On the Edge of Something

“The holographic principle is a property of quantum gravity and string theories which states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region—preferably a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind.

In a larger and more speculative sense, the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies. Cosmological holography has not been made mathematically precise, partly because the cosmological horizon has a finite area and grows with time.

The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which implies that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the description of all the objects which have fallen in can be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon. The holographic principle resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory.” –Wikipedia

For further reading, see “black hole information paradox” in Wikipedia, and elsewhere.

On the Edge of Something

Sometimes, when the clamour of strangeness
echoes in my mind,
and a sense of remembered wonder
dismays me,
I abandon dogma and logic
and follow the sound
Elsewhere.

Does it all, then, come to this?
A sense of dislocation,
a hazy feeling of déjà vu,
a sudden awakening to a dimly recalled dream,
in which my life is a grainy,
and slightly distorted,
picture in a Fifties black and white sitcom.

Could it be, then,
that our universe is simply coded information
written on the event horizon
of some massive black hole?
Are we bit and bytes
representing the memory
of a reality that has gone before?

Does this, perhaps, explain
why we refuse to learn
from a bloodied history?
Is this why we are unable,
consistently,
to right repeated wrongs?

It seems we may simply be the memory
of that which has been done,
and, at the moment of absolute,
of cataclysmic, cosmic destruction,
set aside, complete,
to be played again,
and yet again.