This Just In–Barack Obama Is A Hologram (And So Is Everything Else)
For those of you just coming down from the dream-fulfillment bliss of the Inauguration, some sobering news from the world of Science: it’s possible, maybe even likely, that it didn’t actually matter who got elected President. In fact, nothing at all may matter, because our world and the universe that surrounds us may be one great big mother of a hologram.
"Smoke me a kipper...I'll be back for breakfast."
For those of us who aren’t followers of quantum physics, it’s a pretty huge concept to take in; the article linked above does a better job explaining than I could. Here’s a bit that might open your mind a little so you can shove this idea straight in:
The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.
If this is true, then the machinations of our physical universe are simply illusory, mere shadows cast on the wall by the actions of hyperdimensional entities. On one hand, it’s enough to make a person’s normal feeling of infintesimal smallness and utter, consciousness-destroying insignificance in the face of an indifferent universe seem like the minor irritation of having temporarily misplaced one’s keys. On the other hand, it renders sports statistics even more irrelevant.
