If you’ve heard of “holographic universe” theory, it may’ve left you a bit…
…speechless.
Honestly, I didn’t quite “get” this Matrix-y idea the first time around and it’s still a bit vague for my little brain. But, simplified, it’s this complicated theory about the concept that black holes might keep information they suck in (not destroy it) and how our whole reality is being projected back out at us from the edge of the universe. Like virtual reality. On a mystical level, this is something I resonate with – the whole “reality is an illusion” thing. You can’t define what you have to perceive. So, perception’s never “real” in the “still exists when you’re not looking at it” way. Like – how something’s not “red” unless your eyeballs play photon ping pong and send it to your brain. This is the perception illusion. And I’m fine with it – when science isn’t making progress that’d maybe allow them to hack it like a computer.
But that’s exactly what they’re attempting – trying to determine if all our universal blueprints are just shoved into itty bitty packets across two dimensions. In other words, the theory is that we’re all just pixels looking at pixels from far enough away that the whole image looks like HD instead of amateur porn filmed on a flip phone. If you get close enough to the screen, though, you can see those pixels close up – and those little boxes of light are meant to represent space.
Just how close would I have to get to the “screen”, though?
Um, well you know how small an atom is?
The “pixel size” of space is thought to be 10 trillion trillion times smaller than that.
Hard to conceive of a scale so small.
So hard, that I assume that’s why they called it the Planck scale – because specializing in this realm of physics is like walking the plank off your enjoy-life-while-you’re-part-of-it ship. It takes a special kind of man to spend his nine to five being perpetually on the verge of cracking the code to reality – and then going home to enjoy the simplicity of driving cross country with the family or enjoying a sunset unhindered by an anxiety filter of existential ruminations.
Says Craig Hogan, of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, “We want to find out whether space-time is a quantum system just like matter is.” Hogan, who also came up with the whole holographic noise theory added, “If we see something, it will completely change ideas about space we’ve used for thousands of years.”
So, of all the “what are the implications?” and “how do we hack reality?” questions, what everyone really wants to know about is the thing that drives us to do anything while alive – fear of the old inevitable expiration date? What happens when my info-bits kick the bucket in this holographic universe? Everyone else seems to wonder this as well – in fact I read some very interesting commentary about holographic heaven, hell, purgatory, and so on. But if perception is the only reality we get, that means I get to decide – right? So, I’d much prefer reaching holographic moksha where I’m just floating in nothingness bliss than either of those options. Still – just in case there’s no spiritual holy element to my screen-light’s demise – I’ve got a two-point back up plan:
1. Go to the “free download” section of Black Hole Google.
2. Reinstall me for free.
#AlwaysHaveAplanB