• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Holographic Principle and Mapping

L

Lapthorn

SOC-12
For those of you who cling to 2D maps despite the availability of cheap laptops able to run 3D star mapping software (like ChView), the following, it seems to me, might - just might - offer the bones of a pseudoscientific handwave justification rooted in real-world (if highly speculative) cosmology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

" 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..."

- whereas at the extremely high energies involved in the jump effect, the "real" 2D nature of physical coordinates is reasserted and indeed essential for plotting jump.

[lowers hand, it's quite tired now]
 
Heh, I tried giving a similar explanation (dumbed down many-many shades) from Dr. Bill Wattenburgh of KGO radio, to a one Jeremy Williams on the Star Fleet Battles BBS, who was a physic's student at MIT. He took it to his physic's instructor who said it was complete nonsense.

*shrug*

What do I know?
 
Being a cartographer, my handwave was always that the 2d Traveller map was just a type of jumpspace projection, similar to projections used today to map the globe of the Earth.
 
I don't claim to understand this hypothesis, but I can grasp that it has to do with the idea that we are, in effect, inside a giant black hole. (Remember kids: this is real world physics.)

The apparent speed of expansion of the universe increases with distance. Far enough out, it becomes greater than the speed of light. The edge of the observable universe from Earth is in effect an event horizon. With us inside.

This holographic theory of a fundamentally 2D universe seems to marry up this observation with another one that the properties of 3D matter falling into a black hole can be understood solely from the impression it makes on the hole's 2D event horizon. Which is something to do with the black hole information paradox.

So, the theorists seem to be able to argue that the 3D universe we observe can be understood solely from the structure of the 2D event horizon enclosing us. Additionally implying a certain "graininess" to the universe - there is a maximum amount of information that can be encoded onto the event horizon (related to its surface area in Planck lengths), and hence there is an upper limit to the information containable in the universe.

All a huge digression from pure old Trav, but I love this stuff, even if I have trouble wrapping my poor old brain around it...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top