Elementary particle physics makes it abundantly clear that, as we descend the ladder of the material universe, the various bits that make up physical existence are barely-there bits of stuff, in constant motion, with the space in between them occupying a far larger percentage of a given area designated for a particular "atom" or "molecule".
I urge everyone to test this theory by tossing a baseball through a window; better yet, do as my childhood friend once did and bash your head against a wall as hard as possible. Since the stuff isn't there, no problem, right?
Each and every meta-theory on the basic structure of the universe offers certain challenges to our common sense; whether it's Copernicus, or Newton, or Mach, or Einstein, or Bohr, or Heisenberg, or Hawking, we are challenged to consider again the old adage that the universe is not only weirder than we imagine, it's weirder than we can imagine.
Today comes word that, as the old saw goes, everything solid melts in to air:
"If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.
The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.
The "holographic principle" challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.(italics added)
2500 years ago, Plato posited that existence is akin to humanity sitting shackled, forced to stare at images on a cave wall; Plato, it seems, was the first to break these bonds and declare the images are just that, shadows without substance. Awake! Turn your head and see the way things really are!
The problem with these various theories about the way the Universe "really" is - microparticle physics as the Tao of all things; Bell's Theorem with its positing of a multiverse, each possible quantum state of each and every elementary particle since the Big Bang spinning off a new possible existence at each nanosecond of time; the physical unreality of all that is - require us to stand outside the world as we experience it. This is not to argue that holograph theory is or is not true; it sounds to me more like a certain mathematical model than anything else, most of which would be far beyond most of the people who read this blog. I am suggesting not so much that the theory is bogus as it is unfalsifiable. How would it be possible to falsify a theory whose very existence means assuming that entire Universe operates from its first principles?
Whenever I read somewhere that scientists deal with the way the world "really" is, I have to smile, because, far too often, theories like this are introduced that defy some of the most basic tenets of scientific inquiry. It may, indeed, be the solution to certain mathematical computations; that doesn't mean, however, it is scientific.
