Lately there have been quite a few scientists who have convinced themselves we are living in a hologram. In other words our entire universe including our very lives are being generated by an advanced computer which is so advanced it can create sentient beings like us. I never did buy this idea, but there are a lot of people who do so I have decided to see why they feel so strongly about this. Before I get into their reasons I have to say at many different stages of human technology people had ideas about their lives which were based on their current state of technology. The ancient Greeks thought the stars were crystal spheres, because they knew what crystal was. They really had nothing else to compare the stars to. We are comparing our universe to a hologram created by a computer, because it reflects our current state of technology even though our universe could have been created by something far more advanced, which we have no knowledge of today. Comparing things which we don’t really understand to the current technology has been a pastime of humans for thousands of years, so why should it be any different today?

It is said the first scientist to put forth this theory, that is the theory we are living in a hologram, was Nick Bostrom, who is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, but he is far from the only person believing this. The number of scientists who believe in this theory has grown, but why? Before I answer that question I would also like to tell you Rich Terrile, who is the director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has said our Creator is a cosmic computer programmer. According to Terrile nothing around us is real even though we think it is. One of the things he bases his opinion on is the fact that Moore’s Law states computer power doubles about every two years. He says that within a decade computers will be able to run an entire human lifetime of 80 years in about a month. He believes since quantum mechanics shows particles do not have a definite state unless they are being observed, we are only seeing what we need to see when we look at it.

If this is true who created this scenario? Some believe we are living in an alien computer program, they compare it to an advanced Simcity, which we have for our own computers. Forbes online ran an article which stated it is much more likely we are living in a hologram than we might think. One of the things it stated was research out of Vienna suggested this was true. The article states that in 1994 Leonard Susskind was the first to publish a paper stating that the merging of the quantum and relativistic descriptions of the universe yielded a three dimensional world which could actually be an image of data that can be stored on a two dimensional projection much like a holographic image. One thing is true and that is everything we see has been interpreted by our brain. We might never see things exactly as how they are and we never see things at the exact instant they are shown to us, because it takes time for light to reach our optic nerves. Daniel Grumiller at the Vienna University of Technology has been working on this problem. He published his findings in the journal Physical Review Letters and it said the idea of a holographic universe is feasible using both the quantum and relativistic theories.

There are those who have taken this even a step further. They claim we do live in a holographic universe and the universe is alive. They also claim it was created using patterns of sacred geometry and the hologram has a beginning and it will have an end and when the holographic grid collapses all life in it will also end. One thing that amazes me is how many people are willing to adopt this theory. It has been growing in popularity over the last few years. Others believe the holograph we live in is really a game being played by alien beings. I guess if that was true we would have to call it a war game, since there have been wars going on constantly on this planet. One scientist gathered a group of other famous scientists with the idea of disproving the holographic theory. In the end after the long discussions he couldn’t do it. The scientist was Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think sometimes stories and movies have a tremendous impact on our thinking. In this case I believe our thinking has been steered towards believing the holographic theory because of the impact the movie “The Matrix” had on people. It became so popular some people began to think maybe it could be true. The others who attended the meeting with Tyson were Lisa Randall a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, Max Tegmark a cosmologist from MIT, David Chalmers a professor at New York University, Zohreh Davouidi a theoretical physicist at MIT and James Gates a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland. These scientists were certainly not light weights.

When we talk about holograms we are really talking about a two dimensional picture which our brain converts to three dimensions. This would mean our universe is really flat if the holographic theory was proven true. I think if one tries hard enough they can almost prove anything no matter how ridiculous it seems when it comes to science. I say this because there are so many different aspects to science which are not even in agreement with each other. I think it is very important to remember many of the scientific theories we believe today will be proven false sometime in the future and since we are basing our idea of a holographic universe on at least some of these premises, that’s what will prove to be the downfall of the idea.

Not all scientists believe in the idea of a holographic universe and I would think if we would count each side, the side that doesn’t believe in it far outnumbers the side that does. An experiment was conducted at Fermilab to try and settle this matter and the result was no evidence was discovered suggesting we live in a hologram. It is important to remember the idea of the holographic universe is suggested by theoretical physics. The key word here is theoretical. It has become fashionable in certain circles to push this idea, but I am sure like many outrageous ideas in the past, it has a limited lifespan.