A German scientist’s experiment called GEO600 for the search for gravitational waves, which has been going on for seven years, has led to unexpected results, according to New Scientist.
Using 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, in the Universe there are so-called gravitational waves – perturbations of the gravitational field, “ripples” of the fabric of space-time.
Propagating at the speed of light, gravitational waves presumably generate uneven mass movements of large astronomical objects: the formation or collision of black holes, a supernova explosion, 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, intended to detect these gravitational waves, which could later become a source of valuable information about the so-called dark matter, which our Universe basically consists of.
Until now, the GEO600 has not been able to detect gravitational waves, but, apparently, scientists using the device managed to make the largest discovery in the field of physics over the past half century.
For many months, experts could not explain the nature of the strange noises that interfere 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 assumption, the GEO600 faced the fundamental boundary of the space-time continuum — the point at which space-time ceases to be a continuous continuum described by Einstein and breaks up into “grains”, as if a photograph enlarged by a few turns into a cluster of individual points .
“The GEO600 seems to have stumbled upon microscopic quantum vibrations of space-time,” suggested Hogan.
If this information does not seem sensational enough to you, we’ll listen further: “If the GEO600 stumbles on what I suppose, it means that we live in a giant space hologram.”
The very idea that we live in a hologram may seem absurd and absurd, but it is only a logical continuation of our understanding of the nature of black holes, based on a completely provable theoretical basis.
Oddly enough, a “hologram theory” would essentially help physicists finally explain how the universe works at a fundamental level.
The holograms we are used to (like, for example, on credit cards) are applied to a two-dimensional surface, which begins to seem three-dimensional when a light beam hits it at a certain angle.
In the 1990s, Nobel Prize winner in physics Gerard 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 in 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 borders of the Universe several giant space objects collided.
Nobody knows what “life in a hologram” will mean to 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 findings of scientists are based on a fundamental study of the properties of black holes, which was 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 Einstein’s theory of relativity implies such a space-time that begins in the Big Bang and ends in black holes.
These results indicate the need to combine the study of the theory of relativity with quantum theory. One of the consequences of such a union is the assertion that black holes are not really “black”: in fact, they emit radiation, which leads to their gradual evaporation and complete disappearance.
Thus, a paradox called the “black hole information paradox” arises: the formed black hole loses mass, radiating energy. When a black hole disappears, all the information absorbed by it is lost. However, according to the laws of quantum physics, information cannot be completely lost.
Hawking’s counterargument: the intensity of the gravitational fields of black holes is still inexplicably consistent with the laws of quantum physics. Hawking’s colleague, physicist Bekenstein, put forward an important hypothesis that helps 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 a black hole and marks the point of non-return of matter or light. Theoretical physicists have proved that microscopic quantum oscillations of the conditional radius of a black hole can encode information inside a black hole, so that there is no loss of information inside a black hole when it evaporates and disappears.
Thus, it can be assumed that three-dimensional information about the starting material can be completely encoded into the two-dimensional radius of the black hole formed after its death, approximately how 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 the cosmos also has a conditional radius – a boundary plane, beyond which light has not yet managed to penetrate over the 13.7 billion years of the existence of the Universe.
Moreover, Juan Maldacena, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University, was able to prove that the same physical laws will act 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 the usual picture of space-time. Theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects can cause space-time to randomly pulsate on an insignificant scale.
With this level of pulsation, the fabric of the space-time continuum becomes “grainy” and, as if made of the smallest particles, similar to pixels, is only hundreds of billions billion times smaller than the proton. This measure of length is known as the “Planck length” and is a figure of 10-35 m.
At present, fundamental physical laws are verified 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 granular hologram, then the Universe can be represented as a sphere, the outer surface of which is covered with minute surfaces 10-35 m long, each of which carries a piece of information.
The holographic principle states that the amount of information covering the outer part of the sphere-Universe must coincide with the number of bits of information contained within the three-dimensional 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 who are looking for the smallest particles of space-time, this is good news. “In contrast to general expectations, the microscopic quantum structure is quite accessible for study,” said Hogan.
While particles whose sizes are 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 whether it was possible to experimentally determine this holographic blurring of space. time. And then the GEO600 came to the rescue.
Instruments like the GEO600, capable of detecting gravitational waves, work according to the following principle: if a gravitational wave passes through it, it will stretch the space in one direction and compress it in the other.
To measure the wave, scientists direct the laser beam through a special mirror called the “beam splitter.” It divides the laser beam into two beams that pass through the 600-meter perpendicular rods and come back.
The rays that returned back are again united into one and create an interference picture 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 rods has changed. Experimentally, it is possible to detect changes in length less than the diameter of the proton.
If the GEO600 really detected holographic noise from quantum oscillations of space-time, it will become a double-edged sword for researchers: on the one hand, noise will become an obstacle to their attempts to “catch” gravitational waves.
On the other hand, this may 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 catch the waves resulting from the interaction of the largest astronomical objects, found something as microscopic as the “grains” of space-time.
The longer scientists can not solve the mystery of holographic noise, the more acute the question arises of conducting further research in this direction. One of the possibilities for research may be the construction of the so-called atomic interferometer, the principle of operation of which is similar to GEO600, but instead of the laser beam, a low-temperature atomic flux will be used.
What will the detection of holographic noise mean for humanity? Hogan is sure that humanity is one step away from discovering the 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 gravitational theory. 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 proved, then no approach to the study of quantum gravity will henceforth be considered outside the context of holographic principles. On the contrary, this will be the impetus for the proofs of string theory and matrix theory.
“Perhaps in our hands the first evidence of how space-time follows from quantum theory,” the scientist said.
