8 Theories About Reality That Make You Question Everything

1. The Universe Is A Hologram

Remember those cool holographic things that you used to get in cereal boxes? An image printed on a 2D surface that looks three-dimensional?

Well, that could well be our universe.

In classical physics, we talk about three physical dimensions or four-dimensional spacetime, but now physicists are beginning to wonder whether the third dimension is actually an illusion projected from a two-dimensional surface.

The thing is, relativistic Einsteinian physics describes spacetime as smooth and continuous, whereas quantum mechanics says that, if you look close enough, the fabric of reality is actually made up of tiny (as in a hundred billion billionths small than a proton) grains of information. These grains could essentially be the same as the dots in a hologram that create the illusion of an extra dimension.

Sounds mental, but the bizarre this is that the maths actually checks out. Physicists, including Nobel Prize winner Gerard't Hooft, combined the quantum and relativistic descriptions of spacetime, and repeatedly came out with a result that predicted it to be two-dimensional, we're essentially missing a dimension.

It has been found that when you try to figure out the maximal entropy associated with black holes, the result is equal to the radius squared not cubed, which is a two-dimensional value. This is all pretty suspicious behaviour for a supposedly three-dimensional universe.

Experiments to try and detect the tiny holographic grains are underway. But, basically, nothing is real and your life is a lie. Sweet dreams.