From: Jeff L Jones (jeff@spoonless.net)
Date: Thu Mar 20 2008 - 13:01:39 MDT
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 7:15 PM, Mike Dougherty <msd001@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 4:10 PM, Matt Mahoney <matmahoney@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Can someone explain how a two dimensional area is used to measure the
> amount of information that can be stored in a 3 (or more) dimensional
> universe?
It's known as the "holographic principle" by analogy to holograms,
which are 3-dimensional images that are stored on a 2-dimensional
surface. There is pretty strong theoretical evidence that this is the
way our universe is organized... in some sense, all of the information
is stored at every location... and the total amount of information
enclosed in any volume is just proportional to the surface area. Here
is the best review I've seen on the Holographic principle, although
it's pretty technical. For less technical, I guess just use Wikipedia
or search for "holographic principle" on the web:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0203101
Jeff
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