The big idea that our Universe is a hologram

Have you ever wondered whether there’s more to reality than what we can see, perceive, detect, or otherwise observe?

• The idea of a hologram is simple and profound: we can encode a three-dimensional “light map” of any object onto a two-dimensional surface, preserving all of its information in one fewer dimension.


• Our true Universe, meanwhile, is four-dimensional, with three dimensions of space and one of time, but that’s not necessarily all there is; it’s just w

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The way a photograph works, by contrast to a hologram, is very simple. Take light that’s emitted or reflected from an object, focus it through a lens, and record it onto a flat surface. That’s not only how photography works, but also how you physically see objects biologically, as the lens in your eyeball focuses the light onto your retina, where t... See more

The big idea behind a hologram is actually ubiquitous in physics: the notion that you can examine a lower-dimensional surface and obtain not only substantial information about the higher-dimensional reality that is encoded on it, but complete information that reveals to you the full set of physical properties concerning that higher-dimensional real... See more

Now, here we are, in what appears to us to be a four-dimensional spacetime: with three spatial and one temporal dimension. But what if this isn’t representative of the full picture of reality; what if there are:

more dimensions out there,

that simply are inaccessible to us,

and that what we perceive as our four-dimensional Universe is actually the bou... See more

What is a conventional hologram?If you’ve ever seen a hologram before, you’ve truly beheld a wondrous application of the optical behavior of light. Printed onto a two-dimensional surface, a hologram — when it catches the light just right — shows you not a standard two-dimensional image like you’d typically see, but a fully three-dimensional image. ... See more