The Holographic Universe

Holograms are fascinating things. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose, but smaller. If it is cut in half again, each half (now a quarter of the original) will still contain the entire image.





That all seems interesting, but for most of us holography appears an abstract curiosity, responsible for those shiny images on our credit cards and not much else. But what if that's not the case? What if our entire universe is similar to a hologram, with every part containing information about the whole?





This article discusses, in layman's terms, how work by a research team at the University of Paris may point us toward a holographic view of the universe, and possibly change our understanding of reality.