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Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Holographic Universe


Again, just where are we?

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.

to read more: link

to read even more: book

pic: NASA

10 comments:

賴港華 said...

Wow, I didn't know about this. Then, time travel is possible.......will look into it more.

todd said...

Time travel has always been possible theoretically, but would be a one-way trip. This might open up the way back. God (as an expression) only knows where this leads. The book on the other hand sounds like a little bit of a rip-off. I haven't read it yet but will be more than delighted to. The more exciting aspect of holographic universe is how everything is connected and how it is a smaller whole of the entirety.

賴港華 said...

You can say that people know if something can travel faster than the light, then time travel is possible (this is what you mean by possible theoretically?). But then, Einstein proved that nothing can travel faster than the light and therefore it implies time travel is impossible in practice, well again, according to relativity. However, I think recently the warmhole thing has already opened up the "hope" for time travel but it is all about theory. Now, it seems we have some empirical evidence on that. Gotta read more about the book.

todd said...

Man-made machines have not been able to do that, or won't ever. But the nature itself does wonders that we can't possibly imagine. As long as it's true that when something carries a velocity exceeding that of light, traveling to the future is a possibility. Nature can and probably already have delivered it somewhere.

But time itself needs to be defined. We still don't have an objective definition. What we call time today is framed in human perceptions. Say 60 seconds make a minute. There are no physical properties related to it, hence time might not actually exist. If it doesn't exist, time travel is doomed. Bottom line, we can still stare at the night skies and look back into millions or even billions of years in the past. And last but not least, we travel in the unidirectional time now as we speak, that how time "passes". ^_^

Anonymous said...

Pretty cool stuff ... sounds like the first step to making your dimension-bender invention!

todd said...

Hey Charlie. Nice to see you drop by. and Happy Birthday! man.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Todd! I'd tell you I'm feeling old, but I know you'd have no sympathy for me =)

todd said...

indeed I dont. ^_^

賴港華 said...

According to relativity, time is no longer an absolute objectivity. It depends on the frame of reference which in essence says that everybody has his/her own scale of time. I read somewhere that Einstein once explained what is relativity that it is like when you are with a beautiful girl.....time passes so quickly....anyway again according to relativity, time is just a dimension of space. When the big bang happened, spaces expanded out from the singularity and time came out as one of them.....

todd said...

Einstein calls it spacetime. But the heck with Einstein. In order to find something new, got to go and forget what everyone before me has said. I read it just for reference tho still. ^_^