2. World’s Most Precise Clocks Could Reveal Universe Is a Hologram
January 11We like crazy-sounding ideas, and we're glad to see you do too. Our second most popular story this year is about a particle astrophysicist building two of the world's most precise clocks to test whether or not the third dimension is actually no more than a holographic projection of a 2-D surface.
Many other scientists think the $1 million experiment is bound to fail because it requires verifying the smallest pieces of space, time, mass and other properties of the universe, called Planck units. These units are so tiny, some scientists think measuring them is impossible. The Planck unit of length, for example, is 10 billion billion times smaller than the width of a proton.
We may know who's right by the end of 2011.
Image: Fermilab/Craig Hogan.
Backlink: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-stories/2010topstories_holometer.jpg
