SlashDot posted this article today and it furthers my conviction that we are indeed living in a simulation:

New Scientist: Our Universe Might Be a Giant Hologram

I had read before about the theory that our universe may be “holographic”, meaning that there may be less “real” dimensions than previously believed and that the method in which the universe exists on in a low dimensional space “reflects” a higher dimensional universe.

A search for gravitational waves from black holes had turned up an even stranger tidbit: that our universe is perhaps made out of evenly spaced “pixels”, and that these “pixels” exist on a lower dimensional plane which then “reflect” our higher dimensional universe.

Evenly spaced pixels? Representing many dimensions with just a few? This reminds me too much of my own experiences with game programming.

When you play your nice 3D games on your computer you may not notice that all three dimensions are represented by a one-dimensional array. Nothing but ones and zeroes in a row. The computer has the ability to take the one-dimensional data and transform it into the full-dimensional masterpieces we call computer games.

I eagerly await the disproving or proving of the holographic universe theory. This could all become the new “string theory”: a hotly contested series of theories about the universe that will get all those stuffy physicists shouting and getting into minor kerfuffles.

I now more than ever believe I want to go into Physics for my post-graduate work.

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