It’s now 2021 and most of us believe that the Earth is an ellipsoid and it orbits the Sun; a belief for which Galileo Galilei was sentenced to house arrest in 1633, for the remainder of his life. Yet, Nicolaus Copernicus’ astronomical model, referred to as ‘Copernican heliocentrism’, may now have a contender – the ‘holographic principle’.
Gerard ‘t Hooft first proposed the holographic principle in 1993 and Leonard Susskind was the first to develop a string theory interpretation of the principle to black holes. Moreover, many theoretical physicists now believe the holographic principle to be a property of quantum gravity that explains the inconsistencies associated with black holes, within string theory. Susskind claims that whatever finds its way into a black hole does not disappear, rather it becomes encoded, similarly to the way information is stored in computer technology. Such physicists claim that information is converted and contained within the surface fluctuations of the event horizon (the margin of a black hole), which is of a lower dimension. With this belief, it is inferred that the laws of physics have more credibility when considered in two and not three dimensions, regardless of our perception of a 3D universe.
So then, is our long accepted understanding of reality a spurious claim? Are we to ditch one major theory over another, just like that? Well, maybe not, because theories can exist in tandem, often because they are made to fit.
Now we must pose the question, are we in a simulation?
We all have our own thoughts and perceptions, our own beliefs, and there are so many theories that are proposed and promulgated, new ones replacing older ones, for so many unresolved phenomena and paradoxes. Sometimes new insights may manifest accidentally, but regardless of how good a theory appears, it does unfortunately remain a theory until something concrete and irrefutable comes along to turn that theory into fact.
Yet, are we now edging closer to the truth of what reality really is?
If the information of our universe is perfectly encoded onto a 2D field and projected from the event horizon of a black hole, then this modern and revolutionary idea should be supported by rather complex mathematics and equations.
Michio Kaku and Juan Maldacena are among the well-known contemporary theoretical physicists researching string theory and quantum physics by developing models of the universe with which to test their calculations. Are they close to that ‘eureka moment’? If so, will they provide us with some indisputable evidence of a hologram world?
Lastly, if we do truly live in a simulated reality, it suggests that something as trivial as opting for pistachio flavoured ice-cream over chocolate is something that has been encoded in the programme that is playing around us; meanwhile we sleep, and life is but a dream… So, how complex is the code that is generated from the black hole’s event horizon, and where exactly is this extraordinary black hole? Is it random, or is it intelligently designed? The lack of evidence may be a glitch; perhaps after a reboot a ‘bit’ of tangible proof may just manifest. However, whether our world is simulated or not, we still perceive, live and breathe in a 3D reality, and Galileo’s bold remark about the rotating Earth still applies;
‘eppur si muove’
