Could the Universe be a Giant Hologram?
For decades now, scientists have been investigating the possibility that our Universe is, or once was, a giant hologram, where the laws of physics require just two dimensions, but everything appears three-dimensional to us.
It sounds far-fetched, but if true, it would actually solve some pretty hefty questions in physics, and recent research has dished up some tantalizing evidence that suggests the hologram principle works just as well as the standard Big Bang model in explaining the early Universe.
Think of a black hole - some physicists think that information about all the stuff that falls into a black hole is actually retained (or encoded) on its boundary, the event horizon.
If we apply this principle to the rest of the Universe, all of the information that makes you, me, and all other matter we encounter, is encoded on a two-dimensional boundary and expressed in three dimensions.
While this hypothesis is obviously incredibly difficult to prove, over the past 20 years, more than 10,000 papers have been published on the idea, with earlier this year some scientists claim they discovered what could be the first direct observational evidence that Universe once was a hologram, based on the cosmic microwave background - the 'afterglow' of the Big Bang.
What Do You Think?