Physicists: Universe Almost Certainly Not a Hologram | Hacker News Reader

Physicists: Universe Almost Certainly Not a Hologram

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59 pointsevo_924 comments

If you want some really wacky stuff, try this: The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics - Leonard Susskind and Raphael Bousso

http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3796

By the way, this ain't your daddy's multiverse. This is a whole new and extended multiverse theory which says that the multiple universes used to explain tuning of constants and the multiple universes used to explain quantum decoherence are THE SAME THING!

Then, for balance read this guy who thinks they're on crack:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/05/bousso-susskind-hypermulti...

It's also useful I think to link to Tegmark's sorta-famous Multiverse Hierarchy.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1283

Motl thinks everybody is on crack.

This is true. And he's a birther, and a heavy climate change skeptic. His writing about physics is refreshing though.

Is Motl famous? I've seen his name popup everywhere physics related. Should I know him?

He was in the Society of Fellows at Harvard, and is an extremely prolific, opinionated blogger. He and Peter Woit over at Not Even Wrong used to feud constantly.

Interestingly, Motl is actually really polite and charming in a shy, goofy way in person.

"Even in classical physics, dice may have probabilities 1/6 for each number, but once we see "6", we update the probabilities to (0,0,0,0,0,1)."

It is obvious that he himself is on crack. I couldn't read past that gibberish.

That is a correct reasoning. In classical physics, as everything is predetermined, no real probabilities exist. We use probability theory to gauge our uncertainty about the world.

If you knew the position of every particle in the dice, there would be no distribution of side, it would always come up the same. But we don't and can't know everything, thus we use probabilities to express that. If you throw the dice, your uncertainty drops because you know the outcome of the experiment.

Yes, but is he assuming that all initial conditions are known when it hits 6 while also assuming classical theory? If he is, fine. If he isn't, he updated wrong.

Isn't this just saying that any number has a chance of 1/6th for being "it" before the dice is rolled, and that once we have rolled the dice and it landed with 6 on top, the number 6 obviously has a probability of 1 of being "it"?

Except, of course, the string theorists...

If you want a totally different competing, (and compelling) hypothesis to soak up, try these- http://www.electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm

http://www.haltonarp.com/articles

How about some really, really wacky (and extremely fascinating) stuff: Quantum Immortality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality

The title goes a bit too far. The new experiment doesn't rule out the Holographic Principle, it rules out Craig Hogan's model, which was inspired by the Principle.

The title can be a little misleading to the lay reader, almost to comical effect. But this is actually a pretty significant finding w/r/t its implications for current theories in physics.

Can you clarify something? This article reads as though energy can't be quantized. Am I misreading the article, or is that an open question now? (Or was it always an open question, and I never understood Planck's Constant correctly?)

I believe that the Holographic Universe theory states that the quantization should be larger than the Plank Constant since the Plank Constant represents the quantization at the edge of the Universe. Everything inside the universe is a projection of the information on the edge and therefore is blurrier and has a higher quantization limit.

the black hole entropy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_thermodynamics#Black...

clearly points to some factorization of physically possible 3d volume structures to closed 2d boundary of it. The reverse relation isn't even proven to be 1:1, thus it can't even remotely be called a projection. Ok, lets suppose it is 1:1 and call the reverse a "projection". Still, any narrow/specific interpretation of that factorization relationship and its reverse, like for example the Holographic Universe's projection in any geometrical/group theory quasi-straightforward sense, just doesn't have any basis for it (ie. there is no any known reason to favor any given interpretation over any other yet). Thus it is no surprise that the experimental data doesn't support and contradict that given interpretation.

I believe they're referring to the holographic principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle)

What a terrible headline. It's indicative of the poor state of science reporting.

This was an onion headline years ago, I'm sure.

"Computer, end simulation!"

Just to be sure...

I believe the proper phrase is "Computer, arch."

Damn! My start-up idea was to sell glasses that allowed you to view the holographic structure of the world.

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