Hold off on the “We are are a hologram” wallpaper a minute, This just in …
|July 3, 2011||Posted by News under Cosmology|
At Discovery Magazine (July 1, 2011), Ian O’Neill tells us that “We May Not Live in a Hologram after All”. Hard to say who’ll be more shocked, those who thought we did and those who never supposed that anyone had even considered the idea, but
In a nutshell, GEO600 — a mindbogglingly sensitive piece of kit — started to detect what particle physicist Craig Hogan interpreted as quantum “fuzziness.” This fuzziness, or blurriness on the smallest possible scales, could be interpreted as evidence for the “holographic universe” hypothesis.
This hypothesis describes the 3-dimensional universe we live in as a projection from a 2-dimensional “shell” at the very edge of the universe. As with any projection, the projected “pixels” will become fuzzy the closer you zoom in on them. The quantum fuzziness GEO600 seemed to detect could be evidence for this projection effect. The Universe is therefore a hologram, so the idea goes.
[ … ]
However, as announced this week, a space-borne European satellite that should be able to measure these small scales too, doesn’t appear to be registering any quantum fuzziness. In fact, it has yet to detect anything quantum, indicating that spacetime’s “graininess” is composed of quanta that a lot smaller than predicted — and in my view, puts a question mark over the interpretation of the GEO600 results.
Ah, facts: The life blood of science and the bane of science fiction.