Holographic Universe

[Guest guest]

The Holographic Universe

Michael Talbot

 

" The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to

the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every

heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. "

 

 

" In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a

research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn

out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century.

You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you

are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have

never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe

his discovery may change the face of science.

 

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances

subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously

communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating

them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles

apart.

 

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing.

The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held

tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of

light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount

to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some

physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away

Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more

radical explanations.

 

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes

Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that

despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a

gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must

first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three-

dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.

 

To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in

the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off

the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference

pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured

on film.

 

When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of

light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is

illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the

original object appears.

 

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable

characteristic of holograms. 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.

 

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film

will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the

original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram

contains all the information possessed by the whole.

 

The " whole in every part " nature of a hologram provides us with an

entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most

of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the

best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an

atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

 

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend

themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something

constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it

is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

 

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's

discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to

remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance

separating them is not because they are sending some sort of

mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is

an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such

particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions

of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the

following illustration.

 

Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are

unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and

what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at

the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.

 

As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that

the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all,

because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images

will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two

fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain

relationship between them.

 

When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but

corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces

toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the

situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be

instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly

not the case.

 

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic

particles in Aspect's experiment.

 

According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between

subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper

level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension

beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we

view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one

another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

 

Such particles are not separate " parts " , but facets of a deeper and

more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and

indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything

in physical reality is comprised of these " eidolons " , the universe

is itself a projection, a hologram.

 

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess

other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of

subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of

reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.

 

The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to

the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every

heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky.

 

Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may

seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various

phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity

artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

 

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be

viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down

in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else,

time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the

TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this

deeper order.

 

At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the

past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests

that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday

reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out

scenes from the long-forgotten past.

 

What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question.

Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the

matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the

very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or

will be -- every configuration of matter and energy that is

possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from bluü whales to gamma

rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of " All That

Is. " ' "

 

~ Awakening 101