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Scientists at the Center for Astrophysical Research at Fermilab are now working on creating a device called the Holometer, with which they can disprove everything that humanity currently knows about the Universe. If the experiment, which is being prepared for, turns out to be successful, then perhaps the existing laws of physics will be rewritten!

With the help of the Holometer device, experts hope prove or disprove the “crazy” assumption that the three-dimensional Universe as we know it simply does not exist, being nothing more than a kind of hologram. In other words, the surrounding reality is an illusion and nothing more...

Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy, and this is not a metaphor. He believes that if we could somehow peer into the smallest cell of space-time, we would find that the Universe is permeated through and through with an internal tremor, like the hiss of electrostatic interference in a short-wave radio. This noise is not coming from particles constantly being born and dying, or some other quantum foam that physicists have debated in the past. Hogan noise will appear if the world is not smooth and continuous, like a matte screen on which fields and particles dance, as we have long believed. It occurs if the world consists of separate blocks. Pieces. A grain of sand. Detecting Hogan noise would mean the universe is digital...

The theory that the Universe is a hologram is based on the recent assumption that space and time in the Universe are not continuous, but consist of separate parts, dots - as if made of pixels, which is why it is impossible to increase the “image scale” of the Universe indefinitely, penetrating deeper and deeper into the essence of things. Upon reaching a certain scale value, the Universe turns out to be something like a digital image of very poor quality - fuzzy, blurry. Imagine an ordinary photograph from a magazine. It looks like a continuous image, but, starting from a certain level of magnification, it breaks up into dots that make up a single whole. And also our world, perhaps, is assembled from microscopic points into a single beautiful, even convex picture.

Amazing theory! And until recently, it was not taken seriously. Only latest research black holes have convinced most researchers that there is something to the "holographic" theory. The fact is that the gradual evaporation of black holes discovered by astronomers over time led to an information paradox - all the information contained about the insides of the hole would then disappear. And this contradicts the principle of preserving information. But Nobel Prize laureate in physics Gerard t'Hooft, relying on the work of Jerusalem University professor Jacob Bekenstein, proved that all the information contained in a three-dimensional object can be stored in the two-dimensional boundaries remaining after its destruction - just like an image of a three-dimensional object can be placed in a two-dimensional hologram.

For the first time, the “crazy” idea of ​​​​universal illusoryness was born by University of London physicist David Bohm, a colleague of Albert Einstein, in the middle of the 20th century. According to his theory, the whole world is structured approximately the same as a hologram. Just as any no matter how small section of a hologram contains the entire image of a three-dimensional object, so every existing object is “embedded” in each of its components.

“It follows from this that objective reality does not exist,” Professor Bohm made a stunning conclusion then. “Even despite its apparent density, the Universe is at its core a phantasm, a gigantic, luxuriously detailed hologram.

Let us remind you that a hologram is a three-dimensional photograph taken with a laser. To make it, first of all, the object being photographed must be illuminated with laser light. Then the second laser beam, combining with the reflected light from the object, gives an interference pattern (alternating minima and maxima of the beams), which can be recorded on film. The finished photo looks like a meaningless layering of light and dark lines. But as soon as you illuminate the image with another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object immediately appears.

Three-dimensionality is not the only remarkable property inherent in a hologram. If a hologram of, say, a tree is cut in half and illuminated with a laser, each half will contain a whole image of the same tree at exactly the same size. If we continue to cut the hologram into smaller pieces, on each of them we will again find an image of the entire object as a whole. Unlike conventional photography, each section of the hologram contains information about the entire subject, but with a proportionally corresponding decrease in clarity.

“The principle of the hologram “everything in every part” allows us to approach the issue of organization and orderliness in a completely new way,” explained Professor Bohm. —For almost all of its history, Western science has developed with the idea that The best way to understand a physical phenomenon, be it a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its component parts. The hologram showed us that some things in the universe cannot be explored in this way. If we dissect something arranged holographically, we will not get the parts of which it consists, but we will get the same thing, but with less accuracy.

Bohm’s “crazy” idea was also prompted by a sensational experiment with elementary particles in his time. A physicist at the University of Paris, Alain Aspect, discovered in 1982 that, under certain conditions, electrons can instantly communicate with each other, regardless of the distance between them. It doesn't matter if there are ten millimeters between them or ten billion kilometers. Somehow each particle always knows what the other is doing. There was only one problem with this discovery: it violates Einstein’s postulate about the limiting speed of interaction propagation, equal to the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this frightening prospect has caused physicists to strongly doubt the Aspect's work.

But Bohm managed to find an explanation. According to him, elementary particles interact at any distance not because they exchange some mysterious signals with each other, but because their separation is illusory. He explained that at some deeper level of reality, such particles are not separate objects, but in fact extensions of something more fundamental.

“For better clarity, the professor illustrated his intricate theory with the following example,” wrote Michael Talbot, author of the book “The Holographic Universe.” — Imagine an aquarium with fish. Imagine also that you cannot see the aquarium directly, but can only observe two television screens that transmit images from cameras, one located in front and the other on the side of the aquarium. Looking at the screens, you can conclude that the fish on each of the screens are separate objects. Because cameras capture images from different angles, the fish look different. But, as you continue to observe, after a while you will discover that there is a relationship between the two fish on different screens. When one fish turns, the other also changes direction, slightly differently, but always according to the first. When you see one fish from the front, another is certainly in profile. If you don’t have a complete picture of the situation, you are more likely to conclude that the fish must somehow instantly communicate with each other, that this is not a fact of random coincidence.”

“The obvious superluminal interaction between particles tells us that there is a deeper level of reality hidden from us,” Bohm explained the phenomenon of Aspect’s experiments, “a higher dimension than ours, as in the analogy with the aquarium.” We see these particles as separate only because we see only part of reality. And the particles are not separate “parts,” but facets of a deeper unity that is ultimately as holographic and invisible as the tree mentioned above. And since everything in physical reality consists of these “phantoms,” the Universe we observe is itself a projection, a hologram.

What else the hologram may contain is not yet known. Suppose, for example, that it is the matrix that gives rise to everything in the world; at a minimum, it contains all the elementary particles that have taken or will someday take every possible form of matter and energy - from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It's like a universal supermarket that has everything.

Although Bohm admitted that we have no way of knowing what else the hologram contains, he took it upon himself to assert that we have no reason to assume that there is nothing more in it. In other words, perhaps the holographic level of the world is simply one of the stages of endless evolution.

But is it possible to “feel” this illusory nature with instruments? It turned out yes. For several years now, research has been underway in Germany using the GEO600 gravitational telescope built in Hannover (Germany) to detect gravitational waves, oscillations in space-time that create supermassive space objects. However, not a single wave could be found over the years. One of the reasons is strange noises in the range from 300 to 1500 Hz, which the detector records for a long time. They really interfere with his work. Researchers searched in vain for the source of the noise until they were accidentally contacted by the director of the Center for Astrophysical Research at Fermilab, Craig Hogan. He stated that he understood what was going on. According to him, it follows from the holographic principle that space-time is not a continuous line and, most likely, is a collection of microzones, grains, a kind of space-time quanta.

“And the accuracy of the GEO600 equipment today is sufficient to detect vacuum fluctuations occurring at the boundaries of space quanta, the very grains of which, if the holographic principle is correct, the Universe consists,” explained Professor Hogan.

According to him, GEO600 just stumbled upon a fundamental limitation of space-time - that very “grain”, like the grain of a magazine photograph. And he perceived this obstacle as “noise.”

And Craig Hogan, following Bohm, repeats with conviction: if the results of GEO600 correspond to my expectations, then we all really live in a huge hologram of universal proportions.

The detector's readings so far match his calculations exactly, and it seems that the scientific world is on the verge of a grand discovery. Experts remind that once extraneous noises that infuriated researchers at Bell Laboratory - a large research center in the field of telecommunications, electronic and computer systems - during experiments in 1964, have already become a harbinger of a global change in the scientific paradigm: this is how cosmic microwave background radiation was discovered, which proved the hypothesis about the Big Bang.

And scientists are waiting for proof of the holographic nature of the Universe when the Holometer device starts working at full power. Scientists hope that it will increase the amount of practical data and knowledge of this extraordinary discovery, which still belongs to the field of theoretical physics. The detector is designed like this: they shine a laser through a beam splitter, from there two beams pass through two perpendicular bodies, are reflected, come back, merge together and create an interference pattern, where any distortion reports a change in the ratio of the lengths of the bodies, since the gravitational wave passes through the bodies and compresses or stretches the space unequally in different directions.

“The Holometer will allow us to increase the scale of space-time and see whether assumptions about the fractional structure of the Universe, based purely on mathematical conclusions, are confirmed,” Professor Hogan suggests.

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The theory that our world is just a three-dimensional illusion has existed for a long time, but until recently there was no evidence. A device called the Holometer, which is currently being developed by scientists at the Fermilab Center for Astrophysical Research, may revolutionize our understanding of the structure of the Universe.

Proponents of the "holographic" theory proceed from the fact that time and space are not continuous, but consist of individual points - just as a digital image on a computer screen consists of pixels. Thus, by increasing the scale, we will only get a blurry “picture”.

For a long time this remained only at the level of speculation. But in 1982, a group of French researchers discovered that, under certain conditions, microparticles are able to communicate with each other regardless of the distance between them.

Theoretically, this effect was discovered back in 1935 by Albert Einstein and his students Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. They put forward a hypothesis according to which, if two interconnected photons fly apart and one of them changes polarization parameters, for example, crashes into something, then it disappears, but information about it is instantly transferred to another photon, and it becomes the one that disappeared ! And almost half a century later this was confirmed experimentally.

English became interested in this discovery of French physicists. scientist David Bohm. It occurred to him that the strange behavior of microparticles was nothing more than the key to the secret of the universe.

He turned his attention to holograms, which, in his opinion, could be ideal models of our Universe. As you remember, a hologram is a three-dimensional photograph taken with a laser. To make it, you need to illuminate the object being photographed with a laser beam, and then point another laser at it. Then the second beam, adding up with the reflected light from the object, gives an interference pattern that can be recorded on film.

It is interesting that the finished photograph at first looks like a meaningless layering of various light and dark lines on top of each other. But as soon as you illuminate it with another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object immediately appears. Then we can say that the hologram is ready.

However, the three-dimensionality of the image is not the only remarkable property inherent in a holographic image. Another feature of such a photograph is the similarity of a part to the whole. If a hologram of, say, a tree is cut in half and illuminated with a laser, each half will contain a whole image of the same tree at exactly the same size.

If we continue to cut the hologram into smaller pieces, on each of them it will be possible to again detect an image of the entire object as a whole. It turns out that, unlike ordinary photography, each section of the hologram contains information about the entire object, but with a proportionally corresponding decrease in clarity.

Based on this property of holograms, Bohm suggested that the interaction of material particles is nothing more than an illusion. In fact, they are still a single unit. Thus, the Universe itself is a very complex illusion. Material objects are combinations of holographic frequencies.

“The principle of the hologram “everything in every part” allows us to approach the issue of organization and orderliness in a completely new way,” says Professor Bohm. “The apparent superluminal interaction between particles tells us that there is a deeper level of reality hidden from us. Separate we see these particles are only because we see only part of reality."

The scientist quite clearly explained his intricate theory using the example of separately filming fish in an aquarium (this example is described in more detail in Michael Talbot’s book “The Holographic Universe”). So, imagine an aquarium in which several fish of the same species swim, but they are quite similar to each other. The main condition of the experiment is this: the observer cannot see the aquarium directly, but is only able to observe two television screens that transmit images from cameras located one in front , the other is on the side of the aquarium. Not surprisingly, looking at them, he comes to the conclusion that the fish on each of the screens are separate objects.

Since cameras transmit images from different angles, the fish look different at each specific moment in time, for example, the same fish on different screens can be simultaneously seen from the side and from the front. But, continuing to observe, after a while the observer is surprised to discover that there is a relationship between the two fish on different screens. When one fish turns, the other also changes direction, although in a slightly different way, but always according to the first.

Moreover, if the observer does not have a complete picture of the situation, then he will most likely come to the conclusion that the fish must somehow instantly communicate with each other, that this is not a coincidence. In the same way, physicists, not knowing the principles of the “universal experiment,” believe that particles instantly interact with each other. However, if you explain to the observer how everything works “in reality,” he will understand that his previous conclusions are based on the analysis of illusions that his consciousness perceived as reality.

“This simple experiment suggests that objective reality does not exist. Even despite its obvious density, the Universe at its core can only be a gigantic, luxuriously detailed hologram,” says Professor Bohm.

The holographic principle will be finally proven when the Holometer device starts working. The detector is designed as follows: a laser beam passes through a splitter, the resulting two beams pass through two perpendicular bodies, reflecting from them, then return back and, merging, create an interference pattern, by the distortions of which one can judge the change in space, compressed or stretched by a gravitational wave in different directions.

“This instrument, the Holometer, will allow us to increase the scale of space-time and see whether assumptions about the fractional structure of the Universe are confirmed,” says Craig Hogan, director of the Center for Astrophysical Research at Fermilab. According to the authors of the development, the first data obtained using the device will begin to arrive in the middle of this year.

Meanwhile, the principles of holography are already widely used in a variety of fields. Thus, American scientists have developed laser technology that makes it possible to create virtual images on the battlefield, designed to have a psychological impact on soldiers - to intimidate the enemy and raise the morale of the combatants.

Recently, physicists presented calculations according to which spaces with a flat metric (including our universe) can be holograms. In their work, the authors used the idea of ​​AdS/CFT - correspondence (Anti - de Sitter / Conformal Field Theory Correspondence) between conformal field theory and gravity. Using a particular example of such correspondence, scientists have shown the equivalence of the description of these two theories
. So what is the holographic universe and what does it have to do with black holes, duality and string theory?
This work is based on the so-called holographic principle, which states that for a mathematical description of any world, the information contained on its outer boundary is sufficient: an idea of ​​an object of higher dimension in this case can be obtained from “Holograms” having a lower dimension. The principle proposed in 1993 by the Dutch physicist Gerard "t Hooft in relation to string theory (also called M - theory or modern mathematical physics) was embodied in the idea of ​​​​AdS / CFT - correspondence, which was pointed out in 1998 by the American physicist and theorist of Argentine origin Juan Maldacena.
In this correspondence, the description of gravity in the five-dimensional anti-de sitter space - the space of negative curvature (that is, with Lobachevsky geometry) - using superstring theory turns out to be equivalent to a certain limit of the four-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, defined on the four-dimensional boundary of five dimensions. In the non-supersymmetric case, the four-dimensional Yang-Mills theory forms the basis of the standard model - the theory of observable interactions of elementary particles. The theory of superstrings, based on the assumption of the existence of hypothetical one-dimensional objects - strings - on Planck scales, describes five dimensions. The prefix “Super” in this case means the presence of symmetry in which each elementary particle has its own superpartner with opposite quantum statistics.
Equivalence of description means that there is an unambiguous connection between the observed theories - duality. Mathematically, this is manifested in the presence of a relationship that allows one to calculate the parameters of interactions of particles (or strings) of one of the theories, if those for the other are known. However, there is no other way to do this for the first theory. The idea of ​​duality and the holographic principle are illustrated by two examples that demonstrate the convenience of such analogies when describing phenomena on scales from elementary particles to the universe. Probably, such convenience has fundamental grounds and is one of the properties of nature.
According to the holographic principle, two universes of different dimensions can have an equivalent description. Physicists have shown this using the example of AdS/CFT between the five-dimensional anti-de sitter space and its four-dimensional boundary. As a result, it turned out that five-dimensional space is described as a four-dimensional hologram at its boundary. In this approach, a black hole, existing in five dimensions, manifests itself in four dimensions in the form of radiation.
The first example is the duality of the description of black holes and the confinement of quarks (“non-escape” of quarks - elementary particles participating in strong interactions - hadrons. Experiments on the scattering of other such particles on hadrons have shown that they consist of two (mesons) or three (baryons - such as, for example, protons and neutrons) quarks, which cannot be, unlike other elementary particles, in a free state.
The work of physicists from India, Austria and Japan is based on the calculation of Rényi entropy for the correspondence between two-dimensional conformal field theory (describing elementary particles) and gravity in three-dimensional anti-de sitter space. Using the example of quantum entanglement (which manifests itself when the properties of objects initially connected to each other turn out to be correlated even when they are separated by a distance), scientists have shown that entropy takes the same values ​​in flat quantum gravity and in two-dimensional field theory.
This unobservability of the quark is visible in computer calculations, but does not yet have a theoretical justification. The mathematical formulation of this problem is known as the "Mass Gap" problem in gauge theories, and it is one of the seven millennium problems formulated by the Clay Institute. To date, only one of the formulated problems (Henri Poincaré's conjecture) has been solved - this was done more than ten years ago by the Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman.
As they move away from each other, the interaction between quarks only intensifies, while as they move closer to each other, it weakens. This property, called asymptotic freedom, was predicted by American physicists - theorists and Nobel Prize winners Frank Wilczek, David Gross and David Politzer. String theory offers a spectacular description of this phenomenon using the analogy between particles not escaping from the event horizon of a black hole and the confinement of quarks in hadrons. However, such a description leads to unobservable effects and is therefore used only as an illustrative example.

 

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