Our world may be a giant hologram! Yep.. want some light reading? check out this article at the new scientist.
For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.
KA-BOOM!
The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.
The “holographic principle” challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.
There is a thought exercise about how people who exist in 2 dimensions would perceive 3 dimensional objects.. like a cylinder would look like a ring, a pyramid (like those in Egypt) would look like a square etc… turns out.. we ARE (possibly) in a 2D universe.
…Hawking radiation does not convey any information about the interior of a black hole. When the black hole has gone, all the information about the star that collapsed to form the black hole has vanished, which contradicts the widely affirmed principle that information cannot be destroyed. This is known as the black hole information paradox.
Just throw in for more mind blowing good measure.
According to Hogan, the holographic principle radically changes our picture of space-time. Theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects will cause space-time to convulse wildly on the tiniest scales. At this magnification, the fabric of space-time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. This distance is known as the Planck length, a mere 10-35 metres. The Planck length is far beyond the reach of any conceivable experiment, so nobody dared dream that the graininess of space-time might be discernable.
Hooray, the return of Planck time.. which we used in a joke way back in this old post. A little quantum mechanical humor there for ya. Sigh, my brain hurts, and its more than just this hangover.
All members of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee can now turn in your badges.. that is if you’re in the land of oz… Australia that is.. See, they’ve banned A cups [inquisitr.com] from porn!
Yup, if you’re gonna do porn you’re gonna need a boob job missy. The logic is that people of A cup stature are too child like.. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *sigh*
The ban (RC) on small breasted women in adult publications has been made by the Australian Classification Board allegedly on the grounds that such images could be construed as child pornography, even where those publications comply with American law and keep certification that performers are over 18.
LULZ!
Oh, and whilst it’s not for me, female ejaculation is banned too..
Female ejaculation has been banned on the incredible grounds that “the depictions are a form of urination which is banned under the label of ‘golden showers’ in the Classification Guidelines” and/or “Female ejaculation is an ‘abhorrent’ depiction.” Notably here male ejaculation is completely legal under the same guidelines, attracting an X rating in Australia.
Oddly enough, make ejaculation is still fine and dandy (thank god!)
Not sure why everyone was going to that first one.. but the rest is pretty consistent.
Browsers:
Firefox 33 %
MSIE 42 %
Chrome 2 %
AppleWebKit 13 %
Opera 3 %
Other 7 %
Godawful.com readers are totally leading the trend away from IE.. good work.
Visitors… top 5
871 United States
112 Canada
107 United Kingdom
58 France
45 Russian Federation
Bottom 5:
4 Romania
4 Turkey
4 Finland
4 Egypt
4 Spain
I shouldn’t call them bottom 5 considering there are places with less (Lookin’ at you Latvia), but these are the bottom 5 that still show up on the counter.
30% of visitors have been here over 100 times.. nice work, the rest of you are n00bs in comparison.
And now, my favorite.. what search terms land people here.. but just the funny ones..
“bbq porno“ still near the top.. Who knew there was such a fetish?
Nerds and dweebs around the world sat with baited breath in a way they hadn’t since Xmas in the 80’s. Back then hoping upon hope that santa brought them Castle Greyskull or Snake Mountain, only now hoping Santa Jobs would bring them a tablet from on high.
Not an iPad
I too was looking forward to this (unfortunately I can’t find the picture of myself holding a cat in one hand with Castle Greyskull in the other).. my mind had wondered what piece of magic would be displayed that I would promptly leave work and go stand in line for two months. When the iPhone was announced I remember being slack jawed knowing “This changes everything!”, and after I got one I showed it yo my grandfather who said “I never dreamt I’d see anything like this in my lifetime..”
“Me either” I said.
So yes, this morning, they descended to San Francisco for what many had hoped would be life changing. But there it was.. a 10″ iPod Touch.
“Sweet! Just this morning I was thinking about how badly I needed an iPhone that didn’t fit in my pocket!” – (paraphrased from a Slashdot comment).
My predicted stiffy was only a chubby, and half-cocked at that. Sure, it’s a reasonable price for what it is… not really an impulse buy for me, but I do see potential. My prediction is that the version 2 of this will be amazing. But to make it to version 2, we’re going to need to see some amazing applications, the iBooks (seriously, enough with the “i” stuff) looks nice, I’ve longed for a way to read again without using books, and was just grossed out by the kindle. But when they demonstrated the iPad (blech) version of iWorks, I did see potential.. there was a really nice interface and intuitive and clever way to interact with data.. but it just so happened to be in a fashion I have no interest with, but I can easily see developers coming up with some really amazing apps that will make me want this.
I give myself a year before buying one.. we shall see.
I couldn’t find the correct Dakota Suite song, so I’m posting this one. I have a sinus infection, and it seems like I’ve had one for 6 weeks.. It’s driving me crazy.. though spending 24 hours driving out of 60 hours away this weekend didn’t help either.. posts on that will be forth coming.. in the meantime, join me in some high-schoolesque melancholy .
In the 80’s a 5 year old french boy had a minor hit on his hands.. I’m speaking of course of Dur Dur D’etre Bebe.
Of course back then, the idea was to celebrate youth, I know I hated getting older and until the mid 90’s when I terribly tried to grow a goatee, I was pretty pleased with my age. Now days, the kids grow up so fast, they’re driving cars at 6, having sex at 10 years old (which makes them probably more experienced than myself.. Hey-o!).
Over at the Daily What [thedw.us] I saw this video.. my God.. they grow up so fast don’t they?
I should just add this to my blogroll right now, but instead I just bookmarked it.. you know, so I don’t have to visit my own blog to go to someone else’s.. I highly recommend you bookmark it as well.