The World as a Hologram
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it as an accessible starting point for laypeople trying to understand what "holographic" means in physics, usually when a news story about a holographic universe appears.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2010 to 2026.
What it is
UC Berkeley physicist Raphael Bousso gives a public lecture introducing the holographic principle, the idea that the information in a region of space is encoded on its boundary. He frames it as a possible key to a theory of quantum gravity. It is part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Summer Lecture Series.
What people said
Strong rec wormius · 2026-09 · Hacker News · on “Gravity seems holographic. What does that mean for reality?”
Yeah, there's a great talk about the physics of the holographic information encoded on the surface by Raphael Bousso (if you have an hour): [this video] HIGHLY recommend it for lay folks interested in this stuff. Which reminds me, I should yt-dl this so it's not lost, and I have a copy...
Recommends andy112 · 2013-12 · Hacker News · on “Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram”
Others can hopefully chime in with more, but when I first was learning about it, my reaction to the word "hologram" was the same as your (1). My understanding is that when they say "hologram", they're simply meaning an n dimensional object that's encoded in n-1 dimensional space. If you're not familiar with the basics of the Holographic Principle, start here: [LINK] It's been a while since I've watched these, but IIRC these are very good videos to start with: - [LINK] - [this video] EDIT: Key clippings from the wikipedia article- "But Jacob Bekenstein noted that this leads to a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. If one throws a hot gas with entropy into a black hole, once it crosses t
Cites zargon · 2010-10 · Hacker News · on “Fermilab is building a "Holometer" to test theory of holographic universe”
Such phrasing is not all that uncommon. But I agree the following few paragraphs could do a better job explaining what the word means. [this video]