Is Our Universe a Hologram? Physicists Debate Famous Idea on Its 25th Anniversary

"Twenty-five years ago this month, a conjecture shook the world of theoretical physics. It had the aura of revelation. 'At first, we had a magical statement ... almost out of nowhere', says Mark Van Raamsdonk, a theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. The idea, put forth by Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., hinted at something profound: that our universe could be a hologram. Much like a 3-D hologram emerges from the information encoded on a 2-D surface, our universe’s 4-D spacetime could be a holographic projection of a lower-dimensional reality."

Read more at Scientific American.