The Holometer

[steppa]

I think some people might find this interesting.

Taken from wiki:

The Fermilab Holometer in Illinois is under construction and is intended to be the world's most sensitive laser interferometer when complete, surpassing the sensitivity of the GEO600 and LIGO systems, and theoretically able to detect holographic fluctuations in spacetime.
...
According to the director of the project, the Holometer should be capable of detecting fluctuations in the light of a single attometer, meeting or exceeding the sensitivity required to detect the smallest units in the universe called Planck units.[1][4] Fermilab states: "Everyone is familiar these days with the blurry and pixelated images, or noisy sound transmission, associated with poor internet bandwidth. The Holometer seeks to detect the equivalent blurriness or noise in reality itself, associated with the ultimate frequency limit imposed by nature."
...
Experimental physicist Hartmut Grote of the Max Planck Institute in Germany states that although he is skeptical that the apparatus will successfully detect the holographic fluctuations, if the experiment is successful "it would be a very strong impact to one of the most open questions in fundamental physics. It would be the first proof that space-time, the fabric of the universe, is quantized.

 

[hixidom]

Very cool. I hope he confirms that space is quantized, which I think would imply that there is a limit to the complexity of reality. Maybe the next step would be to confirm that time is quantized.

 

[SpartanII]

Holograms observing holograms.

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

-Edgar Allan Poe

 

[steppa]

I find this really interesting. But...

I don't really see the point. It seems paradox to me...

If there would be something like a smallest mesurable unit...how would the device be able to mesure things smaller than the smallest mesurable unit?

 

[○]

Fermilab has had this project in the works forever; many years. Nice to see it's coming up in the forseeable future.

From my understanding of it, the holometer is a HIGHLY sensitive measuring device for a very precise type of laser light - measuring the quantum coherence of location, the laser light passing through multiples of mirrors which will essentially be able to tell if space itself stands still or jitters in small fluctuations - a property of space time they're dubbing 'holographic noise'.


Here's a link that goes more into depth:

http://astro.fnal.gov/projects/OtherInitiatives/holometer_project.html

 

[○]

If there would be something like a smallest mesurable unit...how would the device be able to mesure things smaller than the smallest mesurable unit?

From my understanding they're not measuring anything 'smaller than the smallest measurable unit'. They're splitting a light beam into two separate beams in opposite directions then eventually bringing them back together. The two beams theoretically drift apart to an extremely small degree (plank length/plank time). When the two beams are recombined they are measuring the difference. If both beams are traveling the same distance/time/etc and recombined at exactly the same place/time/etc, they should display a correlated fuzziness/jitter that apparently is deemed to be a holographic trait/quality of space/time.

With this they're essentially looking to measure plank time directly, and the natural cap on information transmission. That's how I take it at least from reading it.

 

[hixidom]

I imagine the experiment differently, though I doubt I know more about it than Tattvamasi.

In a normal Michelson interferometer, you interfere two beams that have been slightly shifted from one another by a translating mirror. The result is a sine wave oscillation in the interfered signal as you move the mirror in one direction and the beams go from constructively interfering to destructively interfering over and over again.

If space is quantized, however, then the mirror cannot be moved continuously through space. Rather, it will move in small jumps, and instead of seeing a smooth interference oscillation, you will see an oscillation consisting of small jumps corresponding to the discreet locations that the mirror is allowed to exist in.

Something I read made me think that this is the point of the experiment, but it is not clear to me why 2 interferometers are needed. Then again, my understanding is based on my envisioning quantized space as a lattice, and makes no reference to the whole holographic concept which is a bit over my head.

 

[○]

I imagine the experiment differently, though I doubt I know more about it than Tattvamasi.

In a normal Michelson interferometer, you interfere two beams that have been slightly shifted from one another by a translating mirror. The result is a sine wave oscillation in the interfered signal as you move the mirror in one direction and the beams go from constructively interfering to destructively interfering over and over again.

If space is quantized, however, then the mirror cannot be moved continuously through space. Rather, it will move in small jumps, and instead of seeing a smooth interference oscillation, you will see an oscillation consisting of small jumps corresponding to the discreet locations that the mirror is allowed to exist in.

Something I read made me think that this is the point of the experiment, but it is not clear to me why 2 interferometers are needed. Then again, my understanding is based on my envisioning quantized space as a lattice, and makes no reference to the whole holographic concept which is a bit over my head.

Yeah, it's pretty 'over my head' as well, hehe. I don't entirely understand the intricacies, but it's a very interesting experiment.

8)