mention taking precious time out from your political activities and other types of prostletizing, to post responses to articles here? Oh I almost forgot, Christianity 101 - Stars in that prescious vanity encrusted crown you're all clamoring for.

..i'm just sayin..

Everybody - read 'The Holographic Universe' by Michael Talbot!!!

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Wowee-Zowee !
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Physics vs. Religion vs. Geopolitics vs. Medicine vs. Myth/Literature/History vs. TOTAL convergence!
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I am snickering about how each one of us seems to have "the whole thing" almost completely figured out.
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Clue ... Fasten your seat-belts ! The very furthest galaxies WILL dissapear, beneath your feet, in "the very first instant" - You will recognize those galaxies, only briefly, as luminous details upon a receding membrane. You will accelerate such that successive membranes (which may appear as parallel sheets of luminous plasma) will eventually merge, "strobiscopically", into a very dense, homogeonous, purest-white, omniscent plasma (nirvana).
At this point "potential probability" is at "Max." and "kinetic (manifest) probability" is at a minimum.
Veiwing the "whole thing" in terms of "absolute minimum temporal resolution" is the key to "practical access", which exist between one moment and the next "exactly right now" (and nowhere else).

Sounds like halucinogenics might have triggered another penial excitation? - Consiousness seems to be an integral component of reality .. Such a stretch !

Inner Space vs. Outer .. Mandelbrot extrapolation.

= snort - pooof ! =

hiyah popsci.. neat article, it really gets the ol gears cranking I gotta say.
It also makes ya wonder about the whole issue of affecting the outcome of the experiment simply by monitoring the effects of the experiment thing o_0
(nice LibertyDude.. loops are fun)

That important part being said.. could we have a little cleaning done on the comments..or perhaps a faster cleaning process implemented?

The newbies don't always seem to understand that you only need to click once to submit.. and
An IP ban on the fools spamming the comments of a science & technology magazine website with their solicited goods would also be nice.
(falas50, falas51, hanhan8)

I see the comments have already been "Reported to site admins" so thanks in advance, and keep the think-thunkers comin ;)

CORRECTION!: (ROTFLOL)

In the last lines of my post, I meant to reference the "PENEAL GLAND" but, oh what a difference a vowel makes! ... I wrote "PENIAL" (WHOLE other gland!).

= Blushing =

REF: PENEAL GLAND

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_body

Sorry (really) ...
CRIPES! I did it yet again! ... P-I-N-E-A-L (Because it looks much like a PINE-cone).

Jeeesh! ... Dyslexics of the world "UNTIE" !.

This might be the kind of research that leads to something entirely unexpected. Within a year this may be working. Within two it might discover glitches in reality that we can use to our advantage like the Waldman-Shaw-Fujikawa slipspace generator... or maybe a better way to make popcorn.

So how can the folks building the holometer can be sure that what they are observing/building is reality or illusion?.
Hinduism said this in 5000BC that all reality is illusion. It is an illusion created by Vishnu, maintained by Brahma and Destroyed by Maheshwara/Shiva.

Whoa this is getting religious fast...I am not sure about the book you guys are referencing, but the article is confusing a lot of people with the phrase "time and depth." They were just trying to use a different word for space...

Anyway this experiment in my mind is saying the space and time are the architects for our world. And at a certain degree of definition things become fuzzy/noisy because they aren't actually defined. The border between time and space has to be somewhere afterall...

And I was just trying to make sense of string theory, and M-theory and 11 dimensions, and friction and collisions between parallel universes...

STOLEN CONCEPT FALLACY.

How is an illusion defined? go on, I'm sure you know.
THAT WHICH GIVES A FALSE IMPRESSION OF _REALITY_
or also common THAT WHICH IS NOT REAL.
BOTH of these definitions presuppose the concept of reality. They are defined in terms of reality, are meaningless without it.
So is it really that hard to recognize how the statement "Reality is an Illusion" Is blatant logical gibberish? It is is a literal and extremely simple textbook example of a Contradiction in terms. A literal logical absurdity. A statement of (A = ~A). The thing you arrive at in a Reducto Ad Absurdum proof to disprove a statement.

Read the page of the ACTUAL statement by Fermilab: http://holometer.fnal.gov/index.html
You wont find that statement anywhere in there. The question is how the structure of space behaves at the PLANCK scale, where space and time break down, not at the macro level.

Yup. That's why you always feel pinned to the surface of your bed when you get too drunk.

@JohnStClair: I'm jealous. I want to be in hyperspace. All I've ever managed to do is see the future a few times... Hmmm... glitch in the Hologram?

Maybe that's how God will save us... floppy disk!

I just hope I'm not on some 3D screen SIM game at the edge of the universe... if so: Dear SIM user... please upload lots and lots of luck into my holographic existence so i can win a lotto or something... please.

:)

All in all...I strangely don't find this theory THAT crazy. There is so much we don't understand... and when you start reading about quantum physics (entanglement, the slit test, etc) it really shows how much we still can't explain. At least they are working on proving/disproving it. Guess we'll know eventually which way it goes. I will not be disheartened to find out I'm a 2D character that appears relatively 3D...

theres never a wrong time to ponder your place in the universe

Say Hi to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker for me, John St Claire!

I've read up on this whole Holographic Universe business. It's funny how science want's to prove that what is seen is not reality, but just how we perceive it through our limited senses. Just about every world religion knows this already. As a Christian I describe it as the spiritual life. Physical life is lived first in the spiritual realm and thus affects this "Dimly Lit" life.

"Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done" (Romans 1:28)

Fools,,,

Obviously spacetime is discrete, because we're all in the Matrix. Each discrete quantum of spacetime is merely a bit in the computer that we consider the Universe.

But on a serious note, this is pretty cool. I've only vaguely heard of holographic theory before, but an actual test for it is interesting.

I'm just not understanding exactly what's happening with this experiment. Are the two interferometers supposed to produce the same interference pattern (as expected classically) or not? If it does, what does that show? And if it doesn't, do we attribute that to error or to spacetime inconsistencies from one place to another?

-IMP ;) :)

JohnStClair, I can't tell if you're serious or merely being sarcastic or writing tongue-in-cheek. However, if you are serious, you present a number of extraordinary claims without also offering the slightest shred of evidence. Even if you're an astronaut, there's no public information that you or any other astronaut has ever been further than the Moon, certainly nothing publicly suggesting anyone has traveled tens of thousands of light years away. Even more extraordinary is your statement that we already have contact with alien civilizations.

I wish your claim that we can beat the speed of light comes true someday, but you'll have to prove we can do so already. As far as I know, even any technology we can imagine in our wildest fantasies won't likely ever get us even to either of the nearest other galaxies in what astronomers call "the Local Group" (and do so with completely straight faces), the Magellanic Clouds, two irregular dwarf galaxies both a little under 160,000 light years away. And forget, say, the Andromeda Galaxy, the other biggie in the local group at about 2.2 times the size of our own Milky Way (the other biggie) and located about 2.5 *million* light years away.

I do have some conceptual understanding of concepts such as wormholes, though I readily admit that both the math and physics underlying such concepts are far, far beyond my ken. Again -- proof, or at least some creditable evidence we've mastered those and other concepts you mention?

As for alien civilizations, I can see at least one strong argument for any government to hesitate announcing its existence, especially if (1.) alien spacecraft with aliens aboard have visited or are visiting Earth, and, (2.) we have no knowledge of their intentions or capabilities, beyond their apparent interest in our planet and an ability to reach us. Were I the President of the U.S. (for instance) and I learned this, I sure would pause before announcing that to the global media, because under the two conditions I specified, I would de facto *also* be saying that we can't defend our skies from such aliens should they have evil intentions, such as conquest. Imagine the global panic *that* would engender once people realized that!

Intertwined in that scenario are the implications for religions -- each and every one of them, save a few isolated sects. What would the psychological impact on someone such as a genuinely sincere Creationist be were he or she to, say, personally *meet* an alien -- thereby disproving that humans are the only intelligent species in the universe and Earth is the only planet with any kind of life? I can't imagine the impact would be anything short of enormous, and distinctly disastrous, from a mental-health perspective. With billions of followers of one faith or another, this question can't be ignored, even by confirmed atheists, if for no other reason than pure self-interest. After all, even the most open-minded believer in a religion would be severely tested by such a revelation. Millions -- maybe tens or hundreds of millions, even billions -- might be at risk of going over the edge, pretty much putting paid on human civilization.

Before you ask either of two questions, yes, I would prefer we know such things, whether now, if they're true, or at any future time we may learn so (if we ever do). However, no, I haven't the faintest idea how the authorities might go about sharing that information with the general public *without* the very real dangers I mentioned above. Whether my latter answer means the authorities should *not* reveal such information, now or ever, is open to reasonable debate among reasonable people.

Even if all we have (or get later) is some sort of signal proving the existence of an intelligent alien species on, say, a planet orbiting a relatively nearby star -- within, say, 40-50 light years, and even if we somehow knew with absolute certainty they weren't intending to come here or that they lacked the technical ability to do so, the mere knowledge of their existence would be earth-shattering.

All that said, your claim that the reason we don't know about all the stuff you claim is because of a government cover-up in no way indicates your claims are even creditable at all, much less beyond the slightest doubt -- you also didn't over the slightest bit of evidence of any such cover-up.

In short, long on claims -- but zero in the evidence column.

If you can point us towards creditable sources, by all means -- please do so.

Think this is difficult? Wait for the next phase: surprise, there is no hologram. Remember Descartes, wasn't so sure that there was anything behind his head? Well, you got it Rene'.

and I just bought that 3D TV...
now what with those silly glasses?

oldshorty, look up the definitions of "fact" and "theory," them see the differences between the two.

Further, learning more about something doesn't necessarily disprove our earlier-understood facts. For instance, people have known ever since they first encountered fire that a fire will burn them if they stick their hands in it, whether the fire be from natural causes, such as lightning, or an artificial one made by people, such as a campfire. However, those earliest people knew little or nothing about the science behind that fact -- that fire burns people if they stick their arms into it. We know a whole lot more about the nature and science of fire today than those long-ago people did -- but our much greater knowledge and understanding of fire's nature and underlying science in no way whatsoever alter the fact that fire burns people when it touches them.

This article discusses a *theory* -- but without understanding the differences between "fact" and "theory" you won't get it.

Off to the dictionary with you! Maybe you'll then be able to figure out the differences between science and religion and even grasp the notion that "science-religion" is a false statement.

-READ:"The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot[ISBN-13 978-0-06-092258-0 = Harper Perennial]

"For time and space are one illusion, which takes different forms. If it has been projected beyond your mind you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it is, the more you think of it in terms of space."
-A COURSE IN MIRACLES,Text pg. 558 [Foundation for Inner Peace]

@JohnStClair - Please report back to Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, immediately. You have been summoned by John Smallberries and John Littlejohn.

some people like cupcakes. I for one care less for them.

If this is something that is real or an elaborate hoax, remains to be seen. I would reserve criticism until the proof or lack thereof is in the pudding. I like the idea of trying to understand more about the universe and this is definately a great topic for a science fiction thriller. Remember, Jules Verne simply wrote about what to him was fantasy. Verne described space travel, television, the internet and video conferencing. The dimensions may still hold mysteries that will help us understand, or it may be something in between.

I believe with limited resources scientists at various stages in history have put barriers on travel i.e., how fast we could or could not go etc. The sound barrier was suppose to be the fastest anyone could go, now it's light. I believe you can travel faster than light, and how that happens I have no idea. I simply shrug and say why not? Why is this any more a barrier than sound was? We simply don't have the technology to travel this fast; in fact in celestial terms, we are most probably the knuckle draggers of the universe. Let's not give up trying though, we have such a long way to go just to get to Mars.

What the holometer could do is open up our understanding of how we can fold space and time. If our reality is only two dimensions, then why not discover a way to fold it and travel simply by stepping through another dimenision? As I said, what was Science fiction today may be the science of the future.

People have noted the book by Michael Talbot, but readers may also want to check out "An Introduction To Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe" and "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics" both by Leonard Susskind. Those two books may help people actually to understand what is meant by the term holographic in this case.

Interesting article and comments. The universe we are living have been tried to explained in many ways. But most rational explanation lies in 3D space time continnum. I am not a scientist, but I have come to know that there are certain things which have not been satisfactorily explained in the space time frame, therefore scientists are trying to unfold different theories with different dimensions.In this stage is it harmful to take help from religious explanation of the universe. My view is like this, science is inside religion and at certain point science has distinct boundary which seperate it from religion. Therefore first we have to understand the field of science and religion. Science can analyse the deepest universe as far as there exist descrete nature, there where simple airthmetics of 1+1=2 applies.This is what our senses can perceive. But there is nature where this math doesn't apply where 1+1=1 which our senses can't perceive. According to my view, in this nature there is no motions therefore no speed - everything is halted therefore there is no space, no time.Though we are moving, we are not. Though we are having various activities, the activities are null.Therefore though electrons are moving around nucleus, it is not moving, hence 118 elements in earth is actually one element.therefore there is no gold, no silver. All in one.When this can happen? This can happen when there is substance called "GOD".This substance is not descrete. It is present everywhere (Omnipresent) Mathematically, coordinate at any point in this substance gives same value.

What I want to understand is why the significant facilities of LIGO (www.ligo.caltech.edu) could not be leveraged to do this better and cheaper. Budgets are tight, folks, and just a wee bit of working together might be in order.

So does that mean that the Earth actually IS flat?!

>jaydub

If you had taken the time to enlighten yourself with the first comment, you might notice the poster "belittles" scientists whom do not "believe in" creation. I happen to subscribe to the ideas that we (our universe, and everything in it) did arise from nothing without the help of one, or several omnipotent beings. To suggest god created all we see is in my estimation beneath science; at least the scientific method. Each time science advances knowledge, the 'faithful' step in and claim 'god made it that way'. If your choice is to put your faith in an omnipotent creator, so be it. Just don't interfere with the rest of us who are looking for facts to answer the questions the faithful believe have already been answered by god.

It's unfortunate that the term 'hologram' has to be used in this context. It leads to misconstrued notions of virtual/artificial environments like in Star Trek's holodecks.

However, the idea that The Universe's third spatial dimension could be illusory or an artifact of perception has been around for years. At long last, a team of scientists have come up with an experiment that I would have thought to be impossible. But, here we are!

My guess? The data will show that the third spatial dimension is not illusory. If it is, then we should be able to tell which dimension is an illusion. Shouldn't we?

I would think that this would have profound implications with the "principle of relativity" which states that all laws of physics would have the same form regardless of the frame of reference. This, in turn, would have a profound impact on Einstein's Theories of Special and General Relativity. At least, I would think it would.

@albme judging by many of the comments here, i'm inclined to agree about the use of the word "hologram". people latch onto words they're familiar with, then run from there piecing together what they think the article means without really understanding it. and hell, i won't even admit to fully understanding the principles behind the hologram theory.

...I know, how about our universe is just a really big pineapple :P but really this sounds a bit interesting, I think it is always good to question the "truth" because, as it so happens, the truth is always bent this way and that to fit the needs of the people that say things like "I believe god made everything" or "god is a lie," I think that the truth, to be blunt, is always a lie.

Great example to what could be accomplished through good education. http://www.leavechartersalone.com

I'm not sure I understand the comments that religion would somehow be messed up by the discovery of other intelligent non-human beings. It certainly wouldnt mess up any major Christian doctrines that i'm aware of.

Christians believe in extra-dimensional beings that are way smarter and more powerful than us already, namely Angels (both good and bad, I dont see that beings existing within our dimension having similar qualities would pose a problem). The Scripture teaches that the promise of redemption applies directly to humans, that God become a man, not an angel or animal or alien, specifically because men went wrong, and He wanted to make a way back for us and apparently Incarnating and showing us how to live and then dying to take the punishment we would otherwise would have to had taken was the only way to do it. There apparently wasnt such an offer made to Angels who were not deceived but knew full well what they were doing, not to animals since they dont need it and as to aliens, for all we know they dont need it, or else He had another way for them if they DID. C.S. Lewis alluded this quite a bit in both his children’s and adult fictions.

It's already known that matter is mostly empty space, and *that* doesn't make for scary headlines. The Planck's Constant and Planck Length are old (1900) news; uncertainty makes it impossible to know what is happening at a small enough scale. But don't worry; we can still pick up hamburgers and we'll still make it to work in the morning!

I don't know whether to stuggle to make sense of all this or make a nice sandwich. For some reason, I keep reading articles about this sort of thing or the LHC and such. I do know great revelations are elegant and the next elegant understanding to come out of particle thingies and quantum what-nots will be - there are other "heres" here.

Don't worry! If the Republicans take just a few more seats, in the house, the universe will start to collapse, once again!

How can two dimensional objects exist since they should have a zero mass? It may be at the sub-nano scale that the investigators are viewing, the only existence is energy.

Makes perfect sense, actually.
One version of string theory suggests that all particles and some forces are made up of strings in tiny 2-dimensional spaces. The strings wiggle very fast, their planes bulging this way and that, so they seem to occupy three dimensions. Just like if you look at a rapidly spinning propeller, it seems to be a solid disk. (Don't try this at home!)

“From: wikiped­ia's entry: Holograp­hi­c_princ­ipl­e
"The holographic principle (the universe postulated as a hologram) is a property of quantum gravity and string theories which states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region—preferably a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerardus 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind."

The theory is evidently attempting to detect the necessarily scaled up Planck length as noise within the signal. Since the volume of the spherical universe is much larger than its outer surface, to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the universe within must be made up of grains much larger than the calculated Planck length. That is: the grainy-ness of reality, like the pixelation of photographic images, will have come within the purview of science.

William of Occam, a 14th century Dominican who also taught at Oxford, first formulated Occam's Razor as "Unknown entities cannot be introduced in order to explain other unknown entities".

Introducing God (an unknown entity) to explain the ultimate unknown (why anything exists instead of nothing at all) is to introduce an unknown to explain an unknown and this has been a known no-no for seven hundred years. A simpler explanation, avoiding infinite reqress (i.e. "who created the creator?") is that, for some reason, nothing at all is unstable and that a creator is, therefore, just another theory and not a given.

At least as a citizen of flatland I can learn to understand higher dimensions, if not actually go there.

Unless I missed it, I can't believe everyone's giving these scientists "a pass" on what the theory/logic string they REALLY want to prove is:

I sit at a flat screen looking at pictures of pretty girls > In the 3D world, these pretty girls are not in my home > If they exist in only 2 dimensions AND IF I were to exist in only 2 dimensions, then in fact we are together > Therefore, it is possible that I am 2 dimensional as well, in which case I can feel more fulfilled.

Obviously, that's a joke...but re: this research, it is the kind of thing that makes you think "pull that funding."
I know, I know, I'm so ignorant... but in analogy, if anyone would like to give me, say, $100K a year to go into a racquetball court with 2 little rubber balls and try to figure out something, here in the 3D world, I think that would be about as valid.
You know what, give me a whole gumball machine full of those balls, and I'll bet I'll really get results.

"illusion" is the wrong word to describe it

Sounds like the Michaelson-Morley experiment to prove whether or not certain assumptions about the universal ether exists. If the scientists were able to place their presumably holographic selves and this presumably holographic device outside of the space-time continuum, then maybe they could verify their assumptions. As it is, it's a hologram, reading a hologram, reporting to holograms which virtually amounts to physical reality.

Does it even matter whether the 3rd dimension is an illusion or not? If it is, so what? Will it change my quality of life? I'll just stumble along here in The Matrix and hope Mr. Smith(s) doesn't turn me into a fat battery.

Yikes! - The Sims are trying to decide if "The Sims 3: World Adventures" are simulated! There must be an app for that!

If the holometer or clock is as sensitive as Fermilab wants it to be, any observed frequency jitter attributed to cosmic noise will more likely be a phase jitter caused by constant variations and differences in the number of air molecules in the two beam paths. The same experiment conducted in a vacuum may not show any jitter at all because the two beams come from the same source, or space/time might be too uniform for the small difference in distance. A similar experiment conducted in space between two satellites on opposite sides of the Earth beaming their lasers to a ground station on the moon might show a jitter or cyclic variation as the satellites trade positions between the space in front of Earth’s movement and the space behind. It is likely that space/time is “compressed” in front of Earth’s movement and “depleted” behind. If any jitter is evident after variations of physical separation are accounted for, that jitter might be what Fermilab is seeking.

I hope this doesn't turn out like the time when a genius mathematician used algebra to prove he didn't exist and immediately disappeared.

It is incredible how by juggling a few mathematical equations can distort reality. Job security for scientists, they get the funding and declare the results were not conclusive, end of story. Did god create a hologram?

Oh, let them play with their toys.
At least, this has little chance of imploding time/space like some of their collidors.

Points:
1, How do scientists make any two things identical to begin with? Their are only indentical up to the point that "they" are satisfied. The metrology involved in defining when the two devices are identical is more subjective than objective.
Even with a Gawd awful fast/accurrate/stable clock, the results are going to highly subject to interpetation.

2, What defines noise?

3, How do you un-entwine systemic noise from your phenomal noise?

No doubt, they will find exactly what they are looking for.

At best, it may push the boundaries of metrology a bit.

At least, we may get a better clock out of the deal.
We can always use a better clock.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

We could get really lucky.
If they prove that they don't exist, they may stop bugging the rest of us for grant money.

If you are shot with a two dimensional bullet - or, a three dimensional bullet = you are still 17 dimensions of dead.

If I had time
to make some space
where all the pixels go

I'd build a two dimensional trace
of my departed friend
Godot

Is April 1st already? UNSUBSCRIBE

I'm just fascinated by what people "believe."

Wow! That's really neat or perhaps droll. But I'd guess there's perhaps a fraction of a percent of a chance that the results would be positive. If the results are truly positive, then my virtual mind will really be virtually blown. And this would perhaps then explain all the unexplainable weirdness and anomalies that sometimes occur every now and then in our universe.

Funny headliner "determine once and for all whether reality is just an illusion". Dont know what you guys in a box keep discussing about because there is no reality and never has been! Science is an open end issue improving or turning into obsolete the way we call it evolution of knowledge, understanding and consciousness.

Funny toy too, quite expensive to check out if the table is round or folded without we see but the "remove 3rd dimension" claim is just biggest nonsens if not explained in detail. That doesnt mean we fall back into 2 dimension snail level but catching up a holografic understanding and perception of endless dimensions. 95% of human mistrained brain cant even understand what a holografic perception might be, so smash your usual hammer of oposition and irony everybody or watch TV. There will be the day everybody got to laugh about words like "dimensions" anyway.

What this really is about is to understand time which became a true obstacle in fisics and that was about the time, lol.
Lets get quantum everybody and stop smashing childish verbiage against each other.

First Pluto and now the whole third dimension. This is why we can't have nice things...

Saying that this stuff is BS is equivalent to the guys way back when saying that the Earth was flat or saying that it was impossible for a singularity to exist. I'm not saying that it's right, but I'm saying that it could be, and that's why they're building the thing.

Perhaps sometime in the future, we'll do some equally ridiculous sounding experiment to find "sentient dark matter singularities", and then one'll turn out to be God. There will still be religious conservatives saying that's BS.

- Justanotheruser28

Ok so are they saying that basically were a .gif of some sort?

The real question here is who is paying for all this? Chances are directly or indirectly it is funded by somebody's taxes, "somebodies" who don't even know what their hard earned money is being used for and the scientists are making a great living experimenting with their fantasy science which no one really understands, not even them...sounds a lot like a good ole CON job if you ask me...follow the money.

See:In June 2008, Congress passed a supplemental spending bill that includes $62.5 million for the Department of Energy to avoid further layoffs and restart science projects at Fermilab and other national laboratories. US Senator Richard Durbin, Congresswoman Judy Biggert, Congressman Bill Foster and DOE Acting Deputy Secretary of Energy Jeffrey Kupfer addressed Fermilab employees at an All-Hands meeting on July 2.

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was good."

"God created all things with his word."

"God said let there be light and there was light."

Ignore the fact that these are religion for the moment. Instead, let’s look at them from a scientific point of view.

They all state basically that the universe is made from sound.
Sound is holographic.
No matter how small you cut it, a C sharp is still a C sharp.
One single vibrational frequency containing all the information involved.
Isn't that the very definition of a holograph, although we are more familiar with the kind made with lasers?

Now compare that thought with the spiritual ideas that;

"As above, so below,"
Or,
"All the answers are within."

YES, the universe is holographic.

P.S. Yes, there is a God, but she/he/it is not like anything pictured in our religions.

The reason God knows every sparrow that falls is because God IS every sparrow that falls. God IS everything, including you and me. We are very small, holographic pieces of God, him/her/itself.

This is why you can know the truth of all things within, if you only go deep enough.

To all the skeptics, remember when the earth was flat and in the center of the galaxy/ universe? Yeah, I thought so.

To the "dark matter expert" NASA has just produced a super-computer model of Dark matter that jives with everything we know about the universe. So start your bottling factory.

To the Alien whisperer, no one can say with absolute certainty it doesn't occur. I want to believe!

Now the Holographic world is a stretch, but hang on we may learn something totally unexpected. We see in 2D and our brain tricks us into believing it is 3D. So who can say the world is not holographic.

Just think of the people who ridiculed Newton, Plank and Einstein, even Hawking. Most Humans may not be able to understand the universe with today's references. Human's may not be able to grasp the BIG picture, but we are trying and keep on plodding forward oblivious to the impossible.

Maybe 100 years from now, teenagers can make fun of people who believed in 3 dimensions. Maybe there will be 11 or 26 dimensions. Who knows? YOU don't and we don't, but some of us are on that infinite roller-coaster of why and how, and we will continue to pursue the odd questions because no one has answered them yet.

Where can I get a reliable news feed on this? Also I wonder what kind of lasers are they using? Solid state or gas. . .
Anyways I think this will be a pretty significant discovery, bigger than gravity(or equivalent).

@MITDGreenb:
LIGO's interferometers would be sensitive enough to detect this effect (in fact, if holographic noise does indeed exist, it could explain some of the apparent noise in data that's already been collected; indeed, unexplained noise in the GEO600 interferometer in Germany was the catalyst for the development of holographic noise theory); however, the interferometers are too far away from each other to confirm that noise being seen is actually partially due to holographic noise. The novel thing about this experiment is that the two interferometers overlap and end up sampling the same local area of space, over which holographic noise isn't expected to vary much; in that case, the noise detected by both interferometers should be in phase. The idea is then to move the interferometers apart and see if correlation between the detected noise curves decreases. This would be evidence for holographic noise and would lend support to holographic spacetime theory.

@ScottieD:
The 2009 experimental proposal mentions an Nd:YAG Non-Planar Ring Oscillator (1064 nm) as the base of the laser system.

@Tsad Jatko:
The total budget for the experiment (as per the 2009 proposal) was $1.55 million for materials and $676000/year for operations (for 3 years). In the grand scheme of Big Science expenditures, this is a very cheap and compact experiment.

I happened to be an intern during summer 2009 at Fermilab when this experiment was first being discussed, so it's exciting to see it going ahead as planned. Can't wait for the results!

A brief and very casual reading of the experiment indicates the purpose is to try to establish a connection between the realms of the subatomic and cosmic scales, between relativity and quantum physics. We have been attempting to do that for about 100 years now and the number of unexplained anomolies we are finally observing will probably provide enough information to construct a consistent and viable synthesis in the near future. All we need is a mind like Newton or Einstein to pull it together.

It really doesn't matter what kind of a story we make up or how we describe it to get the information we need. The only thing that matters is the data and the ability to translate it into our language of mathematics, which will never be "perfect", but only needs to be good enough for the immediate descriptive and predictive purpose.

When we were developing an understanding of thermodynamics and chemistry we used phlogiston as an artifice to help us acquire the data and develop the theory (or map) of the atomic world.

This is an interesting experiment and I trust it will generate some interesting and thought provoking results that will help us shed some light on a small part the infinite abyss which is our ignorance.

We all share an infinite ignorance, so there is plenty to learn about. By opening our minds and learning what we can, we can hope to ensure that we do not fall into a state of stupid ignorance.

The first article I ever read on this gives a brief history.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html

There is a good book written about 10 years ago on this theory titled: "The Holographic Universe." It presents the theory in a clear and easy to understand way and has some very interesting information in it. Before you laugh off the theory, at least attempt to understand what it is they are saying. They are not saying that the Universe is an illusion. They are saying that the way we perceive it is not how it really exists in reality. That our reality, to a great extent, is an emergent property of the interaction between what is "out there" and our consciousness. Or, more simply: Things are not quite what they seem.

Everything you want to know about "The Holographic Universe Theory" can be found at this site: http://www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html
Some of it sounds crazy, but so did a Moon Landing not so long ago.

Fascinating to see the, "it's only 4000 years old", earthies reject a mere scientific theory even before it's been tested.

Well, I'm off for a flu shot. I'll pray it works, but then why bother to get the shot when it's efficacy is only a medical theory.

@ Buzzlightyear:

"Clue ... Fasten your seat-belts ! The very furthest galaxies WILL dissapear, beneath your feet, in "the very first instant" - You will recognize those galaxies, only briefly, as luminous details upon a receding membrane. You will accelerate such that successive membranes (which may appear as parallel sheets of luminous plasma) will eventually merge, "strobiscopically", into a very dense, homogeonous, purest-white, omniscent plasma (nirvana).
At this point "potential probability" is at "Max." and "kinetic (manifest) probability" is at a minimum...."

Where did you get this from? With very little (minor colour) variation, I had this exact vision (and more) about nine years ago.

So is the universe 2D and not 3D, or wouldn't that be 3D and not 4D?

The arguments that are devolving into Science vs Faith are getting pretty snippy. There are arguments and counter arguments in most fora such as these online science journals. But what can be proven? Nothing.

Being finite and mortal none can live long enough or understand enough to test all possible hypotheses. At some point, one must always make a choice as to what is to be believed as true/proven and as to what is to be believed as false/unproven. We can only live our lives based on a plethora assumptions that can not be disproved within our cognitive limitations. We must chose what we believe.

I will give a simple example:

Consider the statistical theorem that is accepted as 'proof' that "no two humans have the same finger prints." People are identified with sufficient certainty under this theorem to allow a "justified" judicial taking of life in as a punishment.

What can only be said with certainty is that not all humans have been tested.

That two children as I type this note are being born in different parts of the world with even just one identical fingerprint can not be feasible ascertained by human agency. Nor can it be ascertained that there never has been such a singularity because all most half of all the humans who have ever been been born (approx. 12 billion: a few years ago we reached the population growth point that more than 50% of humans ever born were still alive) have already died and decayed away, rendering them un-testable. At some point it has been stated that given reasonable data, both positive and negative, it is highly improbable (I would agree that it is nearly inconceivable) that any two living humans have the same fingerprints to within 12 points of identity. A slightly greater leap is that not even one finger's print in the 120 or so billion human fingers, both existent and deceased, has ever been repeated.

For real and insurmountable reasons (one direction of time, insufficient agency, ceaseless pop. growth & etc), this theorem can not be proven or disproven. Nevertheless --like all things "proven to be trustworthy," it must boil down to a personal choice, heads or tails, do I believe A or B? By which am I persuaded. Which choice will I then attempt to convince or persuade* others to believe in too?

*[con=with + vince from vincere= conquer ; suādēre = to urge) [I natural reject arguments that force]

So which way might I be, or even can I be persuaded that the universe 2D and not 3D (3D/4D)?

I will look forward with mild curiosity to the experimental results. Equally, I muse on the the prior comments from the Book of Hebrews that are very interesting, as is Plato's Allegory of the Cave. This is not a new concept, minds have been pondering this for at least 3,000 years. The answer will no doubt be found in nature, and yes, in the depth of the human mind and the limited ways it can perceive.

For the time being, two things then seem evident:

1) There is will not enough time remaining to human/the universe's (according to the latests theories) existence nor capacity in the human mind to test all possibilities to definitive proof, especially as, regardless the evidence to be uncovered, our being imbedded in that reality prevents us from seeing it from an outside perspective to tests its limits and properties and veracity [dare I say God's perspective--I so dare].

2) It will make almost zero effect on our lives because we are inextricably imbedded in that system--which ever, 2D or 3D--for the foreseeable near future of the human race. [I say almost zero because of the implications of possible FTL and multi-demensional access in the distant future, should reality resemble a 2D universe.]

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It has been said elsewhere in this forum to keep asking questions of our assumptions. I would say that is healthy; especially that the questioning of those realities constructed on theory ought to be tested: as history has mercilessly debunked each generation's 'proven' constructs with satisfyingly frequent regularity.

As a parting note I would add, this is forum of ideas and opinions, not the colosseum floor and you are not all blooded gladiators of the truth.

So lighten up people. :-)

All your quarks are belong to us.

The discoveries attained at CERN last year do indeed make theoretically by the math, the existence of multiple dimensions. For years I was convinced that time was really just an illusion created by the "Manufacturers of Space."
Now that Joke is closer to the truth than you might imagine. I really don't see all the emphasis placed on reality and its long term implications. If reality is so good or special, then why would we go out and create a virtual one? Wouldn't science be surprised to find out with empirical mathematical certainty, that we don't really exist at all.
Guess it is just a simple case of, "I think, therefore I am." Or perhaps more accurately; "God Thinks,,,,Therefore We are, and it is." That would make the Universe both within and without, little more than the conscious minds perception of it. Goes right back to the un-caused, cause as the originator and precursor of the BIG BANG; a true metaphysical GOD. Science and religion and philosophy have always been in harmony with this principle. Besides folks, can't you imagine just how boring our lives would be without a bit of mystery? I stopped shaking my fist at the heavens years ago, demanding answers or perhaps demanding the correct questions out of the Almighty. Now at age 56 I'm content that "Once we stop trying to understand the Universe, we will then KNOW the Universe." One just needs the faith of a mustard seed to keep the planets spinning and the stars burning.:)

I describe this holographic phenomenon in my book Double Bubble Universe. It talks about the third dimension being projected outward from the Planck level by what we call 1D time here in the upper bubble up here above the Planck Level that we inhabit.

The 1D time is a strange attractor. It is part of a Lorenz attractor dynamic carrying the 3rd dimension out beyond the Planck level scale of reality in two directions, both above and below the Planck scale. This creates a double bubble universe, and our bodies live in the upper bubble of 3D space and 1D time. The other bubble below the Planck level has 1D space and 3D time - plus the "lost" pole of gravitation and the tachyonic energy that we here in the upper bubble currently call merely hypothetical.

Thus our universe is a hologram. But that does not make it unreal. We exist due to the real dynamic processes that create it, and us.

holographic 3d existence is obvious due to the math...the 'studies' are actually experiments to 'control' what is mathematically obvious. the rhetoric is 'prep' talk, in case anyone finds out the success. once success has been achieved, why would 'disclosure' even be needed by those who 'discover' the way to make it work...
sidenote-
add a 3rd interferometer and the nine dimensions will become configurable by the same device...2 interferometers will allow configuration of 4 dimensions.
p.s., there is a 'personality' factor involved in this type of tech/knowledge. knowing there's only 1 shot at whats being attempted here, failure isn't an option, pandora's door only swings in one direction...

Save time and money; drink the coolaid. And yes we already know this, there's always that generational media gap thing or whatever...

As soon as the details of the holographic universe become detected & observable the fabric of the universe will unravel & cease to exist. Maybe anyway, makes me wonder.