When I read, in a reputable scientific journal, that the universe we live in may be more like one of those fancy 3-D images that they use on bank cards and '80s knicknacks than it is like the traditional heaven/earth/sky/ model ... well, I rejoice, and I hope you do, too. I mean, it opens up a whole new vocabulary of blame and excuses if the explanation for every lapse, every misunderstanding, boils down to "Our universes were slightly out of tilt, visually."
Which is not what Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, is saying, probably, when he says: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram." But it's how I *hear* it, and I don't have a tin ear for physics. I'm just ... extrapolating, OK? I love reading this stuff. Even paragraphs like this:
Gravitational-wave detectors are extremely sensitive, so those who operate them have to work harder than most to rule out noise. They have to take into account passing clouds, distant traffic, seismological rumbles and many, many other sources that could mask a real signal. "The daily business of improving the sensitivity of these experiments always throws up some excess noise," says Danzmann. "We work to identify its cause, get rid of it and tackle the next source of excess noise." At present there are no clear candidate sources for the noise GEO600 is experiencing. "In this respect I would consider the present situation unpleasant, but not really worrying."
do not really make my head hurt. I mean, they're unpleasant, but not really worrying.Because, eventually, I get to a sentence that reminds me of why I think physicists are so very cool:
"It would be ironic if an instrument built to detect something as vast as astrophysical sources of gravitational waves inadvertently detected the minuscule graininess of space-time. "Speaking as a fundamental physicist, I see discovering holographic noise as far more interesting," says Hogan. "
Isn't it ironic that physicists seem to have a greater grasp of irony than do many English majors?
When you tilt your head slightly, do you see a different version of the universe?
Should I take the next exit off the frivolity freeway ...
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Emily Holleman
Estellar Expectations
Desperate Salon
Currer Bell
fingerlakeswanderer
Julianne Chatelain
Salon.com
Comments
That's the royal "we."
"... The hologram theory was on the cover of Scientific America sometime ago. Frankly, the concept that the real world has a particular form is a questionable. The world appears to be a mathematical function concerning probabilities, and our nervous systems merely tools whereby we are concious of a very limited domain or range of that function. Whether that function is a solid 3, 4, or 11 dimensional world, a hologram, a collection of space-time grains, or none of the above, appears to be a question of formulation, not of reality. This doesn't mean that physics is futile - it means that we should study the function to learn how the universe operates and not expect to find more reality than that."
Warm fuzzies, here ...