Lounge of Tomorrow - Gravity Waves

Lounge of Tomorrow (http://74.208.121.111/LoT/index.php)

- Egg Head (http://74.208.121.111/LoT/forumdisplay.php?f=13)

- - Gravity Waves (http://74.208.121.111/LoT/showthread.php?t=9083)

Ok, try and wrap your head around this one....

An experiment to detect gravity waves have been unable to do so because they keep picking up a noise they can't get rid of.

It turns out the problem might be that they have exceeded the resolution of the universe. Rather like zooming in too close to a photograph.

Wait you say, how can "The Universe" have a maximum resolution? It's not like it's an image right? Well it might just be one. A holographic image to be exact.

Quote:

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.

We've known the resolution limit of the universe for decades (Planck length, Planck mass, and Planck time), the cool thing is that we may be living in a universe that is just a blown up image like if you took a 600x400 image and expanded it to 1800x1200.

If you want a good popularization of the holographic principal I can strongly recommend Leonard Susskind's book (one of two people, along with Gerard 't Hooft, that formulated it) The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics.

But yes, it is all mind blowing.

I knew I shoulda took the blue pill

Hell, you had me at "gravity waves". This is some awesome stuff.

so how many megapixels does my camera need to take a good picture of the universe?

Quote:

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke (Post 263709)

so how many megapixels does my camera need to take a good picture of the universe?

All of them.

Mind-blowingly awesome.

Whoa. Andrew just blew my mind.

Very cool! And thanks for the book referrals, Alex.