It may sound like the outlandish plot of a poorly conceived science-fiction flick.
But some scientists now claim that humanity, the Earth, and everything else in the universe are really part of a giant holographic projection.
While this might sound all too familiar to fans of The Matrix, this bold idea could solve some of physics’ most challenging questions.
From what happens if you fall into a black hole to what the universe was like right after the Big Bang, thinking of ourselves as holographic might just provide the answer.
According to Professor Marika Taylor, a theoretical physicist from the University of Birmingham, the universe is actually two-dimensional.
However, just like when you watch a 3D movie on a flat screen, the images on that 2D surface appear to have depth because of how they are projected onto it.
So, while you might see the world around you as a complex three-dimensional structure, Professor Taylor claims this is only an illusion.
That doesn’t mean our lives or the universe are any less real, but it does mean that the cosmos might be a lot stranger than we had previously thought.
When you think of the universe being a hologram, you might imagine the projected images from Star Wars or ABBA Voyage.
Although this is the right basic idea, it’s not quite the same type of hologram that physicists are thinking of.
The idea that the universe is a hologram doesn’t have anything to do with light or projectors as the name might suggest.
In scientific language, a hologram is a two-dimensional surface which appears to have a third dimension – like the holographic images on some credit cards.
Since holograms appear three-dimensional you can move around them and see different parts of the image as if there were a real object there.
However, if you reached out to touch one your hand would find only a flat surface.
Scientists like Professor Taylor argue that the whole universe is just like this – a two-dimensional surface that just looks like it has three dimensions.
PERCEPTION RESET 