Can someone explain the holographic universe theory to me in the dumbest way possible? My mind can’t grasp what it means.
In: Planetary Science
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The holographic principle essentially means that you don’t need three dimensions to represent a three dimensional object, and the universe we live in can be thought of as a projection of a lower-dimensional set of information into a higher dimension just like a hologram.
Have a peek at this video and see if it helps explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klpDHn8viX8
The layman way I understand this is that all the information necessary to describe any given place & objects in reality can be stored in a 2 dimensional ‘flat’ object. The size of the 2D slice needed is directly proportional to the size of the 3D area covered, and in principle our full 3D world could be represented as information held on a 2D plane.
Just because it could, doesn’t mean it is – it’s an interesting mathematical quirk that could be a hint at something more fundamental
I am no doubt way off and missing a ton of nuance, but this is ELI5 anyway
Full disclosure I do not like the holographic principle, so I will try to not be biased but no promises. First I should explain what a hologram is.
Holograms and holographic projections are essentially what you imagine when you hear that word, but it helps to be rigorous here: a lower dimensional thing looks higher dimensional. Okay that’s not really rigorous, but it’s the important part. When we see them in real life, you are probably imagining some sort of sticker or something that is effectively two dimensional, but “projects” a three dimensional image. The image isn’t actually three dimensional, it just appears as such.
Okay let’s handwave away some things like Penrose’s work on black holes and black hole information and a bunch of other things. The work Bekenstein did here is the important bit. The Bekenstein Bound shows us how much information can be stored in a volume. Don’t worry about what this means, it isn’t that important to the question, what is important is the connection here to the holographic principle. Essentials only, information is “stuff” and “things” and “events”, just everything, including how things happen. And he figured out that the most information you can stuff into a specified volume depends only on the surface area of that volume, not the volume itself. In other words, you can model a black hole using the 2D surface of the event horizon, and it would take care of everything inside that surface. But wait, the universe isn’t a black hole (or is it…), and there’s less information here than the density, why can’t the universe be a projection from a 2D surface infinitely far away? That’s this. Essentially, every degree of freedom you perceive can work as modeled on a 2D surface. You still have all three degrees of freedom, it’s just that one of them is “fake” kind of.
Where I disagree with it is that to me, this is just another dimension. It fits the definition of a dimension (a separate degree of freedom) so why isn’t it just a dimension? The holographic principle can be true, but it’s just a different way to look at the three macro spatial dimensions.
Oh and some people have proposed the universe is born of the birth of a black hole, I’m not too fond of this one either but the math checks out we could be in one. This one I don’t like just because it doesn’t really do anything. It doesn’t say anything about how the universe works or began it just hand waves questions.
You know the holodeck from star trek? Forget it. That has nothing to do with this.
A hologram is a 3d image stored on a 2d surface. Theoretically, it doesn’t have to be just an image. It’s possible (by which I mean it hasn’t been disproven) that you can store an entire 3d object on a 2d surface. Specifically, on the surface of a black hole. So theoretically, the entire observable 3d universe might be stored on a massive 2d surface.
This has no application to your life whatsoever.
So the flat-earthers might be technically correct if this theory is true? 😂
If you have issues thinking in abstractions then any explanation here won’t do you much good.
The gist is that if one delves deep enough into physics, then one finds that the maximal amount of information a given volume of space can theoretically store is proportional to the _surface_, not as one might expect the _volume_!
That is surprising at first because clearly one can stack hard-drives or whatever data medium in 3 dimensions, right? But if you go very overboard with this, either by doing this at stellar scales or with absurd densities, then gravity says NO! The entire thing turns into a black hole and all is lost (or not; this is another can of worms, yet not unrelated).
If one does the math, you find that storing at the maximal possible information density, you barely avoid this scenario by staying proportional to the surface area of such a black hole. And thus all information you ever have in 3D can just as well be stored in a corresponding 2D object.
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