Holographic Universe.

This is going to sound nutty, but it's the latest theory of physics to explain the disparity between Einstein's General theory of Relativity and Quantum gravity.

This theory proposes that our universe is actually a two-dimensional projection on the surface of a giant bubble that somehow presents a holographic three-dimensional projection of our universe. In other words, what we see as three dimensions is an illusion, a holographic representation of a real two-dimensional reality.

The holographic principle says that information is related to a system's boundary, not its volume. This allows gravity in a region of space to be described by a surface area that encloses the region and this region of space contains only one piece of information per square Planck length. In other words, everything in space can be explained by information stored on the surface of space. It's almost as if it's just a shadow or reflection on that surface.

For sure, the holographic projection from the surface where its stored is not the same as a holography that we are familiar with. It's much more complicated. For one thing, a hologram can only be viewed at limited angles. The holographic projection of our universe can be viewed at every angle.

The reason why this theory, which is based on a string theory concept, is being considered as a possible explanation of what we see is because the math seems to reconcile quantum gravity with Einstein's equations, which is a holy grail of physics.

This crazy idea started with the fact that Einstein's equations can't explain a black hole. His math breaks down because it results in division by zero, which is impossible. The same can be said for trying to understand the Big Bang, the cosmic event that gave birth to our universe, which physicists called a singularity. As singularity cannot be described mathematically.

The conundrum that resulted in this theory began with Stephen Hawking's idea that when stuff falls into a black hole its information is lost forever. This breaks all the rules of physics, which states that all matter is composed of particles that contain information about their characteristics. A sacred rule of physics is that information cannot be lost. One way to solve this problem is to propose that the information of stuff that falls into a black hole is stored in two dimensions on the inside of the black hole's event horizon, which means that it's never lost. It's just archived as a holographic projection.

Now, this idea about a black hole can be expanded to include our universe and also explain how our universe came to be. If we assume this holographic principle explains the universe then it could be assumed that the universe began as a one-dimensional object that began to expand in time into a two-dimensional object that exists as a holographic data source on the inside surface of an expanding bubble.

One of the problems with quantum gravity is that it suggests that space time is a physical substance at the Plank length, which is the smallest possible dimension. In other words, time and space is a quantum thing. Space and time must have physical properties that allow it to be compressed, expanded and bent in three dimensions. This is difficult to reconcile with what we see. However, if space-time is a two-dimensional projection, these problems go away because it's much easier to bend it.

If this sounds like science fiction, it is, but the very complicated math that describes this idea seems to work in explaining several observations.

One of the problems that this theory seems to solve is the idea of dark matter. Dark matter is the theoretical stuff that explains why galaxies stick together. The planets in our solar system orbit the sun at varying velocities. The closer planets like Mercury orbit much faster than a distant planet like Neptune. When we apply this to the stars that orbit around the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, we find that the stars obit at the same velocity no matter their distance from the center. Cosmologists proposed an invisible substance that they named dark matter to solve this disparity. All attempts to detect the particle associated with dark matter have failed, suggesting that it doesn't exit.

However, the effect of dark matter is seen as gravitational lensing. This effect is noted around galaxy clusters when distant galaxies behind it are seen as distortions. It's as if we're looking through the bottom of a beer glass. This phenomenon and the galactic orbital velocity problem could be easier to explain by using the holographic principle.
If one applies the idea of holographic strings to the arms of spiral galaxies, this problem goes away. The gravitational lensing problem goes away when we apply the math of the holographic principle.

Another possible effect of the holographic principle is that there would be distortions in the background microwave map of the universe, which is an archival image of the Big Bang's residual energy. There are distortions in the map's image, but they could be explained in other ways.

Another possible effect would be a blanking or blinking effect, which is a property of holographic projections. You might have seen this in science fiction movies as blinking, which would reveal that you were looking at a hologram. There is a project in place to detect this blinking at the quantum level. It turns out that quantum particles can pop in and out of existence. This is an observable effect of the uncertainty principle. It means that the quantum world behaves as if it were a holographic projection. This blinking effect is one reason why quantum computing is so complicated.

Most of us would question this crazy theory. We see things in three dimensions, but it could be that what we see is an illusion. The holographic projections of our universe on the inner surface of the cosmic bubble is much more complicated than a simple holograph that we're familiar with but it could explain many things that are observable.
One of the main principles of science is that there is no final solution to how things work. There are theories that must be proven by both math and observations. But, even when scientists think they know the answers, they always search for new ideas or theories. In other words, we really don't know what's actually going on. We just have ideas that are always being tested against the reality of observation. Nothing is sacred in science.

Thanks for reading.