Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Please read:
The Universe as a Hologram - Holographic Reality
[b]The Holographic Universe
Michael Talbot
In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a
research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn
out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th
century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact,
unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you
probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some
who believe his discovery may change the face of science.
Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances
subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously
communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating
them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion
miles apart.
Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing.
The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held
tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of
light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount
to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused
some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain
away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even
more radical explanations.
University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes
Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that
despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm,
a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.
To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must
first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three-
dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.
To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed
in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced
off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference
pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured
on film.
When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of
light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is
illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the
original object appears.
The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable
characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half
and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to
contain the entire image of the rose.
Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film
will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the
original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram
contains all the information possessed by the whole.
The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an
entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most
of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the
best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an
atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.
A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend
themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something
constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it
is made, we will only get smaller wholes.
This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding
Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles
are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the
distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort
of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness
is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such
particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions
of the same fundamental something.
To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the
following illustration.
Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are
unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and
what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at
the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.
As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that
the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all,
because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images
will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two
fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain
relationship between them.
When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but
corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always
faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of
the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be
instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly
not the case.
This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the
subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment.
According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection
between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a
deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex
dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he
adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from
one another because we are seeing only a portion of their
reality.
Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and
more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and
indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything
in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe
is itself a projection, a hologram.
In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would
possess other rather startling features. If the apparent
separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a
deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely
interconnected.
The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to
the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims,
every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the
sky.
Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature
may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various
phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity
artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.
In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be
viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break
down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything
else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish
on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of
this deeper order.
At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the
past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests
that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday
reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out
scenes from the long-forgotten past.
What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question.
Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the
matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the
very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or
will be -- every configuration of matter and energy that is
possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from bluü whales to gamma
rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of "All That
Is." [/b]
AEN,
we all know that you flunk physics at O'levels, no one would say an
electron can directly communicate to another electron at unknown
distances. Why? It directly violates the Theory of
Relativity.(E=MCsquared) If it was such a hologram universe,
space-time would be continuely violated everyday and the universe
would break down with all its dimensions being flung apart. (thus
no one or thing would exist at this present moment, in the past or
in the future.)
