Terry sez: > Our World Might be a Giant Hologram > > http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html > > DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to > miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in > the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary > buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to > each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, > however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres. > > For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for > gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense > astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has > not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might > inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for > half a century. > > 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. > > If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been > appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has > an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect > it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram." > > <more>
Warning. You only have 60 seconds left to insert another quarter before disconnection. Make sure your mantra is current. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
