While our place in the universe may be never understood, scientists have a new theory that may place an interesting take on it all: our world may be a giant hologram.
Scientists behind the GEO600 experiment have been looking for gravitational waves – ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes, but have so far failed to detect any, despite theory dictating that they should be there.
Instead though they found an inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Having no idea what they had found, a researcher approached them with an explanation: GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan. He adds: “”If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”
New Scientist has the full explanation here , and I won’t pretend that I understand it all, but the notion is fascinating none the less.
