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Cosmic Transmissions (Autumn, 2021) Cosmic Transmissions (Autumn, 2021)
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Outer Space

Cosmic Transmissions (Autumn, 2021)

Łukasz Kaniewski
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time 9 minutes
Łukasz Kaniewski:
He writes about space, which is where he lives. He has mess on his desk (and likes to rhyme all the time). He uses public transport.

The universe in a bottle

Juan Maldacena is in many ways the antithesis of Albert Einstein. He doesn’t have a mop of hair. He’s not a pop culture icon. He doesn’t stick his tongue out for photos. What’s more, his study and desk are perfectly, ascetically tidy. Actually, the only thing that connects Maldacena and Einstein is theoretical physics – and the fact that they both imagined the universe anew.

The universe in a bottle – the idea emerged in Juan Maldacena’s head in 1997, as he was sitting at his empty desk and thinking. Within that bottle, described by equations, we have the world with three dimensions of space and working gravity. But that interior is, in fact, a projection of what happens on the two-dimensional surface of the bottle: a hologram. It’s not about the world being a simulation, but rather that fundamentally, we could describe it better, and more simply, if we assumed it has two dimensions.

When Maldacena published his model, it caused quite a stir in the world of physics. One of the most eminent contemporary physicists, Leonard Susskind, called him a master, and it’s no wonder – the world as a hologram is a notion that this American scientist had popularized. According to him, a holographic reality would save us much trouble.

The trouble isn’t practical, but purely theoretical, and we got

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Łukasz Kaniewski:
He writes about space, which is where he lives. He has mess on his desk (and likes to rhyme all the time). He uses public transport.
Translation: Marta Dziurosz
Publish date: 09.09.2021

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