A scientific experiment by German scientists called GEO600 to search for gravitational waves, which has been going on for seven years, has led to unexpected results, according to the journal New Scientist.
With the help of a special device - an interferometer - physicists were going to scientifically confirm one of the conclusions of Einstein's theory of relativity.
According to this theory, there are so-called gravitational waves in the Universe - perturbations of the gravitational field, “ripples” of the fabric of space-time.
Propagating at the speed of light, gravitational waves presumably generate uneven mass motions of large astronomical objects: the formation or collisions of black holes, supernova explosions, etc.
Science explains the unobservability of gravitational waves by the fact that gravitational effects are weaker than electromagnetic ones. Scientists, who started their experiment back in 2002, expected to detect these gravitational waves, which could later become a source of valuable information about the so-called dark matter, of which our Universe basically consists.
Until now, GEO600 has not been able to detect gravitational waves, however, apparently, scientists with the help of the device managed to make the largest discovery in the field of physics in the last half century.
For many months, experts could not explain the nature of the strange noises interfering with the operation of the interferometer, until suddenly an explanation was offered by a physicist from the Fermilab science laboratory.
According to Craig Hogan's hypothesis, the GEO600 apparatus collided with the fundamental boundary of the space-time continuum - the point at which space-time ceases to be a continuous continuum described by Einstein, and disintegrates into "grains", as if a photograph enlarged several times turns into a cluster of separate points …
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"It looks like GEO600 stumbled upon microscopic quantum fluctuations of spacetime," Hogan suggested.
If this information does not seem sensational enough to you, listen further: "If GEO600 stumbles upon what I assume, it means that we live in a giant space hologram."
The very idea that we live in a hologram may seem ridiculous and absurd, but it is just a logical continuation of our understanding of the nature of black holes, based on a completely provable theoretical basis.
Oddly enough, the "theory of the hologram" would significantly help physicists finally explain how the universe works at a fundamental level.
Holograms familiar to us (as, for example, on credit cards) are applied to a two-dimensional surface, which begins to appear three-dimensional when a ray of light hits it at a certain angle.
In the 1990s, Nobel Prize laureate in physics Gerardt Huft of Utrecht University (Netherlands) and Leonard Susskind of Stanford University (USA) suggested that a similar principle could be applied to the universe as a whole. Our daily existence itself can be a holographic projection of physical processes that occur in two-dimensional space.
It is very difficult to believe in the "holographic principle" of the structure of the Universe: it is difficult to imagine that you wake up, brush your teeth, read newspapers or watch TV just because somewhere on the edges of the Universe several giant space objects collided with each other.
No one yet knows what “life in a hologram” will mean for us, but theoretical physicists have many reasons to believe that certain aspects of the holographic principles of the functioning of the Universe are reality.
The conclusions of scientists are based on a fundamental study of the properties of black holes, which were carried out by the famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking together with Roger Penrose.
In the mid-1970s, the scientist studied the fundamental laws that govern the universe and showed that from Einstein's theory of relativity follows a space-time that begins in the Big Bang and ends in black holes.
These results point to the need to combine the study of the theory of relativity with quantum theory. One of the consequences of this combination is the assertion that black holes are actually not completely "black": in fact, they emit radiation, which leads to their gradual evaporation and complete disappearance.
Thus, a paradox arises, called the "information paradox of black holes": the formed black hole loses its mass, radiating energy. When a black hole disappears, all the information it absorbed is lost. However, according to the laws of quantum physics, information cannot be completely lost.
Hawking's counter-argument: the intensity of the gravitational fields of black holes is incomprehensible so far corresponds to the laws of quantum physics. Hawking's colleague, the physicist Bekenstein, has put forward an important hypothesis that helps to resolve this paradox.
He hypothesized that a black hole has entropy proportional to the surface area of its conditional radius. This is a kind of theoretical area that masks the black hole and marks the point of no return of matter or light. Theoretical physicists have proven that microscopic quantum fluctuations of the conditional radius of a black hole can encode information inside a black hole, so there is no loss of information that is in a black hole at the time of its evaporation and disappearance.
Thus, it can be assumed that the three-dimensional information about the original substance can be completely encoded into the two-dimensional radius of the black hole formed after its death, approximately as a three-dimensional image of an object is encoded using a two-dimensional hologram.
Zuskind and Huft went even further, applying this theory to the structure of the Universe, based on the fact that space also has a conditional radius - a boundary plane, beyond which light has not yet managed to penetrate in 13.7 billion years of the Universe's existence.
Moreover, Juan Maldacena, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University, was able to prove that the same physical laws will operate in a hypothetical five-dimensional universe as in four-dimensional space.
According to Hogan's theory, the holographic principle of the existence of the Universe radically changes our familiar picture of space-time. For a long time, theoretical physicists believed that quantum effects could cause spacetime to pulsate chaotically on a paltry scale.
At this level of pulsation, the tissue of the space-time continuum becomes "grainy" and as if made of the smallest particles, similar to pixels, only hundreds of billions of billions of times smaller than a proton. This measure of length is known as the "Planck length" and represents the figure of 10-35 m.
At present, fundamental physical laws have been tested empirically up to distances of 10-17, and the Planck length was considered unattainable, until Hogan realized that the holographic principle changes everything.
If the space-time continuum is a grainy hologram, then the Universe can be represented as a sphere, the outer surface of which is covered with the smallest surfaces 10-35 m long, each of which carries a piece of information.
The holographic principle says that the amount of information covering the outer part of the sphere-Universe must match the number of bits of information contained inside the volumetric Universe.
Since the volume of the spherical universe is much larger than its entire outer surface, the question arises, how is it possible to observe this principle? Hogan suggested that the bits of information that make up the "interior" of the universe should be larger than the Planck length. “In other words, the holographic universe is like a fuzzy picture,” says Hogan.
For those looking for the smallest particles of space-time, this is good news. “Contrary to popular expectations, microscopic quantum structure is readily available for study,” said Hogan.
While particles with dimensions equal to the Planck length cannot be detected, the holographic projection of these "grains" is approximately 10-16 m. When the scientist made all these conclusions, he wondered if it was possible to experimentally determine this holographic blur of space. time. And then GEO600 came to the rescue.
Devices like the GEO600, which are capable of detecting gravitational waves, work on the following principle: if a gravitational wave passes through it, it will stretch space in one direction and compress it in the other.
To measure the waveform, scientists direct a laser beam through a special mirror called a beam splitter. It splits the laser beam into two beams, which pass through the 600-meter perpendicular rods and return back.
Returning beams again combine into one and create an interference pattern of light and dark areas, where light waves either disappear or reinforce each other. Any change in the position of these sections indicates that the relative length of the bars has changed. Changes in length less than the diameter of a proton can be detected experimentally.
If the GEO600 did indeed detect holographic noise from quantum vibrations of space-time, it would be a double-edged sword for researchers: on the one hand, the noise would interfere with their attempts to "catch" gravitational waves.
On the other hand, this could mean that the researchers were able to make a much more fundamental discovery than originally thought. However, there is a certain irony of fate: a device designed to capture the waves that are a consequence of the interaction of the largest astronomical objects, found something as microscopic as the "grains" of space-time.
The longer scientists cannot unravel the mystery of holographic noise, the more acute the question of conducting further research in this direction becomes. One of the possibilities for research may be the design of the so-called atomic interferometer, the principle of operation of which is similar to the GEO600, but instead of a laser beam, a low-temperature stream of atoms will be used.
What will the discovery of holographic noise mean for humanity? Hogan is confident that humanity is one step away from detecting a quantum of time. “This is the smallest possible time interval: the Planck length divided by the speed of light,” says the scientist.
However, most of all the possible discovery will help researchers trying to combine quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity. The most popular in the scientific world is string theory, which, scientists believe, will help describe everything that happens in the universe at a fundamental level.
Hogan agrees that if holographic principles are proven, then no approach to the study of quantum gravity will henceforth be considered outside the context of holographic principles. On the contrary, it will be the impetus for proofs of string theory and matrix theory.
“Perhaps we have the first evidence of how space-time follows from quantum theory in our hands,” the scientist noted.