The Big Bang to the end of time—ask me anything------BrianGreene @reddit_AMA [–]mcinephile : I am a little confused about the hypothesis that we may live in a holographic universe. If a 3 dimensional image is projected from 2 dimensional information how do we account for the layers that we know exist in the 3rd dimension? For example, how could 2D information form all the layers in the human body. Is it because matter is mostly empty space and therefore layers in the 3rd dimension wouldnt necessarily block the appearance of all the layers? [–]BrianGreene: Youre confused? You are not alone. We are confused too. The holographic principle--that we may be, in a very specific sense, holograms is among the strangest ideas weve been led to by recent research. The idea is this: ALL the information necessary to describe (or reconstruct fully) an ordinary 3d object like a baseball can be fully stored on a 2d surface. If you looked at that information the baseball would not appear as it ordinarily does--the information is highly encoded. But the amazing thing is that ALL the information can be stored there, even though the surface only has 2 dimensions. In that sense, all the usual coming and goings in our 3d world is equivalent to information zipping this way and that on the 2d surface--kind of how a hologram is a 2d piece of plastic that encodes a 3d image. Crazy sounding idea--but thats where some of the math has taken us. [–]mcbrite : So is that amount of storage infinite for any given area? [–]BrianGreene: Not infinite. Instead, there is a wonderful little formula that tells that the amount of information is equal to the AREA of the surface divided by 4 (when expressed in natural units). [–]raghavan: Similarly information of a 2D object can be stored on 1D line ? 1D to a point ? It would be great if you can explain how it is possible to store complete information of a 3D object on a 2D surface because I tend to think that dimensionality reduction might result in loss of data. [–]BrianGreene: No loss of data: Instead, there is LESS information in any volume than youd think. Not talking air heads here--but if you consider the MAXIMUM information possible in any 3d volume, it is proportional to the AREA of the surface bounding that volume.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 05:23:16 +0000
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