The Universe Might Be A Massive Hologram

The universe is a vast and complex hologram, according to an international team of scientists that recently made the statement. The idea of a holographic universe, however, was first suggested in the 1990s by Leonard Susskind.

"Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions (and your perception of time) in fact emanates from a flat two-dimensional field," said Kostas Skenderis, study co-author at the University of Southampton in U.K. "The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card. However, this time, the entire universe is encoded."

The study describes the concept of a holographic universe as being similar to watching a 3-D movie in a cinema, where through the illusion of the pictures having depth, width and height actually originate from a flat two-dimensional screen. The difference, however, is that in our 3D universe, objects can be touched and the projection is actual from our perspective.

The evidence of a holographic universe came after analyzing the Big Bang's afterglow with new and powerful telescopes according to the study authors. The telescopes helped in detecting a huge amount of data hidden in the microwaves or white noise residue from the moment the universe was created.

According to The Guardian, in the 1990s, physicist Leonard Susskind had shown that many of the laws of physics could be explained mathematically with the help of two dimensions instead of three. The approach was something that cosmologists liked because it seemed beneficial for solving one of the biggest mysteries in physics -- how gravity works on extremely small scales, in addition to finding that all cosmological observations in the early universe could be explained by the simplest quantum field theories. The research team of scientists now hope that its study will open the door to knowing more about the early universe and understanding how space and time originated.