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The strange connection between information and matter: How to use information to understand the operation of the universe?
In modern physics, the nature of information and its relationship with matter have aroused the thinking of many scientists. According to the holographic principle, the workings of the universe can be understood through information, a view that changes our fundamental understanding of physical entities. The holographic principle was first proposed by Gerard Hoft and developed and expressed by Liam Susskind. Its core idea is that the description of three-dimensional space can actually be regarded as embedded in a two-dimensional boundary. Information on.
"The three-dimensional world we experience—filled with galaxies, planets, houses, rocks, and people—is actually a hologram, a reality encoded on a distant two-dimensional surface."
The basis for this theory comes from the Bekenstein limit, which posits that the maximum entropy of any region is proportional to its area, not its volume. This shows that the information content of both black holes and ordinary matter can be fully recorded at their boundaries, allowing us to rethink how matter is composed.
Black Hole Information Paradox
Hawking's calculations showed that the radiation emitted by a black hole seemed independent of the matter it absorbed, which raised a deep paradox. According to quantum mechanics, when the wave function of a quantum state changes, there should be a corresponding flow of information. However, if a black hole could absorb pure states but re-emit radiation in only mixed states, this would mean that information is lost, violating a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. This paradox forces scientists to explore the deeper connection between cosmic structure and information.
"The entropy of a black hole is proportional to the area of its event horizon, rather than the usual way it should increase with volume."
The equivalence of information and matter
Traditionally, entropy has been considered a measure of "disorder" in a physical system. However, using the concept of Shannon entropy, the amount of information can also be viewed as a measure of the existence of matter, giving rise to a new view that there may be a profound intrinsic connection between the properties of matter and the content of information.
In his article, Bekenstein pointed out that thermodynamic entropy and Shannon entropy are conceptually equivalent, which provides us with a whole new perspective on understanding the boundary between matter and information. He asked:
This question prompts people to reflect on whether information is the key to understanding the existence of matter."Can we see the whole world in a grain of sand, as William Blake described, or is this just a poetic statement?"
AdS/CFT correspondence and the practice of the holographic principle
The AdS/CFT correspondence is an important illustration of the holographic principle, providing a connection between anti-de Sitter space and conformal field theory. This correspondence not only provides a means to consolidate quantum gravity theories, but also allows us to study strongly coupled field theories in a quantum field theoretical manner. According to this correspondence, when strong interactions appear in quantum field theory, the fields in gravitational theory are weak interactions.
This enables many nuclear physics and condensed matter physics problems to be transformed into more mathematically tractable problems, significantly advancing our understanding of the quantum world.
Experimental test of the holographic principle
Although the theoretical basis of the holographic principle is widely accepted, experimental verification still faces challenges. Small particle experiments might provide new insights into the holographic principle, and Bekenstein had proposed testing it in tabletop experiments. However, there is still a lack of widely accepted experimental data to support these theories.
For example, Kirk Hogan of Fermi National Laboratory has proposed that, according to the holographic principle, quantum fluctuations in spatial position should lead to measurable "holographic noise" observed in gravitational wave detectors. However, these claims have not yet been widely recognized by the scientific community.
As scientists further study quantum gravity and holographic principles, they expect even more groundbreaking discoveries that will give us a deeper understanding of how the universe works.
And beneath this complicated theory, is there a deeper truth that we have not yet understood?
