A Thin Sheet of Reality: The Universe as a Hologram (Full)
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2011 World Science Festival panel discussion on the holographic principle: http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/a_thin_sheet_of_reality_the_universe_as_a_hologram What we touch. What we smell. What we feel. They're all part of our reality. But what if life as we know it reflects only one side of the full story? Some of the world's leading physicists think that this may be the case. They believe that our reality is a projection—sort of like a hologram—of laws and processes that exist on a thin surface surrounding us at the edge of the universe. Although the notion seems outlandish, it's a long-standing theory that initially emerged years ago from scientists studying black holes; recently, a breakthrough in string theory propelled the idea into the mainstream of physics. What took place was an intriguing discussion on the cutting-edge results that may just change the way we view reality. Featuring: John Hockenberry: John Hockenberry is an award-winning journalist with twenty-five years experience in radio, broadcast television and print. He is the host of WNYC and PRI's The Takeaway, a correspondent for PBS Frontline, and a noted presenter and moderator at conferences such at TED, Aspen Ideas, and the World Science Festival. Gerard t'Hooft: Gerardus 't Hooft was born on July 5, 1946, Den Helder, the Netherlands. When he received his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1972 at Utrecht University on "The Renormalization Procedure for Yang-Mills Fields", this work would later earn him, together with his advisor Martinus Veltman, the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics. 't Hooft has been Professor in Theoretical Physics at Utrecht for most of his professional life, doing research and education on the topics of the electro-weak interaction, the strong interaction and later also the gravitational forces in the world of the sub-atomic particles. Member of the Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) as well as other institutions and academies, his work led to a number of honorary doctorates and international prizes such as the Wolf Prize of Israel, the Pius XI Medal, and the Franklin Medal. Leonard Susskind: Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University, and one of the discoverers of string theory, a candidate for a theory that unifies all laws of physics. An award-winning author, he is a proponent of the idea that our universe is one of an infinite number. Herman Verlinde: Renowned for his influential contributions to string theory and its application in mathematics, particle physics, cosmology, and black hole physics, Herman Verlinde's research has been recognized through several awards and fellowships from the Packard Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Royal Dutch Academy of Science. A professor of physics at Princeton University, he is a leading member of the High Energy Theory group. In 1988, Verlinde received his Ph.D. at Utrecht University under the supervision of Gerard't Hooft. From 1994 to 1998, he was professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, where he founded its Center for Mathematical Physics. In 2008 and 2009, he was a visiting member at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. Herman Verlinde is the twin brother of Erik Verlinde, who is also a prominent string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam. Raphael Bousso: Raphael Bousso is recognized for discovering the general relation between the curved geometry of space-time and its information content, known as the "covariant entropy bound." This allowed for a precise and general formulation of the holographic principle, which is believed to underlie the unification of quantum theory and Einstein's theory of gravity. Bousso is also one of the discoverers of the landscape of string theory, which explains the small but non-vanishing value of the cosmological constant (or "dark energy"). His work has led to a novel view of cosmology, the multiverse of string theory. Bousso is currently professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Comments
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the moderator is a moron.
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A level 6 salvia divinorum trip, and this makes perfect sense. Not to glorify use of substances here, but I do believe quantum physics is intertwined with neuroscience and the brain. We play a critical role in the universe, whether we like it or not. The butterfly effect, for instance, is definitely real. We are moving parts in an interconnected, all-encompassing thing, the universe, and so each of our movements and actions, while they appear to be separate, such as, if I move my arm in the air, what is actually happening, is that a sea of particles bound together by electromagnetism (my arm), is moving through an adjacent sea of particles that is dictated as "separate" by my brain, due to my being a self-aware being. Taking self-awareness out of the equation, and I am merely at the complete whim of everything else, basically on autopilot.
I have read plenty about quantum mechanics and how we, despite seemingly separate beings, are interwoven into the universe...such that, even when we die, we are still a part of the universe. It is constantly growing and moving in all directions, and our brains allow us to experience a subjective, yet still valid perspective in existence. For instance, I am sitting at my computer right now, and sitting on my chair. Technically the chair and my body are not separate. It's impossible to tear apart a piece of reality (so far as we know, no one has ripped a hole in the fabric of space--yet). The chair is connected to the floor, and the walls and ceiling are connected to the floor, the chair, and myself. This continues, etc. etc.
For example, If I take an object, and put it in a box, and take another object, and put it in a different box, I have not separated the two objects, despite my senses believing otherwise. In a way, the two objects are separated, and yet, they are still part of the same "fabric" of reality...if I draw a circle on a blanket and a square somewhere else on the same blanket, they are separate, but the blanket is still one thing. The circle and square are apart from each other, but still technically bound together. They are still connected, because each object is matter that is part of the universe, and the universe cannot be separated.
So the idea of a god, yes, would, in a sense, be considered true. If there is an "Everything" (the universe) and we are part of that "Everything", then our existence is predicated upon this "everything" existing. Call it whatever you want...
I liken the universe to a holographic fractal, and any time that a quantum particle changes properties, another parallel universe is born, and this continues in all areas of space, at each instance of "time". This would make perfect sense in terms of a fractal and its behavior, continuously branching off into different forms, and every area being slightly different from the rest, and progressing this way, ad infinitum.
For instance, a leaf falling, lands next to my feet while I am standing outside. In billions of parallel universes, this leaf has fallen a millimeter away from where it fell in the universe I am experiencing, in all areas of space. In other parallel universes still, this leaf has not fallen, or will fall at a different point in time and space, so that all possibilities play out, no matter how trivial, such as this single leaf falling and landing on the ground. -
There are no perfect
symmetries, there is no pure randomness.
Therefore, Robert B.
Laughlin's definition of emergence, "a collective principle of
organization that gives rise to a law, a relationship of measured
things that is always true but the law vanishes away into nothingness
when you examine little parts to see where it came from"
requires a slight alteration, because the relationship of measured
things is always true to some degree of resolution beyond which, the
truthfulness begins to fluctuate and then vanish. When we measure the
coastline of England, the answer will depend on the length of the
ruler we use. As we move towards smaller and smaller rulers or finer
and finer scales, we are moving through the fractal iterations. At
some point, the length of the coastline will begin to fluctuate. This
is an emergent property and it is caused by the wind and the waves,
time and tide. If we imagine that the coastline of England is the
hidden structure of reality, and the length of the coastline is a
physical law, such as the fine-structure constant, when we take a
measurement at very large scales (increments of 20 miles) the answer
will not fluctuate but as we move to finer and finer scales something
magical happens, the answer begins to fluctuate. This is the
uncertainty that physicist are up against. The fluctuation, or lack
thereof is an emergent property. Also, as we move to finer and finer
scales, the concentration of energy increases. The fractal nesting of
ever increasing cycles of time are related to scale.
Imagine you are standing near
a fast flowing stream. On the surface of the water is a feature, A
form or bulge in the surface. It holds the same form, it stays in the
same location, it is in a sense, both permanent and transient. It is
caused by a rock that is just below the surface, as the flow of water
increases the feature grows larger. This is what matter is, a
permanent yet transient feature on the fluctuating surface of
space/time.
Causality is a fractal probability distribution. -
"Now" is a mirror precisely positioned between the past and the future
and it is reflecting in both directions. The surface of this mirror has
imperfections and so the reflections cannot faithfully match either the
past or the future, there is always a slight variation. The randomness
imposed by the imperfections has a fractal quality with extreme
sensitivity to initial conditions. It is not the mirror that is moving,
it is the imperfections.
A rock does not need information to tell it how to be a rock. That
is not how information works. The information is stored in the
relationships that make up the rock. If the relationships were
different, the rock would be different. We can rearrange the
relationships of many things at many levels. If we scramble the
relationships, what happens to the information? Sheldrake would suggest
that new relationships, something the universe has never seen before,
are resisted by some form of energy (morphic field) but as the
arrangement becomes more common, at some point it becomes easier to
produce.
Everything is fields.
If we are in a simulation, it is pointless to talk about the arrangement of the pixels on the screen.
The holomovement and process; the undivided whole is differentiated by
perception, this creates a disturbance in the field. The disturbance is
information but it is different, new or novel because of imprecise
perception and intention. Perceptions are always a best guess or
controlled hallucination. From this information, intention is formed in
the form of an echo from a previous intent but again this is an
approximation to some degree of resolution. Expression and experience
move together in and out of these nested hierarchies, creating new or
novel information. The geometry involved is a novelty or imagination
engine.
Quantum uncertainty is always creating novel relationships to some
degree of resolution. This is the dance of expression/experience. Self
referential noise is the fiddler.
Truth is precise associations without fluctuation, but everything is
fluctuating and so, we only see truth values. The degree of precision is
important in that it gives us the applicability of any truth value.
With the measurement problem, when we have the particles location,
we are in a sense stopping time but the electron is part of the
holomovement and so a slice of time yields a partial or incomplete
picture of the holomovement. If we think of a holographic plate, the
electron is everywhere on the plate and it is our particular vantage
point when viewing the plate that gives it location. Perception creates a
differentiation. Reality is constructed by emergent phenomena. Think of
the holographic plate as a dynamic system rather than a static plate.
The plate is one slice of time, as a system the structure is nothing
like a plate, it is more like sound waves moving as spherical ripples in
time. There must be some form of a container with everything inside of
the container affecting everything else to some degree.
Information and awareness in a system; the system as a whole has a
complete awareness of itself. Perception creates differentiation, the
differentiation divides the awareness, this process is, in a sense, a
division of consciousness. The meaning contained in the system is moving
from the highest state of application, through nested hierarchies of
meaning and association into a realm of imagination where all things are
possible but less and less meaningful.
The singularity is a point, but a point is a theoretical object.
When a photon interacts with a photographic plate, the location of the
photon is a combination of it's wave amplitude and the position of the
plate creating an artificial slice of time. This illusion of location is
no different then the illusion of complete information about the
photon. This photon may have come from a star a billion light years away
but it is everywhere. The interference pattern from the two slit
experiment shows bright bands and dark bands, and it is the dark bands
that are the most interesting, because the dark bands are not empty,
that would be like saying that the trough of the wave does not exist. -
I now see where Professor t' Hooft has gone profoundly wrong and why his pre-quantum theory is doomed to failure. His conception of quantum theory is incomplete. First, he does not use Bohm's pilot wave theory. Second, he seems unaware that all quantum entanglement comes from locally real retrocausal zig-zags as first explained by O. Costa de Beauregard, then used by Yakir Aharonov for weak measurements, by John Cramer for the transactional interpretation, and most recently by Huw Price, Ken Wharton and Rod Sutherland. Professor t' Hooft does not seem to understand that Einstein's relativity does not require the absence of advanced future causes of present effect and that his appeal to the Grandfather Time Travel Paradox is a misleading Red Herring as shown by Igor Novikov and David Deutsch with different complementary pictures. Indeed, Wheeler and Feynman introduced advanced future causes for classical electrodynamics further developed by Hoyle and Narlikar.
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Again, at 1 hour, 22 minutes in, the second guy on the right is absolutely spot on. There is some happening at the Planck scale, the scale at which dark energy interacts. The formulas that control nature are very simple at the Planck scale, the quantum scale is at a higher and more complex level. The reason they have so much trouble with quantum theory is that they have been confused by all the scientific noise. They need to work on understand what is happening at the Planck level, and then work their way up from that, this is the only way they are going to solve this problem.
At the Planck level, before the Big Bang, you really need to understand what is going on, the universe is simple because you don't have a lot of the forces. The only force at the Planck level is an electrostatic force between particles. Gravity starts to form at the Plank level once sub atomic particles start to form as we enter the quantum level. All other forces are derived at the quantum level and at the atomic level after the Big Bang. If you can understand the behaviour of the fundamental Planck particles, you can derive the entire universe.
The Hologram idea is nice, but it's simply a mathematical representation of reality, it is not reality and it has a few issue. Maybe it helps these scientists to keep employed, but they should really listen to the second guy on the right and start investigating at the Planck scale. -
Once they work it all out, these poor guys will have to get a real job and there goes their government pay check.
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One hour in, the second guy from the right is spot on. The pre information is dark energy, the particles that make up all sub atomic and atomic matter.
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It seems simple to me, atomic matter goes into a black hole and dark energy comes out. Information is not lost, it is simply converted. I don't believe the information that make a tea cup will be retrievable once is transformed into dark energy. Dark energy can easily move out of a black hole which is the reason the black hole decays. The information that was once the tea cup gets distributed back into universe and can be reused, but we have to wait for the next big bang before it can reduced as atomic matter.
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Hawkins is over rated, he produced a nice equation, but that's about it. He gets a nice government pay check however, that probably influences his craziness.
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We come from information,we go back to information. That's life.
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This stuff is so-o over my head at times...but I thank you so much for putting it out here.
As one of the guests on the panel stated..."You have to ask "nasty questions"".
Every inch of enlightenment on any subject since mankind's intellect evolved, flowered,began and progressed with specifically those sort of inquiries. -
Interesting but is speech also considered information? Because from what I can tell, they seem to see information as physical things. Technically so is speech, right? Sound waves is still a physical thing in a sense, that it exists. But where does our words go then? Does words count as information? Different words, give different sound waves, right?
But does that mean that the words someone spoke 3000 years ago is still around? Am I making sense to anyone? -
PROBABLY BORING AS FUCK WITHOUT KAKU AND SOME DUDE ON LSD.
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Got to LOVE Lenny though and his little friend too! the rest not so much
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yes the unknown unknowns, I'm sorry but we were all kicked out and that info is not available here change your surrogate activity now or experience frustration the entire rest of your life, you know that there's something else calling you right now... CM just like you
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Mind-blowing & such a juicy discussion! Thanks to Brilliant thinkers... XXXXX
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The surface is infinite and can not be told in math.
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understanding your spacecraft < just google it
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Going to make a wild usumpshion, is the reason that info can be retrieved at the event horizon because it's going past or the same speed of light , I meen how can we know for shure when we get infinite symbols at the end of phisicks.
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