MPJ

I was no more than four years old when our car got stuck on a snowy hill decades ago. Everyone but me went outside to push to get us out of frozen road. More people gathered from other cars to help each other and soon everyone was engaged in a small rescue operation. That certainly didn't mean I didn't help - as well as others pushing the car from the outside, I did the same from the inside. From the back seat, I put my hands on the front and pushed hard. In my defense, deep down I knew that what I was doing was kind of weird and useless. At the time I just didn't know why. I was just ashamed sitting alone and doing nothing. Well, like they say, with age comes the wisdom and now I know that what I did was physically impossible, just like in the case of baron Münchhausen - when he got out himself and his horse he was sitting on out of a swamp by pulling his own hair upwards. And just like in old expression about an absurd and impossible thing one can do - if I were to pull bootstraps on my shoes up, lift myself into the air and jump over the fence.

In science fiction, the word bootstrap is also used to portray the impossible task in all the paradoxes that are always hard to understand. Within time travel, the bootstrap paradox is a theoretical paradox that occurs when an object, information or human is sent back in time and becomes trapped in the infinite cause-effect loop in which it no longer has a detectable point of origin. For a simple example, if I somehow send a copy of this very blog post to my younger self before I write it in the first place, the origin of the text becomes utterly unknown. It exists in the time loop and I become just somebody who typed it in. Yet, the text will still have my own style of writing and my own thoughts written down and not somebody else's. Hopefully, you will not find this case implicitly weird, because weird in this blog post, is yet to come.


I was aware of existence of the Netflix's 'Dark' for a long time now, but due to it's scientific background and complexity, I knew it required continuous binging time to watch it and last weekend I finally decided the time is just right, and I swallowed all three seasons in just three days. Like no other TV show it was solely based on time travel and quantum superposition, and... in a word it was outstanding. With lots of characters to follow through both space and time, it did require full concentration, but thankfully due to fantastic direction, script and performances of all involved it was more than understandable and enjoyable, to say the least. It is impossible to continue this without spoilers, so if you are eager to watch it first, this is the point on this blog post to stop reading and I advise it strongly.

Anyhow, Dark's premise is all about bootstrap paradoxes. There are multiple plotlines in the show heavily embedded in time loops, just like my example of this blog post traveling to the past. If that was weird, imagine what this kind of paradox, involving time travel of real people and their intertwined stories, could do to your sanity only as an observer. On top of that, season one passed with very few or not at all special effects and there was no reason for that either. In Dark, all the post-time-travel effects are already embedded in the future, or the present from where they traveled back in time. For example, Helge already had all visible face scars that were consequence of the Urlich's time travel. Also, the stories about murdered woman on the bottom of the lake were already socially spread even before Katharina was murdered in her own time travel.

More than two hundred years passed after Thomas Young performed the famous double-slit experiment as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light and still it's revelation puzzles our sanity ever since. In short, if we shoot a beam of light at a panel with two small slits (less than a millimeter apart), the photons - elementary particles that light is made of, have to figure out how to get through the slits to radiate out the other side. If they are truly particles, like in macro world, they would project a solid image of two piles on the background wall behind the slits. If they travel similar to the waves, like water does in macro world, the image would resemble a wave-like interference pattern: alternating locations, equidistantly spaced, where particles leave a mark on the wall.

Thanks to the outcome of the experiment, we know that light is capable to do both. It always travel in wave like fashion, even if we shoot photons in a row towards slits, one after another. Quantum mechanics explanation is that photons are in superposition, meaning they can exist in different states and even multiple places at the same time. The weirdness comes 'only' if we try to tag particles with a pass-through detectors in order to detect which slit they are choosing to go through. At that instant they brake superposition and continue to travel as a macro-objects, just like bullets.


This is very similar to the coin flipping or well-known Schrödinger's cat from the macro world analogy. If we use quantum terminology, these two are in a simple binary superposition, they both have only two outcomes, the coin ending either head or tail or in cat's version being either dead or alive. Superposition in double-slit experiment is way more complex as for the photons being in multiple places at the same time between slits and the detection wall.

However, the weirdness is only present in the quantum level of the micro world and in the case of light in double-slit phenomenon, the puzzle is not the nature of how light travel but rather why it behave the way it does in the moment of being observed? Certainly, it creates profound questions for which we still have no definite answers. The most interesting one is did we find the puzzle here which shows us how nature really works? What is reality behind the engine in quantum world? More important is even the question is this reality objective throughout the universe or it is subjective and created for the observer only?


Let's think about reality problem for the moment first. This behavior of breaking superposition for the sake of observer is very reminiscent of graphically demanding video games in which the reality is never objective - the scenes are always rendered for the gamer sensory inputs - if you play those kind of games and decide to enter a closed room through the door, the room and everything in it doesn't exist at all until you open the door. Only then the CPU starts creating it for you and there's certain superposition of the room and your actions in it which breaks to the only one outcome, depending of what you do.

Now, double-slit is way to complex to test it this way, but binary superposition could be simple enough to create in lab in quantum equivalent and monitor what happens. This is what experiment made by Massimiliano Proietti and his team at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, tried to perform on a small-scale quantum computer made up of three pairs of entangled photons. The idea is to experimentally test Wigner's thought experiment of an observer of the quantum outcome being also observed by second observer. The resulting statements of the two observers is that their interpretations of the outcome contradict each other. The same happens in the lab, with entangled photons in the role of non-conscious observers - the inequality in the data is definitely violated which points in the direction that quantum mechanics might indeed be incompatible with the assumption of objective facts. To put it simply, multiple observers of the same event can have different outcomes as the process in superposition breaks in different patterns. Just like in video games, the reality of the nature could also be subjective and rendered for the observer eyes only.



Strange world of physics at MPJ:
https://www.mpj.one/search/label/physics

Science refs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h75DGO3GrF4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-physics-reality-doesnt.html
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080

Sooner or later computation hardware and artificial intelligence algorithms will inevitably reach the point of enough sophistication that creation of a simulation of enormous proportions, for example the size of entire universe, will be effortless. So to speak. These gods-like engineers of such future simulation will indeed face a decision point regarding which degree of limitation to create for their simulated entities or artificial intelligence units in order for them to never reach the point of finding the proof that their world is in fact nothing more than just a series of electrical or optical currents of one inconceivably powerful futuristic computer.

Rarely I've got a chance and real opportunity to revive an old article from the past and to update it to fit better in the present day. Actually, the quantum weirdness is still where it was four years ago - science is not something that changes over night especially with quantum mechanics, so I am not going to update the post with any new physics or breakthroughs. Instead, what 's new and what pushed me to repost today is one extraordinary novel in the field. The book that kept me from sleeping last weekend was "Quantum Space" by Douglas Phillips and in short it is by far, one of the best titles I read this year. It is one of those true sci-fi stories that follows the real science and in this case the weirdness of the quantum world I wrote about in this post and I would add one of those articles I enjoyed the most writing in the history of the blog. But, before couple of my glimpses to the book itself, followed by my warm recommendation and especially if you want to read it yourself, please continue reading about physics itself. This one definitely requires some knowledge to understand it fully, so let's start with some weirdness of our own macro physics first.

It's very well known that the world we live in are driven by two sets of rules or physic laws. The one for big and the one for small. We don't need to be rocket scientists in order to observe our big world surrounding us and to notice all the laws we obey to. For example if we drop a book and a feather and let them both hit the floor separately, it is obvious that book touches the floor first. However if we put feather ON the book and let them fall together, they will hit the carpet in the same time. Well, the book will still hit the carpet first, but if you try the experiment you will know what I mean. This simple experiment was itching Galileo's mind centuries ago when he discovered one of the fundamental physics law stating simply that mass of the object has no influence to the speed of free falling. But, we can ask ourselves next, why the feather traveled slower toward the floor if dropped alone? Because of the things we cannot see. The air is blocking it. To learn what is happening with the feather during the fall we have to go beyond our eyes. We need science and experiments to discover why small molecules of the air would rather play with feather than with heavy book.


Was the book/feather experiment weird to you? I am sure it was at least little weird if you are seeing it for the first time. We simply accept things for granted. What we cannot see, like the air and its little ingredients in above experiment, we tend to exclude from our perception. If this was little strange and intriguing, lets go further to the world of even smaller and compare it to the world of the big. For example, in a mind experiment, we have a 9mm gun and shoot toward the wall with two holes in it, both with diameter of 9mm or little bigger. If you are Olympic champion in shooting you will, of course, need only two bullets, one for each whole. In the world of little if we use a gun that shoots electrons toward a wall with two adequate holes in it, you would probably think that we would need two electrons to hit both holes, right? Nope, we need only one. Believe it or not, one electron goes through both holes and we even don't need to aim too perfectly. No, it doesn't split up in two and use each half to pass the holes. It goes through both holes in the same time. In fact, if we had three or more holes on the wall, one single electron would go through each one and in same time use all possible paths toward the destination. Perhaps the best illustration what happens in this experiment is presented by "Stephen Hawking's Grand Design" documentary made by Discovery Channel.

And you thought feather on the book was weird...

However, this is just another interpretation of the famous double slit experiment, and even though first theories about duality of particles/waves originated way back to Thomas Young and the year of 1799 with his scientific paper about properties of light, perhaps the best known theory was proposed by Richard Feynman during forties of 20th century. Beginning of the last century will be remembered by the birth of quantum mechanics, part of the physics trying to describe all the laws responsible for what is happening in the inner world or the world where the very fabric of our universe is located. Feynman confirmed Young's light theory that subatomic particles (how we call them today) and energy waves are more or less the same. Electrons are among them. In simple words, they are capable to travel as particles (and acts as bullets in our giant world by traveling within the straight line from point A to point B) or to avoid obstacles by transforming into waves and vice versa. However, after all these years, due to the fact that we are way too big to monitor quantum world directly, we still have no clues why and how subatomic particles choose to travel either as a wave or as a particle of material world. For example, in previous double slit experiment, if we tried to add source of photons, and "light" the holes where electrons are "passing through", trying to find out what happens on the surface of the wall and how they "choose" to be either particles or waves, we only added disturbance in the system and electrons simply stopped to transform into waves and started going through the holes like simple bullets with many of them crashing into wall in case of missing the holes. It's almost like they know that somebody is watching them and that they don't like to expose their secret of how they vanish into tin air forming waves and materializing back after the wall. That skill would be something special in every magician performance.


As you probably noticed, this post is part of the "Beth's Q&A" thread and even though quantum mechanics is not directly mentioned in Beth's and my chats, it is simply not possible anymore to stay with standard or particle model of the mainstream physics and to look to the inner world only by researching its particle type of properties. Like with me and possibly with many scientists out here (and to be fairly added, I am not the scientist, just modest observer), set of laws responsible for entire microscopic world seems to be "under construction" today more than ever. The idea for this post came to me couple of months ago, when Beth asked me exactly this: "Somewhere, sometime, someone figured out the inside of the atom. Quarks they call them. What we used to call the proton and nucleus of the atom. Why can't we still call them as before. Why did a new name come into play? Who discovered quarks, and how. Did they use the electron microscope? Did they use math? Tell me what you know of quarks. How did that come about? I am interested in the electron microscope and quarks or anything else hiding in an atom. The item that was never to be broken down as it was taught to me".


Before we dive into more weirdness of the quantum world, lets check a little current terminology regarding atoms with all its parts including quarks as the smallest items within. The word "átomos" originates from the Greek word ἄτομος and it was made by Democritus, Ancient Greek philosopher who, around the year of 450BCE, formulated first atomic theory or the nature of matter we are made off. Translated from Greek, "atom" means something basic and uncuttable to smaller pieces. Almost two millenniums passed since Democritus and finally in the year of 1911 it was discovered that atom, after all, is made of even smaller particles. Ever since then, we know that atom is now made of nucleus, with positive electric charge surrounded by the cloud of negatively charged electrons orbiting the nucleus. The smallest atom is the simplest isotope of Hydrogen-1 with nucleus of just one proton orbiting by one electron. The most heaviest atom made by nature found on Earth is Plutonium-244, the most stable isotope of Plutonium with 94 protons and 150 neutrons in its nucleus and with cloud of 94 electrons in the orbit. For 50 years protons, neutrons and electrons were the tiniest particles known to world. Then in the year of 1968, the very year when I was born, experimental physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center confirmed existence of 6 different type of quarks. Much like electrons, they have various intrinsic properties, including electric charge, color charge, mass, and spin. Two of them with the lowest mass are the most stable and they are simply called Up and Down. Scientists are not very intuitive when it comes to naming stuff - other four quarks are called Strange, Charm, Bottom, and Top. I wonder how exactly behaved one of them in accelerator's results in order to get the name 'Charm'. On the other end, I like this much more than naming scientific stuff with only Greek letters. Anyway, within the standard model of particle physics quarks are building blocks in the universe and many particles are made out of quarks. Quarks can't live in solitude, only in combination with other quarks and they are tied up with strong nuclear force which is extremely hard to break. Proton is made of two Ups and one Down quark, while neutron is combination of two Downs and one Up quark. They orbit around each other and form an entity we call particle. Bottom line now is that, as far as we know, quarks and electrons are fundamental particles and we don't have any proof that they are made out of even smaller internal structure.

However, we have pretty good idea what's inside. Strings. Now comes the part of real weirdness. Are you ready to dive into rabbit hole? It will not lead you in the Wonderland, but it is certainly one of scientific biggest adventures.


Actually, it's not easy to describe what strings are in scientifically popular terms, but I will try anyway. In standard model besides six quarks and electron there are more fundamental particles. There are two more particles with negative charge similar to electron called 'muon' and 'tauon'. Comparing to electrons they are much heavier in size (if we can speak about size when it comes to fundamental particles). Finally, there are three types of neutrinos or particles that are neutral in electric charge. So far we encountered 12 fundamental particles. But there are more. As far as we know today, there are four fundamental forces as well (gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces) and each force is produced by fundamental particles that act as carriers of the force. Photon is for example carrier for electromagnetism, the strong force is carried by eight particles known as 'gluons', weak force is using three particles, the W+, the W- , and the Z and finally gravity suppose to be taken care by the fundamental particle called 'graviton'. Standard model predicted existence of all these fundamental particles, including Higgs boson we talked about last year in post Beth's Q&A - The God Particle. Each one except for graviton. All efforts to include gravity in the theory so far failed due to difficulties to describe it on a great scale within quantum mechanics. Step by step, over the years, new theories arrived tending to fill the blank or to replace standard model entirely. There are several string theories that are 'under development' with the best candidate called 'M-theory' formulated in the last decade of the last century. In short, strings are single-dimensional objects we find within fundamental particles or to be precise, particles are nothing more than just different manifestations of the string. String can move and oscillate in different ways. If it oscillates a certain way then it's name is electron. If it oscillates some other way, we call it a photon, or a quark, or a neutrino or ... graviton. In the nutshell, if string theory is correct, the entire universe is made of strings! However, mathematical model of a string theory, such as M-theory is far more complex we can possibly imagine. Even though string theory can be seen as an extension to the standard model, it's background is far more different than with the universe described by particle model. Comparing to the space-time continuum we live in as four dimensional universe described by standard model, in M-theory there are 7 dimensions more. Those dimensions are tiny and undetectable by big objects like us living in large three spacial dimensions, but within quantum world there are objects capable to spread its existence and occupy up to 9 dimensions. Furthermore, the theory predicts that additional tiny dimensions can be curved with large number of ways and even a slightly different position or curvature of at least one dimension would lead to dramatic changes of the whole system or entire universe. For example if somehow we forced one dimension to curve little bit more, the effect could for instance be different osculations of strings which would result in slightly different properties of fundamental particles and electrons could start behaving differently and start having different electric charge. This example is highly speculative, but the point is that with different shape of dimensional system, set of physical laws in the system would be completely different.

To put it simply, if laws of the universe can be changed by, for example, God and if string theory in form of M-theory is correct, he would do that by some almighty computer capable of curving dimensions. Combination of changes in curvature of miniature 7 dimensions could be able to change for example value of pi and instead of being 3.14159265359... it could be different number. It is unknown what would that mean further but in the universe where pi is for example 5, the circle would be something entirely different and the pupils in schools learning about it would probably looking very differently than in our universe. However, there is still no direct experimental evidence that string theory itself is the correct description of nature and truly theory of everything most scientists dream of.


But if laws of the universe after creation are unchangeable (not even by the gods) and if M-theory is true, is it possible that some natural phenomenon exists out there capable of giving birth to different universes by randomly producing shape of their inner cosmos? Yep, there is one. Appropriately called "The Big Bang". The moment of creation of everything we are familiar with, including time. First couple of moments, when the process was very young, we can safely say that it all worked completely under the quantum mechanics and laws of the microcosmos and it is not far from common sense to expect that, like in double slit experiment, all particles during first moments of their existence used all possible paths in their travel toward the final destination. Within M-theory this might mean that all possible versions of universes emerged as the result and the one we exist in is just one of many. Furthermore, theory also predicts that within one universe all positive energy (planets, stars, life, matter and anti-matter in general) is balanced by the negative energy stored in the gravitational attraction that exists between all the positive-energy particles. If this is correct then total energy within one universe might be zero and therefore possible to be created out of nothing only by quantum fluctuations of the primordial singularity. Quantum fluctuations are very well known phenomenon which is experimentally confirmed in form of virtual particles that arise from vacuum (particle - antiparticle pairs) and cancels each other almost immediately (unless this happens on the event horizon of a black hole where one of the particles was immediately captured by the black hole leaving the other alive in form of Hawking radiation).

I am sure that 'M-theory' will stay just a theory for many more years to come as proving existence of strings, multi-dimensions, multi-universes, supersymmetry, etc. must be very hard with our current technology but theories improve over time as well as technology and perhaps we will have our answer relatively soon. However, the quantum world with all its weirdness is very much real and many predictions no matter how strange are already proven. For example, quantum entanglement on top of it. This is ability of two particles (or more), that usually originates from same source, to have the same properties like momentum, spin, polarization, etc. so that even after they are separated in space, when an action is performed on one particle, the other particle responds immediately. This was experimentally confirmed with two photons separated by 143 kilometers, across two Canary islands and soon should be used in experiment between ISS and Earth in a form of first wireless Quantum Communications Network and for the first time perform the connection between two points separated by more than 400km.


Finally, let's just mention one potential application of quantum superposition (ability of a particle to exists partly in all its particular theoretically possible states simultaneously). Comparing to digital computer where one bit can hold information in form of either 0 or 1, one qubit (quantum computer alternative) can hold either 0, 1 or anything in between and in same time. The idea is to use this property and build a quantum computer capable of performing millions of operations in the same time. Still being in early years of development and far before commercial use, quantum computers with up to 512-qubits developed in D-Wave, one of the leading company dedicated for future quantum computers market, are made based on chip specially manufactured for quantum computation. Maybe it is still too early to say but I have a feeling that quantum mechanics is matured enough and ready for practical applications, especially in the field of communications and IT. Along with nano-technology, this would someday in near future be one of those truly breakthrough discoveries capable of changing the world entirely.

At the very end, let me continue the story with a few short notices about the "Quantum Space", amazing science fiction by Douglas Phillips and his first novel in the series. If you read entire post and didn't have much knowledge about the science itself, I am sure by now you are better prepared to read the book and enjoy it much more. Of course, Douglas did pretty good job with his characters explaining the science as well, perhaps on a much better level than I did so there's no worries about understanding the quantum mechanics to follow the book. Much of it is still the unproven theory so it's harder to distinguish science from fiction anyways. Nevertheless, for the fiction as far-fetched as it is, and even though for the theory that is weird by its nature, I found to be, well believable is maybe not the right word, but definitely intriguing. I loved the idea of expanding the micro dimension and the way of solving the Fermi paradox within the storyline. The characters and the writing are also great so in all the effort to write spoilerless review all I can say it that I will eagerly wait next year for the sequels.

Image ref:
https://futurism.com/brane-science-complex-notions-of-superstring-theory/

Quantum Space
http://douglasphillipsbooks.com/books

*Stephen Hawking's Grand Design: Action of Electrons
http://www.discoveryuk.com/web/stephen-hawkings-grand-design-action-of-electrons

** Quarked!
http://www.quarked.org/askmarks/answer24.html

*** Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinov: The Grand Design
http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/055338466X
http://www.amazon.com/Velika-zamisao-Stiven-Hoking/dp/4095178361 (serbian edition)

Refs:
http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Average-Velocity
http://pratthomeschool.blogspot.com/2010/10/geometry-lesson.html
http://www.superstringtheory.com/
http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~alberto/physics/string.html
http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/physicists-quantum-photons-08092012/
http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/quantum-entanglement-iss
http://www.discoveryuk.com/web/stephen-hawkings-grand-design/videos/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

Stories and speculations about human origin are always fascinating. Ever since Darwin. "Origin of Species", published in the middle of 19th century, was truly one of those real breakthroughs in scientific thought. However, even though it is widely accepted by the mainstream and to date no alternative theory exists, if we disregard religion, that is - theory of evolution is not complete. In it's core, Darwin's natural selection of life is 'only' describing the evolution as a process. How life adapts to changes. Trials and errors of survival of species. The entanglement of life and environment. What happens if one species collides with another. But, the origin is something else entirely. No valued theory is anywhere on the horizon. What happened at the very beginning is still a mystery. We just ... don't know.

Hence.. The stories and speculations.

This october my reading time has been reserved for two books about human origin. Coincidentally, they arrived at the same time, Dan Brown's "Origin" and A.G.Riddle's "Genome", both extraordinary novels centered on the same premise. With Dan Brown it came in a form of "Where do we come from and where are we going?" while A.G.Riddle's phrase was "How we became what we are and what we are destined to become?". The premise was not the only similarity in the books and after I've finished with reading, I couldn't get rid of the feeling that both writers defined the scientific background together, like over the restaurant table or so. Well, this is probably highly unlikely and the simple truth is that this is how like-minded people think and work and surely coincidences do happen. I am also one of those like-minded people when it comes to this topic and I truly had genuine pleasure while reading both novels. So, let me show you how I experienced both adventures with couple of my humble thoughts on the science behind.


Ok, Robert Langdon first. To be honest, Dan Brown came with one significant disadvantage - based on his previous success, especially with "The Da Vinci Code", many people, and me among them, expected his best game. When I saw the title when he introduced the new book while ago, it was obvious that he wanted to return to Rome, so to speak. To rattle religious world once again and this time with science and Darwin. But, to be honest, when I started to read, my thoughts wandered elsewhere and I couldn't see the AI, quantum computers, gamescience, supreme technology, cutting edge simulations... But when I finally saw where he was going with the story, I probably felt like Robert Langdon - confused at first, but determined and open minded to 'see' Edmond Kirsch's final presentation.

For the conclusion of this short review, there are two thoughts I want to share, along with my indisputable recommendation. First is Winston - he was amazingly designed and for the first time in the series, Dan Brown allowed another character to steal the show from Robert Langdon. I truly hope there will be 'Origin', the movie and I'd love to see Winston 'in flash'. In a way, he reminded me of Arty, my own character within the FAR-T1 stories...


Final thought about the book was about Kirsch's answer to the premise. His powerful simulation to prove the origin and DNA appearance for the first time was amazing. It was word-perfect and just fits my understanding of the proposed science. Unfortunately, the answer to the second question is a bit blurry. Future human evolution and emerging of the new technological species that would consume us in such a short time was, well, not very convincing. Perhaps, I was expecting something more dramatic and elaborative but I guess this vision, if we exclude short timeframe, is more consistent with Jules Verne type of plausible science fiction and I verily respect that.

On the other hand, maybe even more complex and entertaining was A.G.Riddle's "Genome". Actually, this novel is the second part of the "The Extinction Files" series. To fully understand entire adventure you must start with the first book called "Pandemic" as there are many characters that intersect with each other and they are all essential all the way to the final chapter. Speaking of characters, another similarity with "Origin" was the character origin, to say in the appropriate manner. After I finished reading both books it was impossible not to notice real world resemblances and compare Brown's Edmond Kirsch with Steve Jobs and A.G.Riddle's Desmond Hughes with Elon Musk. Perhaps this was their intentions in the first place, but whatever it is, I liked it very much. These two men are definitely two of those most inspirational people in the current world and their time.


While in "Origin" the science fiction is sharing the surface with typical Robert Langdon's old-fashioned adventure wrapped into religious background, "The Extinction Files" is more focused on the Sci-Fi part. Actually A.G.Riddle is not offering the answer to the human origin and he never intended to - his first question was more how evolution actually works and his characters were focused to find the pattern in human behaviour and what actually triggered for evolution to go in one direction and not the other. Another puzzle was, for instance, why different groups of ancient people developed the same ability for art, agriculture or writing even though they were living in isolated environments. The proposed solution is that the DNA was hard-encoded to do the same evolutional paths wherever and whenever it happens and that this behaviour is not the result of trial and errors in human brains evolution.

However and what was most exciting in "Genome" is the answer to the second question - what we are destined to become? This is where Sci-Fi part went wild and extremely exciting and where I couldn't stop reading, eager to learn what would happen next. I am not going to spoil reading for anybody and I will just say that what I liked the most was that Riddle in the final chapters amazingly 'solved', or tried to, to say the least, two great mysteries in science - Fermi's paradox and everlasting question of how to cheat death. The best of all, the solution for both was connected more than I could imagine before reading the book and yet it still stayed in the realm of Jules Verne plausible fiction. The one that, if proven right in the future, has a good chance to become reality.


To conclude with final similarity for the two books and if we ask Dan Brown and A.G.Riddle what device we really need in order for their predictions of the future to come true, I am sure there's a good chance for them both to say two same words in the same time. Quantum computer.

If you ask me the same question about our future and whether or not we will be consumed with technology or merged with, I am not so sure. It's a possibility, though. What I am sure of, after all I am a software developer for decades, is that qubits will one day become a real player. This is where computing is headed and to be honest with IT of the present day, digital world is, after all, created by sampling of analog data. No matter how advanced digital computers are, digital realm is just a subset of the analog world. One day we will have a way to handle any sort of data continuously without any need to simulate it with digital samples and qubits will provide just that. One more thing I am also sure of. When that happens, possibilities will be unthinkable and new world will open wide.

Origin & Genome
http://danbrown.com/origin/
http://www.agriddle.com/genome

Image refs:
https://nextbio.co.za/cell-free-foetal-dna-nipt/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/03/ibm-q/

You probably heard that matter is pretty much an empty space. It's true. Everything is made of tiny particles with nucleus in their centers and cloud of electrons orbiting around. If we take Hydrogen (H) for example - the smallest atom with just one proton in nucleus orbiting by just one electron and if we scale the proton to be the basketball size, the orbit of the electron in diameter would be something about 15km. Both, nucleus and electrons are electromagnetically charged, keeping everything in stable equilibrium and also inside nucleus two more fundamental forces - strong and week nuclear interactions are keeping all the matter and energy in line. However, the smallest atom in the Universe is not the smallest, standalone system we know of. According to standard model, all atoms and complex molecules found in nature or artificially produced are made of fundamental particles. Something we cannot cut into smaller pieces. Electron is one of them. But there are more. So far, as far as we know, if we count all of those basic particles inside protons or neutrons and those that represents force carriers with addition to the "god" particle that makes all the mass possible, there are exactly 17 of them. But one of them deserves its own story to tell. It's nickname is "the ghost particle" and it is literally capable of passing through any mountain like it is made of cheese.


You probably guessed, this will be short story about neutrinos, the most elusive particles in the universe we can play with. They are product of radioactive beta decay in heavy nucleus where proton or neutron decays into other sub-atomic particles, i.e. if proton decays in a process knows as 'beta plus decay', it transforms into a neutron, a positron, and a neutrino. In the moment of its creation, even if it happens in the center of the Sun it escapes entire star immediately. There are many different beta decay types and I mentioned just one - others helps as classified neutrinos. Just like with other fundamental particles that comes in three flavors - with charged leptons (electron, muon, tau), the up-type quarks (up, charm, top), and the down-type quarks (down, strange, bottom), neutrinos also can be different in mass and property. The one created in previous example with creation of positron is called electron neutrino, but if anti-tau or anti-muon are created in the process, neutrinos that emerge on the other side of the decay will be tau or muon-neutrinos respectively. Neutrino, no matter which type it is, belongs to leptons as well. This means it is not affected with strong nuclear force at all and it only interacts with weak nuclear force and because of being particle with mass it also follows gravity as well. To simply illustrate its ghostly manner I will just note that its tiny mass is about 4 millionths of the electron mass (and electron mass is 1837 times less heavier than entire mass of Hydrogen). Furthermore it is not electromagnetically charged and therefore not affected with this fundamental force as well. In other words if you like to watch horror movies or believe in ghosts, the obvious conclusion is that they are made of neutrinos. That would perfectly explain how ghost travels through walls and doors just like Patrick Swayze did in the movie "Ghost" couple of decades ago.

Well, kidding aside and thankfully to these neutrino's features, they are really one ghostly particles that is extremely hard to either control or detect. However, this phantom behavior of theirs, immediately triggers some extraordinary ideas. If we could embed messages into neutrinos and control path of their beam we might literally send them through anything. If some neutrino based portable device is possible to be built, and you are located, for example in Buenos Aries, Argentina and you want to send message to Beijing, China, you would have to point your neutrino device slightly toward the center of the Earth* and neutrinos would reach the receiver with speed of light all the way through the planet. But before we glimpse into obvious possibility of whether or not is possible to use neutrinos in some sort of communications let's check some more facts about them.


Basically, neutrinos, strictly speaking belong to the radiation realm. They are indeed carriers of radioactive energy. The same as alpha and beta particles, gamma rays, muon radiations and tons of other types of particles floating around the universe as a result of different types of particle decays or some other processes in the universe. Actually, we are living in a soup of radioactive energy on daily basis from various sources as pretty much everything in the universe is decaying or decomposing toward the ultimate fate of the universe which will in the end be just one giant soup of basic ingredients, if the ever-lasting expansion of the universe is correct theory, that is. Therefore, the choice between usage of paper and plastic bags has nothing green in potential answer. Either way, both bags will eventually decompose. Just give them enough time. Humans are also radioactive - we also emit radioactive particles thanks to radioactive food we are consuming. Technically speaking, all food is radioactive because all organic food contains Carbon-14 or radiocarbon as it is nicknamed. Many other radioactive elements can be found in other products and the most notable one is Potassium-40. This one is actually radioactive isotope that undergoes all three types of beta decay. In one of them it emits neutrinos as well. So, if you like eating bananas, rest assured that you are one of neutrino producers as well as bananas are very rich in Potassium. Believe it or not, large container shipments full of bananas at ports or airports regularly trigger radiation alarms. Well, if you have not eaten entire container full of bananas, you are safe. Radiation form couple of bananas is harmless, way below the edge and potassium is actually very good for you and if you emit a neutrino here and there nobody will notice. Believe me. Well, on second thought, don't believe me. Even though neutrinos are very hard to be detected, still, after all, there is a way to do it.

Neutrinos are tiny particles but few of them on rarely occasions still collide with atom nucleus of the material they are passing through. And by few I mean the literal meaning of the word. The Sun is producing extremely large number of neutrinos - 60 billion per square centimeter are passing through Earth and .. us .. each second. That is maybe around 100 trillions of neutrinos passing average human. To detect that few, several extremely large detectors are created and one of them is shown in above image - Super-Kamiokande under mount Ikeno in Japan. It utilizes Cherenkov radiation, optical equivalent to a sonic boom, to detect collision. If neutrino collides with the electron or nuclei of water - neutrino only changes direction but particle that was struck recoils in sudden motion and faster than the speed of light in water (which is slower than maximum speed of light in vacuum). This creates a flash of light which is amplified with photo detectors (those round bulbs all over the water pool). This flashes provide information on the direction and type of the neutrino. SK is located in the old zinc mine 1km below the surface in order to exclude all other radiation to reach the water and ensure that only neutrinos are detected. To illustrate small number of neutrinos detected with this approach states the fact that total number of collisions detected from supernova SN1987A in Kamiokande was only 19 out of trillions of neutrinos emitted by the supernova. Small amount of neutrinos are regularly detected from the Sun and their number is way smaller than predicted by the number of estimated nuclear reactions in the star, which provides a proof that neutrinos are able to change their flavor during their travel and as it seems especially during their travel through solid matter. Different number of solar neutrinos are detected during night as they passes long way through the solid matter of entire planet Earth while on daylight they need to penetrate only those 1000 meters to reach the mine chamber.


Poorly detection of neutrinos due to their week interaction with matter is only the start of bad news regarding potential communication device we are trying to build. More difficulties follow. For example artificial production of desirable type of neutrinos is either with nuclear reaction or in particle accelerators which is either too large or too dangerous to build. Encoded information in beamed neutrinos can also be lost with their oscillation between flavors during travel. Creating desirable beam and path is still not perfect and last but not least there are too much noise on the way as billions and billions of other neutrinos are also there either created in stars, supernovas or those created in the very beginning during the big bang. Even so, scientists with powerful proton accelerators developed a procedure to develop stable beams of neutrinos or anti-neutrinos** which are then directed toward near and/or distant detectors. Two experiments emerged with potential scientific value - in first one neutrino beam at Fermilab was sent with short, encoded message through 240 meters of rock toward MINERvA neutrino detector and the word "neutrino" which was binary encoded within beam sequence was successfully decoded. Second and the most challenging one was performed in Japan. Within the "T2K experiment", both neutrino and anti-neutrino beams are created in J-PARC laboratory and sent toward 295km distant Super-Kamiokande. Both are successfully detected and in return opened first working neutrino beamline on large distances.

So in both, theory and practice, neutrino communication might be possible and current experiments confirm it with working proof of concept made in large neutrino observatories and accelerators. Actually, it resembles the state of computers as they were some half a century ago when they were large and limited in mathematical computation built with bulky vacuum tubes. With invention of semi-conductors and transistors everything changed and result is pretty much in front of you either on your desc, lap or palm. Perhaps similar breakthrough is waiting to be invented so we could equip our smartphones of the future with neutrino messaging when we would be finally able to send texts to Mars from our living room without enormous satellite dishes. Who knows, maybe search for extraterrestrials would gain completely new angle and perhaps many of those neutrinos that are passing through our bodies right now could be complex messages from E.T. and neutrino communication in the future might be our ticket into Milky Way alien internet. Universe's WiFi. So to speak.


Speaking about E.T. and science fiction in general, this neutrino story remanded me about two more things I love to share in conclusion for this post. First one is John Cramer, experimental and theoretical physicist and professor at Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle. Some seven or eight years ago, Cramer intended to perform an experiment with two quantum entangled laser beams pointed in different directions. He was trying to prove that by fiddling one beam that was sent into circuitous detour miles away through optical cable would be detectable on the second beam that was ended in detector much earlier in different location. Detection of this form of laser beam fiddling would be indication that quantum entanglement is a phenomenon not only between spacial distant particles but also distant in time. When asked what he expects in the outcome, John Cramer, being a science fiction author as well, said: "If this experiment we're doing works, then I will follow up and push it as hard as possible. And if it doesn't work, I will write a science-fiction novel where it does work. It's a win-win situation."

The second thing and in recent tradition of MPJ and its "books" thread, what hinted me partially for this post is great novel "Signal", written by Patrick Lee, with entire plot triggered by the neutrino based portable device, capable to catch radio waves from the future by harvesting neutrinos that move against the direction of time. The device able to hook into radio stations 10 hours ahead. Just try to imagine all the implications and applications of this kind of fictitious device. If you can't, I am encouraging you to grab Patrick's novel and read it. I literally swallowed it and during reading eagerly waited for another chapter. I really can't emphasize what is better, the thriller plot, scifi or the intense writing. I will say no more.

Image refs:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-neutrino-detectors-look-so-cool
http://irfu.cea.fr/Sphn/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/
http://www.patrickleefiction.com/
http://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/fundamental-particles/antineutrino/
http://particleadventure.org/neutrinos.html

In text refs:
* http://www.antipodesmap.com/
** http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/november-2012/how-to-make-a-neutrino-beam

Refs:
http://physics.info/standard/practice.shtml
http://chemistry.about.com/od/foodcookingchemistry/tp/Radioactive-Foods.htm
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/life-is-rad
http://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/03/2.html
https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/neutrinos/neutrino-types/
http://timeblimp.com/?page_id=1033
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2007/07/17/4350992-backward-research-goes-forward
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/cramer.html

In short it goes like this: "There's a cat in a box... That has, like, a 50/50 chance of living because there's a vial of poison that's also in the box. Regular physics would say that it's one or the other. That the cat is either alive or dead, but quantum physics says that both realities exist simultaneously. It's only when you open the box that they collapse into one single event."

This quote is me paraphrasing James Ward Byrkit, writer and director of the movie "Coherence" I've just watched. Although Erwin Schrödinger back in 1935, when he first wrote his famous thought experiment, invented pretty complex radioactive trap for the poor cat inside the box, I think that "vial of poison" and James' full description in the script is one of the best interpretation of the quantum paradox there is. The quantum weirdness is one of the most intriguing areas in science, that is still buzzing our minds for about a century now. I wrote about it a little last year in post Quantum Weirdness and when it comes to science, it was one of the posts I enjoyed writing the most in the past.


About 90 years ago, Niels Bohr, the greatest Danish physicist of all times, described the quantum mechanics perhaps with the best explanation ever since. He said something like this: "Quantum particle doesn't exist in one state or another, but in all of its possible states at once. It's only when we observe its state that a quantum particle is essentially forced to choose one probability, and that's the state that we observe. Since it may be forced into a different observable state each time, this explains why a quantum particle behaves erratically."* Well, describing the quantum behavior is a challenge ever since and because of Bohr who managed to do it first, all other explanations combined we call today "The Copenhagen Interpretation". The Schrödinger's cat is just Erwin's metaphorical attempt to put it closely into our world of big which we should understand better. But we will get back to the 'cat' later..

And relax, this is not going to be the scientific post or some nerdy brainstorming and (usually) utopistic ideas of mine. Instead it will be about movies. Yep. Just short glimpse of one of my favorite direction within Sci-Fi genre of movies. The one where, just like with reading books, you don't need any big productions, fancy and state of the art visual effects, expensive sets and VFX or famous actors to create great entertainment. This is a genre I like to call Sci-Fi for the brains. Like in the movie "Coherence", the plot is placed down to the real people, or to be precise into familiar settings. There is no space ships or vividly animated aliens or any villains for that matter. All you need is your imagination, little background knowledge and that's all.


I will show you now three movies I recommend warmly and without too much spoiling the films for all of you who still didn't have the chance to watch them. Couple of days before "Coherence" I have seen the blockbuster "Edge of Tomorrow". I liked it a lot, of course, but still, even though with great cast and effects, the story is nothing exclusive or new. It also provides expected closure and left no room for too much thinking or brainstorming over the story. On the other side, "Coherence" with it's relatively anonymous cast and script, that can easily fit within the set in some small theater or school gym, tried to exploit the very cat of mister Schrödinger's and provide one more Copenhagen interpretation, only this time with people in main roles and our own personalities instead of "vial of poison". It all started with simple dinner party and with ordinary people who eventually realized what might happen when you open the box. Is the cat alive or dead, or to be precise what is really happening when different possibilities emerge out of the box in the same time ... try to find at the end of the movie. It's not what you might expect and what we got used to in regular movies, but not every story has the happy ending. I guess in this one, the ending is like in quantum mechanics and like the cat from the century before, "Coherence" has both happy ending and ... not. You have to see it to understand. That's all I will say.

The second Sci-Fi jewel in the same sub-genre is "The Man from Earth", written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman back in 2007. The science behind this one is biology and how, in its most divergent (and also on the edge of impossible) path, it might affect the very history of mankind. Or to be precise, explained it. The story focuses on John Oldman, the man who, due to some biological anomaly, doesn't age ever since he was born in Cro-Magnon tribal society 14000 years ago. Like any other science fiction, the movie doesn't try too much to explain the reasons of his presence and instead portraying his straggle to fit, ability to learn throughout time and adapt into different parts of the world and his everlasting crave to tell somebody his story. And this film is exactly what it is about - finally, the "old man" Oldman, currently university professor who's about to leave and start another loop, decides to share everything with a group of his peer colleagues. Well, he will learn that impossible stories like his one is not possible to be accepted that easily or at all. But the audience behind the screen will get great entertainment and possible solution for some parts of our own history, and especially, religiosity and it's main figures during the eons. Including Buddha and Christ. Oh yes, and don't expect the sword fights, mad scientists or any action at all, like it was in "Highlander" and it's, almost stupid plot with cutting heads off for the "prize". The set of this movie is only one small living room. The only thing you have to do is sharpen you brain cells before clicking the "Play" button.


Finally, the last one is "Primer", extraordinary film written, directed, and produced by Shane Carruth. Shane was also playing the main character in the movie and the entire project finished with only $7,000. It's hard to say what science is behind this one. Probably the best bet is to use word "fringe" for this as the main theme and background technology is "time travel". The script is based on the one of oldest time travel paradigms. The one that doesn't include parallel universes and instead the time traveler is ending into his very own universe where the danger of "butterfly effect" can ripple the time stream and change everything. This is the most intelligent script and movie I have seen so far and before I watched I read some reviews before and remember this one: "Anybody who claims they fully understand what’s going on in ‘Primer’ after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar". Well, I am not either and to be completely honest I didn't manage to follow entire story and understand it after the first (and last) watching but more or less I got the almost whole picture from that only session.

The key point in understanding the science (fiction) behind "Primer" is to comprehend what is happening with the guy who enters the time machine and when he does in the first place why his major concern is to make sure that his parallel copy enters the box no matter what. The problem with this is well speculated in the article from Discover Magazine I read once, and in short, if time travel into past is possible, nature must have some mechanism in order to prevent inconsistent events like in this case non-entering the box by the time traveler after the loop is initiated. Confused? Maybe to better understand this paradox, take a look at this image***:


The hazard is obvious, if the "original" in its own blue timeline didn't enter the box at 6PM, the green parallel timeline would not exist in the first place. In other words, if "double" meets "original" and stops him from entering the box, the paradox is obvious and we can only imagine what happens if that "butterfly" occurs. That's why "the science fiction behind time travel" in recent years actively rejects this approach and involves another universe being destination for time travelers instead of the origin universe, which would explain consistency of traveling into past. Of course, we might ask what would happen if ALL "originals" from ALL universes decide to time travel? Whatever universe they arrive, the copy of them will be needed to enter the box in destination universe and we have the same problem again, let's call it "Multiverse Butterfly Effect"... Anyway, if you didn't see "Primer" or want to watch it again, try to comprehend this image first. It will help a lot.

These three movies, even though from the same genre and sub-genre, differ in used background science and I can't truly compare them with each other. So I can't favorite one of them but these are the movies I like to give thoughts again and again... They are not really made for just entertainment and for me, more memorable then regular Sci-Fis.

Images and article refs:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schroedingers_cat_film.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat
* http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/.../quantum-suicide4.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
http://coherencethemovie.com/
** http://www.amazon.com/Wanted-Schrodingers-Magnet
http://manfromearth.com/
http://www.primermovie.com/
***http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
http://www.myvisionmyway.com/the-man-from-earth-minimalist-poster.html

Most of famous movies and novels that are dealing with remarkable and bold scientific ideas in existence, like plotting the script behind the most intriguing property in the latest string theory called "Holographic principle", lack one main attraction I am always looking in science fiction. The plausibility of the story. To get to the wider audience, science behind is somehow always pushed below the main layer and the result is either too philosophical, ridiculous or unnecessary too complex (like planting humans for energy in 'Matrix' by AIs) or simple love story, like in case of "The Thirteenth Floor" or other simple and proven Good-vs-Bad chases in virtual realities, like those portrayed in Caprica.


But, if I had to choose one of those Hollywood fictions, maybe you would be surprised if I preferred "The Thirteenth Floor" over all the others I had chance to watch or read. For one simple reason. Like with holographic principle in string theories, producers identified one very true prediction in such realities and embedded in the film and it's poster ad as well - the boundary that represents the very end of the world. In the movie both virtual characters learns about their worlds not being the real deal by discovering their own artificial horizons where all the roads inevitably and ultimately end. Almost like in the middle ages when the Earth was considered to be flat and there was a point where it eventually ended or in the myth with Earth carried by four elephants standing on a turtle floating a never-ending ocean. Like many times before, science fiction behind this might not be too far from the truth at all and if you think that centuries after the flat Earth myth, we finally learned that Earth is spherical and doesn't have an end along with our endless and ever expanding Universe, well, think again. With new findings and several published papers within ongoing string theory research, especially within holographic principle research of black holes event horizon, new and exiting (or disturbing, looking to it from our own perspective) plausible reality might be considered the accurate one. And yes, with new theory, our own universe now has an end in form of one tiny two-dimensional bubble where we all might actually be located in our true form and the universe, as we perceive it, is just a figment of our imagination or to be precise, a hologram made out from some other reality residing in the outer bubble we simply know as Cosmological horizon.

Plausible?

Like with the end of the road in the movie, theoretical physicists hit the wall sometimes when they try to describe some astronomical processes. Exactly this was the case when Steven Hawking discovered black hole radiation. Hawking radiation is made out of a pair of virtual particles emerged form vacuum where positive particle manages to escape the event horizon while the negative one gets absorbed by the black hole and in result causing black hole to lose energy and eventually evaporates. In other words, radiation from black hole seems that doesn't originate from the inside of black hole at all. If this is true, then all the information of the matter swallowed by the black hole is lost forever and that in fact contradicts with quantum mechanics, which dictates that nothing, including information, can ever be lost. At the time, this problem, called black hole information paradox, divided leading scientists to the point of simple bet where nobody was absolutely sure what was going on in the mysterious holes. There was even a book, published six years ago, conveniently named “The Black Hole War” by Leonard Susskind committed to this paradox in physics.


Of course, paradoxes are only there to indicate that something is wrong, either with fundamentals or with the theories. In this case its either something wrong with quantum mechanics and its math and information can be lost in black holes or this is impossible and some new (or one of existing ones) theory is still waiting to be proven and accepted by mainstream science. You can find many of proposed solutions in below links, from the one where information still, by some unknown process, find the way to leak along with radiation of virtual particles through the one, that I preferred in the past, where black hole in the other end forms a baby universe with all the information transferred to the newly created cosmos to the most hypothetical one in which something happens at the very last moments of black hole evaporation, similar to the supernovae explosion with all the information finally burst out or ... in the more exotic realm ... and what is the newest approach and recently backed with new evidence, that all the information actually got copied in the tiny two-dimensional film of the event horizon and maybe never entered the black hole in the first place by some black hole quantum mechanism. If we use life metaphor, the content of black hole holds only corpses, while information, like a soul left the body in the moment of death, or in this case when it irretrievably fell into singularity. Actually this approach is now widely accepted within string theorists and it is appropriately named "Holographic principle" which all new string theories now include.

Scientific explanation for this principle is: "the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region". String theory proposed by Juan Martín Maldacena, Gerard ’t Hooft and Leonard Susskind with holographic principle included suggests that not only with black holes, but everywhere in the universe, all the information needed to describe a closed system or volume of space with any physical process inside, can be fully encoded within the two-dimensional surface surrounding it. If this is correct, then we can go further and conclude that all the physical processes in the monitoring system are actually happening in the surface instead of its three-dimensional representation and our familiar space-time continuum might be just a (holographic) projection of the two-dimensional entities and events. On the larger scale, this theory allows that entire universe can be understood as the reality of two-dimensional information structure encoded within the cosmological horizon, while the three spacial dimensions we live in is only its representation at macroscopic scales and at low energies described by cosmological holography.


In other words, it might mean that there is a two-dimensional me (and you) at the end of the universe, more than 13 billion light years away, encoded somewhere in the cosmological horizon, that is full description of myself and controlling all my actions (and reactions) over here. Strangely enough, recently more evidence are suggested in scientific research of Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan and his team. What they did was to perform mathematical calculation of the internal energy of a black hole based on the predictions of string theory. By using proposed holographic principle, they compared the results with calculated internal energy of the corresponding lower-dimensional cosmos with no gravity and found amazing fact that they match completely. They of course, used a model of an hypothetical universe, which is not representation of our own, but still, this is the most valuable "proof" in favor of holographic theory. And not just that, if these calculations are right this practically means that one complex universe with gravity included (that still fails to be understood fully) can be explained and compared by the flat universe with no gravity force whatsoever.

Holographic universe is of course highly hypothetical and hard to comprehend but the main principle is solid, calculations are there, math exists and it brings both, solution to information paradox in the black hole physics as well as a way to simplify our future modeling of astronomical systems. With a possibility to exclude gravity out of the equation, holographic principle is already nicknamed with "21st century Rosetta stone" in the world of mathematics, and if proven accurate, we could be a bit closer to the final understanding of how really nature works. But, like any other new breakthrough discovery it could open many more questions on the way and the obvious one is if the main reality is in the information surface, how does it work? How life fits in? Is it also located on the surface and projected like everything else or perhaps living creatures are something else that works independently?

Images and Article refs:
* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
** https://community.emc.com/people/ble/blog/2011/11/06/holographic-principle
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2013/12/do-black-holes-destroy-information/

Refs:
http://www.nature.com/news/simulations-back-up-theory-that-universe-is-a-hologram-1.14328
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
http://rt.com/news/space-evidence-universe-hologram-195/
http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/03-our-universe-may-be-a-giant-hologram
http://astroengine.com/2009/01/20/is-the-universe-a-holographic-projection/
http://www.universetoday.com/107172/why-our-universe-is-not-a-hologram/
http://physics.about.com/od/astronomy/f/hawkrad.htm
http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/relativity