Holographic Universe: Discovery Could Herald New Era In Fundamental Physics

ScienceDaily

Cardiff University researchers, who are part of a British-German team searching the depths of space to study gravitational waves, may have stumbled on one of the most important discoveries in physics, according to an American physicist.

Craig Hogan, a physicist at Fermilab Centre for Particle Astrophysics in Illinois is convinced that he has found proof in the data of the gravitational wave detector GEO600 of a holographic Universe – and that his ideas could explain mysterious noise in the detector data that has not been explained so far.

The British-German team behind the GEO600, which includes scientists from the School of Physics and Astronomy's Gravitational Physics Group, will now carry out new experiments in the coming months to yield more evidence about Craig Hogan's assumptions. If proved correct, it could help in the quest to bring together quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity.

In order to test the theory of holographic noise, the frequency of GEO600´s maximum sensitivity will be shifted towards ever higher frequencies. The frequency of maximum sensitivity is the tone that the detector can hear best. It is normally adjusted to offer the best chance for hearing exploding stars or merging black holes.

Even if it turns out that the mysterious noise is the same at high frequencies as at the lower ones, this will not constitute proof for Hogan's hypothesis. It would, however, provide a strong motivation for further study. The sensitivity of GEO600 will then be significantly improved by using 'squeezed vacuum' and by the installation of a mode filter in a new vacuum chamber. The technology of 'squeezed vacuum' was particularly refined in Hannover and would be used in a gravitational wave detector for the first time.

Professor Jim Hough of Glasgow University, one of the pioneer developers of gravitational wave detectors, says: 'Craig Hogan made a very interesting prediction. It may be the first of a number of unexpected possibilities to be investigated as gravitational wave detectors become more sensitive.'

Professor Bernard Schutz, Professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy, member of the Gravitational Physics Group at the School, and recently elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society said: 'It would be truly remarkable if GEO600 is sensitive to the quantum nature of space and time. The only way to confirm that would be to carry out controlled experiments, the results of which can be solely attributed to holographic noise. Such an experiment would herald a new era in fundamental physics'.

Professor Dr. Karsten Danzmann, director of the Hannover Albert-Einstein-Institute, said: 'We are very eager to find out what we can learn about the possible holographic noise over the course of the coming year. GEO600 is the only experiment in the world able to test this controversial theory at this time. Unlike the other large laser interferometers, GEO600 reacts particularly sensitively to lateral movement of the beam splitter because it is constructed using the principle of signal recycling. Normally this is inconvenient, but we need the signal recycling to compensate for the shorter arm lengths compared to other detectors. The holographic noise, however, produces exactly such a lateral signal and so the disadvantage becomes an advantage in this case. You could say that this has placed us in the very centre of a tornado in fundamental research!
Searching for the graininess of space

The smallest possible fraction of distance is called the 'Planck length' by physicists. Its value is 1.6 x 10-35 m – this is impossible to measure by itself. The established physical theories cease to function at this scale. GEO600 scientists are testing a theory by US physicist Craig Hogan, who is convinced he can hear the noise of space quanta in the data of the gravitational wave detector GEO600. Hogan suggests that the mirrors in an interferometer wander relative to one another in very rapid steps of the tiny Planck amount, that accumulate during the time of a measurement into something as large as a gravitational wave would produce. Hogan and the GEO600 scientists are following up the question whether a certain 'noise signal' in the data recorded by the detector can be traced back to the graininess of space and time.

GEO600

Because of its innovative and reliable technology, GEO 600 has gained an excellent worldwide reputation and is considered a think-tank for international gravitational wave observation. It was here that the most modern lasers in the world were developed which are being used in all the gravitational wave observatories in the world today. Researchers at GEO600 are taking technology a step further with 'squeezed vacuum'. This technology is designated for use in the third generation of gravitational wave detectors.

GEO600 is a joint project of scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, or AEI), Leibniz Universität Hannover, Cardiff University, the University of Glasgow and the University of Birmingham. It is funded jointly by the Max Planck Society in Germany and the Science and Technology Facilities Council in UK.

Further information:

* Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute): http://www.aei.mpg.de
* GEO600: http://www.geo600.de
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From the Bottom Up

Monbiot.com

A new mobilisation could revitalise politics in the UK - but only if you get involved.

By George Monbiot.

For the first time in my life I resent paying my taxes. Until now I have seen this annual amputation as a civic duty - like giving blood - necessary to sustain the life of a fair society. Suddenly I see it as an imposition. Its purpose has reverted to that of the middle ages: subsidising the excesses of a parasitic class. A high proportion of the taxes I pay will be used to bail out companies which, as the Guardian’s current investigation shows, have used every imaginable ruse to avoid paying any themselves.

I think that for many people this is the final blow: the insult which seals their alienation from the political process. The small Welsh town where I live, many of whose inhabitants are among the very poor, was once a haven of progressive politics, built from nonconformist religious sects and a long tradition of social solidarity. People from these valleys were transported to Van Diemen’s Land for demanding the vote.

Now almost everyone I speak to says the same thing - “what’s the point? They’re all as bad as each other” - and I can find no argument to refute it. Had their forebears been told that, 125 years after the first agricultural workers got the vote(1), the poor would be bailing out the rich and (thanks to the first-past-the-post system) the votes of only a few thousand citizens would count, I doubt they would have bothered.

We are trapped in a spiral of political alienation. Politics isn’t working for us, so we leave it to the politicians. The political vacuum is then filled with heartless, soulless, gutless technocrats: under what other circumstances could political ghosts like Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, Alistair Darling, Hazel Blears, Peter Mandelson or John Hutton remain in office? Unmolested by the public, corporate lobbyists collaborate with this empty political class to turn parliament into a conspiracy against the public. Revolted by these phantoms, seeing nowhere to turn, we withdraw altogether, granting them even richer opportunities to exploit us.

The government talks of re-igniting public enthusiasm for politics, of bringing out the vote, but balks at any measure which might make this happen. The reform of the House of Lords has again been postponed until after the next election, if at all(2). The promise, in Labour’s 1997 manifesto, of a referendum on electoral reform is long-forgotten. It now looks as if nothing will be done to stop MPs from moonlighting, as our representatives argue that they cannot possibly get by on £63,000 a year (plus lavish expenses)(3). I wonder whether they have any idea how that plays in a town like this.

Consultations are rigged. Citizens’ juries are used to lend a sheen of retrospective legitimacy to decisions already taken. The Big Conversation turned into a lecture. LabourList, mercilessly satirised by Catherine Bennett in this week’s Observer(4), seeks to create a grassroots movement where no grassroots exist.

But I doubt that the government could revitalise politics, even if it had the best intentions. If the people of this country are to be mobilised, if new life is to be breathed into politics, we have to do it ourselves. As soon as you acknowledge this, you see the problem: we have lost our base. The affiliated trade unions have turned into the government’s nodding dogs, continuing to fund the Labour Party even as it destroys everything they claim to stand for. The old social democratic and non-conformist movements have gone. All we have left are the NGOs and a series of informal direct action movements. They have proved to be good at raising public awareness, less good at building sustained, multi-faceted campaigns. We require a permanent mobilisation, and it might be just about to begin.

For several years, activists have been proposing a MoveOn campaign for the United Kingdom. MoveOn.org is an web-based coalition in the United States that has mobilised around three million people to demand progressive change. It was launched in 1998 as a petition to Congress “to censure President Clinton and move on”, rather than impeach him(5). Since then, it has been credited with revitalising the Democratic Party and changing the face of American politics. Some of the claims its promoters make are exaggerated, but no one disputes that it has inspired hundreds of thousands of alienated people to re-engage.

At the beginning of every year, MoveOn polls its members on their political priorities and then mobilises them around those demands(6). It encourages them to bombard their representatives with emails and phone calls, to raise political funds and to propose new legislation. Every year it scores small victories, on issues as diverse as Medicare reform and Facebook privacy(7). It also appears to have contributed to some very large ones: some people claim that neither the candidacy nor the presidency of Barack Obama would have been possible without it. MoveOn has made mistakes - its position on the Iraq war, for example, has been hopeless(8) - but it’s obvious that the model works.

There have been campaigns a bit like this in the United Kingdom, but they have tended to concentrate on a single outcome and to disperse or relax when it has been achieved. The Big Ask, run by Friends of the Earth, mobilised 200,000 people to demand a climate change bill - and got it(9). The Local Works coalition drove the Sustainable Communities Bill through parliament(10). The closest relative of MoveOn in the UK so far is Unlock Democracy, which, with far smaller resources than its American cousin, has already changed the way we are governed. Last month, for example, working with groups like enoughsenough.org and mySociety, it managed to stop MPs from hiding their expenses from the public(11).

Today Nick O’Donovan, a British academic working in the US, launches a movement in the United Kingdom built overtly on the MoveOn model. Dosomethingaboutit.org.uk is a rolling petition which seeks to ensure that the people who sign up don’t lose touch with each other. When there’s an important vote in parliament or when the government is threatening to shut down a useful public service or to waste our money on subsidising the rich, it will set up a petition and mobilise its members. Like MoveOn, it will also poll them over the issues they want to champion. At elections it will help people to decide which candidate in their constituency to support, in order to avoid splitting the progressive vote. Its purpose is to strike fear into the hearts of our self-serving technocrats and, it says, to make “the moral high ground electorally viable”(12).

I hope O’Donovan and his colleagues know how much they are taking on. They will be fighting party machines which have refined every dirty trick in politics; the hopelessness that arises from 12 years of broken promises; a labour movement that seems to have abandoned every political aim except driving foreigners out of the workplace; an electorate that has ceased to believe in itself. But none of this is a reason not to try.

Dosomethingaboutit is a bold and wildly ambitious scheme. Can it work? That’s up to you.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. The Representation of the People Act 1884. This extended the vote to some rural men, but only if they owned land worth £10 or paid £10 a year in rent.

2. George Parker, 14th July 2008. Straw seeks to defer Lords reform. Financial Times.

3. Sam Coates, 2nd February 2009. Peers can carry on lobbying despite payments row. The Times.

4. Catherine Bennett, 1st February 2009. Does Labour really think John Prescott is the new Obama? The Observer.

5. http://www.moveon.org/about.html

6. http://pol.moveon.org/2009/agenda/results/?rc=homepage

7. http://www.moveon.org/success_stories.html

8. Norman Solomon, 13th March 2007. The Pragmatism of Prolonged War. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3054

9. http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/success_stories/climate_law_world_first_16014.html

10. http://www.localworks.org/

11. Unlock Democracy, 21st January 2009. People power forces Government to back down on MPs’ expenses. http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/?p=1808

12. http://dosomethingaboutit.org.uk/dowhat.php"
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Global recession - where did all the money go?

Paddy Allen, guardian.co.uk
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