Do We Live in a Holographic Universe?

Or maybe you’re just tripping out, munching on your stash of fresh magic mushrooms and truffles.  Just a sky-high psychonaut trying out bizarro theories for size. “If our universe isn’t real,” you say. “Then who’s pulling the strings behind the curtain? Aliens? Wizards? Pssh.”

But what if it’s true? Do we live in a holographic universe? 

The Holographic Universe

Quick Physics lesson! 

The world you know has three dimensions of space (up or down, left or right, forward or back) and one of time (past or future). 

Here’s where it gets trippy. In 1997, Juan Maldacena theorised that the universe is just one big movie screen of sorts. A holographic projection in nine dimensions of space (plus one of time). The things around us are merely “vibrations” on thin, invisible strings — and thanks to gravity, the illusion is super convincing. 

So if we’re in a hologram, then where’s the real action? According to Maldacena, it would have to be somewhere with no gravity — a flat cosmos. For years, scientists argued that this theory was crazy. “Where’s the proof, Maldacena?”, they said. Well here it is! 

Black Holes and Revelations

 Black holes are “holes” in space where the gravity is so strong, it sucks everything that comes near — so not even light can escape it. And if something does enter it (like a rocket ship, for example), the object will be crushed into invisible bits. These flattened bits are then preserved as an “image” at the edge of the black hole. Like a living snapshot, or a hologram. 

What if we could stretch out that idea? Not just at the event horizon, but for the universe beyond the black hole? Maybe the 3D objects we see are really placed on a faraway 2D surface — and we’re just interacting with a moving snapshot. An illusion, if you will. 

(*Remember! Black holes have super strong gravity, which makes things seem “real”. But if we’re in a hologram, then the real universe should have zero gravity… So to prove it, the energy between the Holo-world and the Actual-world must match.) 

A Hologram for the King

In a 2014 study by Yoshifumi Hyakutake and his team, they first computed the energy of what’s inside a black hole and its event horizon. Next, he and his team solved for the energy of a lower-dimension with no gravity, using a computer. 

Guess what? The two calculations match. 

This suggests a holographic universe…as reflected on invisible, vibrating strings. And we’re not the Actual-world in this case, because we have gravity, right? Which means…

Jeezus! 

Dual Nature of Universes

The 1997 theorist Maldacena, who was not part of the team’s work, was stoked by the results: “It seems to be a correct computation.”

“The whole sequence of papers is very nice because it tests the dual [nature of universes] in regimes where there are no analytic tests.”

Leonard Susskind, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University who helped start the Holographic Principle, said: 

“They have numerically confirmed, perhaps for the first time, something we were fairly sure had to be true, but was still a [guess] — namely that the thermodynamics of certain black holes can be [copied] from a lower-dimensional universe.”

There’s still no definitive proof that our universe is merely a copy. The only way to check for sure is to jump out of Holo-World and into the Actual-World…and we haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet ?

Still Very Much Real

So there you have it! As you may have figured out by now, the Holographic Theory means that the three-dimensional universe we’re in is a projected image of a two-dimensional one… NOT that we’re living in a simulation, Matrix-style. The people you love, the snacks you enjoy — these earthly delights are still very much real. Phew! 

Think about it this way. When you trip on psilocybin from magic mushrooms and truffles, you go on a psychedelic journey into the mind. Can you glimpse your possible futures, all branching out? If so, that means you have agency: the ability to make decisions as you wish. And guess what? Simulations can’t do that! 

As the late Prof. Stephen Hawking once realised: 

“We are not down to a single, unique universe, but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse, to a much smaller range of possible universes.”