Is a Holographic Universe Supported by Science?

Evidently it is according to Alex Filippenko a leading astronmer at the University of California, Berkeley

I've already watched several of his video courses on astronomy. Thus far they have been very scientifically precise. Dr. Filippenko is a leading astronomer and has made many contributions to modern astrophysics and astronomy.

He currently has a course out entitled "Black Holes Explained"

Here's a quote from the description of his course:

Is the universe like a hologram? Quantum theory suggests that information is not lost inside a black hole but instead is encoded around it like a hologram — a phenomenon that may characterize the universe as a whole! Indeed, the idea that the universe itself has properties similar to black holes shows that these objects play a pivotal role at all scales: from the truly cosmic to the subatomic realm.

Here's an overview of the course lectures:

1. A General Introduction to Black Holes
2. The Violent Deaths of Massive Stars
3. Gamma-Ray Bursts—The Birth of Black Holes
4. Searching for Stellar-Mass Black Holes
5. Monster of the Milky Way and Other Galaxies
6. Quasars—Feasting Supermassive Black Holes
7. Gravitational Waves—Ripples in Space-Time
8. The Wildest Ride in the Universe
9. Shortcuts through the Universe and Beyond?
10. Stephen Hawking and Black Hole Evaporation
11. Black Holes and the Holographic Universe
12. Black Holes and the Large Hadron Collider

Sounds like an interesting course. At $39 I just order it myself.

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1841

I already know quite a bit about black holes myself, but I'm interesting in this holographic aspect. I never heard about that before in terms of black hole properties. So I'm interested in lecture 11 mainly, although I'm sure I'll enjoy all 12 of these.

Alex Filippenko is always a joy to listen to. He's a very good lecturer and is genuinely passionate about his work. He also confesses when things are a bit "speculative" and I'm sure he'll be doing a lot of "confessing" on this video, but at the same time, these things are indeed within the realm of serious scientific consideration or he wouldn't associate with them.

The universe may be a hologram after all. Although, I haven't seen these particular lectures yet, so until I've watched them owl have to take a back seat on that one. But just the same, to even see Filippenko endorsing this idea implies to me that it's serious science. He's not one to consider anything that isn't being taken seriously by the scientific community as being at least plausible.

So anyway, I just thought I'd share this information for whatever it's worth.

Now, if only we could limit the use of 'holographic universe' to the same meaning as that which Dr. F. was using.

I don't doubt that there is truth to what he says - but I have heard many of my 'healing arts' friends go on and on about the 'holographic nature of the universe' while taking amazingly liberties with the ideas they map to the phrase.

This is what Jeanniebean has been telling us for years

There are three videos on YouTube that give a fairly decent overview of the concept. Search for "Hologrpahic Universe" parts 1,2 and 3.

Thanks Mirror. But nobody takes me serious because I believe in aliens and intelligent design.

I believe I take your claims on a case by case basis, and I often take you (and your claims) very seriously.

I do not mean to compare you to some other's I know who are really loopy with the 'holographic universe' idea, yet, at the same time, I'm not convinced that you use the phrase the same way that Dr. F. does. I could be wrong. There is a lot for me to learn and think about on this topic.

I take a lot of what you say seriously and have actually researched a lot of it for myself. And I also know that I am not the only person on here to do so.

The only book I've read on the subject was very convincing for me and I found it very interesting. The scientists and doctors referred to were highly respected. The book was "The Holographic Universe." Extremely fascinating.

Well, I just ordered the lectures tonight so I haven't seen them yet. I don't know in what manner he's using the term "holographic universe" but it seems to me that if it doesn't imply what the word means why even use the term?

I'll try to get back to this thread with some comments after I've actually watched the lectures. But that might not be for a week or so.

David Bohm was led to the conviction that the universe is structured like a hologram and his path began at the very edge of matter, in the world of subatomic particles.

Although an electron can sometimes behave as if it were a compact little particle, physicists have found that it literally possesses no dimension. If you try to measure the width of an electron, you will discover it's an impossible task. An electron is simply not an object as we know it.

And of course another discovery, as we know, is that an electron can manifest as either a particle or a wave. This chameleon-like ability is common to all subatomic particles. It is also common to all things once thought to manifest exclusively as waves.

These things are called 'quanta' and are believed to be the basic stuff from which the entire universe is made.

Quanta is the plural of quantum. One electron is a quantum. Several electrons are a group of quanta. The word quantum is also synonymous with wave particle, a term that is also used to refer to something that possesses both particles and wave aspects.

Perhaps the most astonishing of all is that there is compelling evidence that the only time quanta ever manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. For instance, when an electron isn't beng looked at, experimental finding suggest that it is always a wave. (This is only one interpretation of the evidence and is not the conclusion of all physicists, and David Bohm himself has a different interpretation.)

Einstein was not at all happy with the course of the fledgling science of quantum theory had taken; and he found that Neil Bohr's conclusion that a particle's properties don't exist until they are observed particularly objectionable because, when combined with another of quantum physic's findings, it implied that subatomic particles were interconnected in a way Einstein simply didn't believe was possible.

In 1935 Einstein and his colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen published a now famous paper called "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?"

The problem is that according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, let alone travel instantaneously, for that would be tantamount to breaking the time barrier and would open the door on all kinds of unacceptable paradoxes. Their argument is known as the "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox."

They were convinced that no "reasonable definition" of reality would permit such faster-that-light interconnections to exist and therefore Bohr had to be wrong. Bohr remained unperturbed by Einstein's argument. Rather than believing that some kind of faster-than-light communication was taking place, he offered another explanation.

If subatomic particles do not exist until they are observed, then one could no longer think of them as independent "things." Thus Einstein was basing his argument on an error when he viewed twin particles as separate. They were part of and indivisible system, and it was meaningless to think of them otherwise.

Sometimes I wonder if Albert Einstein was even a real human.

I actually worked on this problem in extreme depth. I felt, like Einstein, that there had to be a flaw in quantum theory. Of course, I had far more advantages than Einstein. The reason being that I had Bell's Theorem which Einstein never knew about because Bell's Theorem didn't come along until after Einstein died.

Bell,s theorem is a mathematical proof that shows that Neils Bohr was right and Einstein was wrong. (i.e. quantum theory is complete)


Bell's theorm shows why no 'hidden variable' can possibly explain this phenomena within faster-than-light communication.

I took this whole problem and program it into a computer. I wrote a simulation of the EPR experiment using the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics. I was very pleased to see that when the program ran it gave precisely the predicted results that physicists see in the lab and that Quantum Mechanics predicts. (in other words, I had programmed the simulation successfully )

Now the chore was to violate Bell's theorem.

The first thing that I did was divide the program into subroutines (actually I didn't need to do that since the program had already been written that way naturally). But what I mean is that I consciously recognized what the subroutines represented.

In order to violate Bell's theorem (and salvage Einstein's position) I would need to re-write the program in such a way that the subroutines are not allowed to communicate with each other in a way that would violate fast-than-light communication.

To better understand this allow me to explain with a flow chart.



The box marked "Start" is just the stuff required to initialize the program and set up any data arrays, etc. (that's more for the program than for the experiment). So that's an isolated 'subroutine'.

The box marked "Create" is where the entangled particles are created.

The box marked "Measure" is where the two seperated particles are measured. (i.e. seperated in terms of no communication faster than light)

The box mared "Results" is again just where the program displays the results of the measurments.

Now, notice that no direct feedback can be had between "Create" and "Measure". To jumpt "back-and-forth" between these two subroutines would physically be the same thing as the original particles going back to where they were created and asking how they should behave. So that would be "faster-than-light" communication.

So that kind of programming must be disallowed.

If we are going to solve the problem as Einstein suggested, we're going to need to use "Hidden Variables" which means that we can set up any original data tables that we wish. They can be as complex as we wish. We don't need to worry about anything like Occam's Razor because we don't yet have an explanation that we need to be 'simpler' than.

So any amount of complexity is permitted. We can go hog wild. Anything we can dream up is permissible no matter how complex it might be. The sky's the limit! If you can make this program violate Bell's Theorem using super sophisticated data tables you WIN!

So that's what I set out to do. It wasn't long at all before I realized that this is indeed an impossible task and that it doesn't matter how complex you make the hidden variable nothing can possibly work to change the outcome.

It was crystal clear sitting there looking at the code. As a programmer I could vividly see why such a task would be impossible.

Of course, all I did was verify that Bell's Theorem is indeed correct (which most people could see from just looking at Bell's Theorem)

But I wasn't satified until I tried to write a program to violate it. When I set out to do that, then it became obvious to me why it would indeed be impossible.

So no "hidden variable" explanation would work.

I think David Bohm himself did propose a so-called "hidden variable" scheme that would work, however, I pretty sure that he also CHEATED by requiring that there also be faster-than-light "Pilot Waves" involved. So he didn't truly solve it using hidden variable, he solved it by refusing to adhere to the restriction of not using "faster-than-light" communication.

So that's not truly a 'hidden variable' solution. It's a faster-than-light-communication solution.

Anyway, I've been down that road a long time ago. In fact it was so long ago that the program I wrote was written on a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer that was Brand NEW at the time. One of the first ones out!

I didn't even have a disk drive at that time, I had to save my programs to cassette tape!

So that was indeed a while back.

Wow, a cassette tape!! I have only seen one computer that used cassette tapes. I used to play "family feud" on it with my husband. I knew very little about computers then, but you had to fast forward and go in reverse to get to programs. Very primitive indeed.

Impressive post by the way.

That was one of my more advanced computers.

My first computer was an Altair 8800 shown in this photo:



What you see is what you got!

No monitor, no mouse, not even a keyboard!

You programmed it one byte at a time, and you had to set each bit of the byte with a toggle switch on the front panel. The little red LED lights told you whether a bit is on, or off.

You even had to set the address of each memory location in the same way! Quite primitive!

But it worked. You programmed in binary, entered your data in binary, and got your answer in binary.

And if you wanted to 'save' a program you better have written it down on paper because that was the only way to "store" it.

And yes, if you wanted to run that program again after you shut the comptuer off you better be prepared to type it all back in again bit-by-bit!

It actually went faster than you might think though. I got to where I could program 'nibbles' at a time, flicking four bits at once. Four toggle switches at once (in different directions of course).

I confess those programs were quite primitive, and it would have been a nightmare to program the EPR simulation on an Altair 8800.

In fact it only had about 1k of memory total so I might have run out of memory before I got the whole program typed in. Then I'd be screwed and just have to realize that I coudln't run the program on that computer.

The computers we have today are phenomenal and people take them all for granted.

When I started to get into computers I wanted to know a little about their background and so I ordered some books from time life and read about them. This one you posted above was in there. I couldn't imagine who on earth would even want on of those.

My Dad worked at the CF&I Steel Mill and they got a computer and it was so huge it took up a whole second story in a building and had to be lifted up there with a crane after they knocked out a wall. OMG that's hard to believe.

David Bohm and Einstein

Bohm became increasingly troubled by Bohr's interpretation of quantum theory. After three years of teaching the subject at Princeton he decided to improve his understanding by writing a textbook. When he finished he found he still wasn't comfortable with what quantum physics was saying and sent copies of the book to both Bohr and Einstein to ask for their opinions. He got no answer from Bohr, but Einstein contacted him and said they should meet and discuss the book since they were both at Princeton.

After six months of spirited conversation, Einstein enthusiastically told Bohm that he had never seen quantum theory presented so clearly. Nonetheless, he admitted he was still every bit as dissatisfied with the theory as was Bohm.

They each had admiration for the theory's ability to predict phenomena, but what bothered them was that it provided no real way of conceiving of the basic structure of the world.

Bohr and his followers also claimed that quantum theory was complete and it was not possible to arrive at any clearer understanding of what was going on in the quantum realm.

This was the same as saying there was no deeper reality beyond the subatomic landscape, no further answers to be found, and this, too, grated on both Bohm and Einstein's philosophical sensibilities.

Bohm decided that there had to be another view. When his textbook "Quantum Theory" was published in 1951 it was hailed as a classic, but it was a classic about a subject to which Bohm no longer gave his full allegiance. His mind, ever active and always looking for deeper explanations, was already searching for a better way of describing reality.

Sometimes I wonder if Jeannie and James are even human. you are like sponges sucking up tons of knowledge each day

So what did Bohm do?

After his talks with Einstein, Bohm tried to find a workable alternative to Bohr's interpretation. He began by assuming that particles such as electrons do exist in the absence of observers.

He also assumed that there was a deeper reality beneath Bohr's inviolable wall, a sub-quantum level that still awaited discovery by science.

Building on these premises, he discovered that simply by proposing the existence of a new kind of field on this sub-quantum level he was able to explain the findings of quantum physics as well as Bohr could.

(Side note: See now here is an example of how scientists assume things before they are discovered, in an effort to find solutions, which is exactly the thing that we are being criticized for.)

Anyway, Bohm called his proposed new field the quantum potential and theorized that, like gravity, it pervaded all of space. However, unlike gravitational fields, magnetic fields, and so on, its influence did not diminish with distance. Its effects were subtle, but it was equally powerful everywhere. Bohm published his alternative interpretation of quantum theory in 1952.

Reaction to his new approach was mainly negative. Some physicists were so convinced such alternatives were impossible that they dismissed his ideas out of hand.

(Side note here: See.. even among the great scientists there is a tendency to dismiss a bold new idea..)

Some others launched passionate attacks against his reasoning. In the end virtually all such argument were based primarily on philosophical differences, but it did not matter. Bohr's point of view had become so entrenched in physics that Bohm's alternative was looked upon as little more than heresy.

(Sound familiar James?)

Assumptions on the finite nature of Nature.

Despite the harshness of these attacks Bohm remained unswerving in his conviction that there was more to reality than Bohr's view allowed. He also felt that science was much too limited in its outlook when it came to assessing new ideas such as his own, and in a 1957 book entitled "Causality and Chance in Modern Physics", he examined several of the philosophical suppositions responsible for this attitude.

One was the widely held assumption that it was possible for any single theory, such as quantum theory, to be complete. Bohm criticized this assumption by pointing out that nature may be infinite. Because it would not be possible for any theory to completely explain something that is infinite, Bohm suggested that open scientific inquiry might be better served if researchers refrained from making this assumption.

(Side note: I keep telling people that INFINITY is the key to the structure of the universe.)