Yes, You’re A Hologram! Mind-Blowing Quantum Physics Double Discovery

Posted December 13, 2013 06:00 by dave-dr-gonzo

Just months after the confirmation of the elusive “Higgs Boson” that imparts all matter with mass (and gravitational attraction), a group of scientists has found further evidence that suggests the known universe is a quantum-unified holographic phenomenon:

A team of physicists has found evidence to support an idea long theorized by philosophers and stoners alike that the universe might actually be one big holographic projection.

Theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed in 1997 that gravity is the result of vanishingly small, vibrating strings that that exist in nine dimensions of space and one of time.

If that were the case, then the universe would essentially be a hologram – a simpler, flatter cosmos without gravity – that is perceived much the same way that Plato described in his Allegory of the Cave.

“The work culminated in the last decade, and it suggests, remarkably, that all we experience is nothing but a holographic projection of processes taking place on some distant surface that surrounds us,” wrote physicist Brian Greene, of Columbia University. “You can pinch yourself, and what you feel will be real, but it mirrors a parallel process taking place in a different, distant reality.”

As if that weren’t enough, a separate study may have yielded a breakthrough that could explain and measure quantum gravity – and undo the quantum “law” that says you can’t measure both the position and velocity of subatomic phenomena, thereby unifying time-space.

Physicists reported this week the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.

The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression.

“The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling,” said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and an author of the first of two papers detailing the new idea. “You can easily do, on paper, computations that were infeasible even with a computer before.”

The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. …

[T]he discovery of the amplituhedron could cause an even more profound shift, Arkani-Hamed said. That is, giving up space and time as fundamental constituents of nature and figuring out how the Big Bang and cosmological evolution of the universe arose out of pure geometry.

“In a sense, we would see that change arises from the structure of the object,” he said. “But it’s not from the object changing. The object is basically timeless.”

While more work is needed, many theoretical physicists are paying close attention to the new ideas.

The work is “very unexpected from several points of view,” said Witten, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study. “The field is still developing very fast, and it is difficult to guess what will happen or what the lessons will turn out to be.”