Can the universe's secrets be hidden on a cosmic postcard?
Image: Event Horizon Telescope, uploader cropped and converted TIF to JPG, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Holographic principle
Can the universe's secrets be hidden on a cosmic postcard?
Imagine you're trying to pack a suitcase with clothes. You want to fit as much as possible, but there's a limit to how much you can pack without it getting too heavy or bulky.
Think of the universe like a suitcase. Instead of stuffing it with clothes, the holographic principle suggests we can pack all the universe's information onto the suitcase's surface, like a hologram. The surface acts as a boundary that holds all the details of the universe inside.
Example
If you have a suitcase (the universe) and a postcard (the boundary), the postcard can show the entire layout and contents of your suitcase, even though it's just a flat piece of paper.
Remember this
The holographic principle means the universe's information can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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