An ongoing experiment could reveal whether or not our full and fleshed-out 3D universe is an illusion, a 2D projection onto a cosmic screen beyond our perception or understanding.
The Holometer project, which is based at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, is now operating at full power, probing the very nature of space-time itself.
Source:
http://www.space.com/26969-universe-2d-hologram-holometer-experiment.html
All the pop-sci articles I've read have a description of the set-up similar to this:
> It uses a pair of laser interferometers placed close to one another, each sending a one-kilowatt beam of light through a beam splitter and down two perpendicular arms, 40 meters each. The light is then reflected back into the beam splitter where the two beams recombine. If no motion has occurred, then the recombined beam will be the same as the original beam. But if fluctuations in brightness are observed, researchers will then analyze these fluctuations to see if the splitter is moving in a certain way, being carried along on a jitter of space itself.
I have emboldened the sections I'm having trouble with. If the universe was discretised, why would that result in the splitter moving? Bounce two balls off a wall made of discrete lego blocks and they'll return to your hands at the same time. The lego blocks in the wall, or the pixels in a digital image, are discrete, but don't move.
I could understand if they varied the distance for one of the split laser beams and found that the intensity of the recombined laser always varied at some integer multiple of a constant*Planck_length, but this is not their procedure. (Also, I assume there's a reason that wouldn't work?)
It seems topical to bring up this question. I can't recall that they ever brought up the Holometer experiment, which is trying to find out whether space-time is a quantum system just like matter.
http://news.fnal.gov/2014/08/do-we-live-in-a-2-d-hologram/
I just cannot, for the life of me, wrap my mind around these concepts. Someone please make my brain stop hurting.
I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.
Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.
Do your worst!
I'm surprised it hasn't decade.
For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.
I said "hey look, an escaPEA"
No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!
Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂
It really does, I swear!
They’re on standbi
Pilot on me!!
Nothing, he was gladiator.
Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.
This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.
If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.
Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.
