Universe May Be Scratched Gin Blossoms CD You Threw Out In 1997

Okay, that's not what the article says, but is it that far a stretch once you accept that our world may be a giant hologram.

New Scientist loves these sorts of articles. If you read them it often turns out that the attention grabbing title is only a metaphor used by the scientist to convey the gist of their work to lay-persons. But here we read, "work by several string theorists, most notably Juan Maldacena at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has confirmed that the idea is on the right track. He showed that the physics inside a hypothetical universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking place on the four-dimensional boundary." And everyone knows that if the physics inside a hypothetical universe with five dimensions and shaped like a Pringle is the same as the physics taking place on the four-dimensional boundary it's just a small step to hologramville.

I'm kidding, in a way. This stuff is interesting, but what would it mean for the universe to be a giant hologram? Is that more or less reassuring than the idea that the universe is a clock, or a bag of jiggling bits? Don't get be wrong, I'm all for supporting this kind of inquiry and understand that the information we may learn is more important than New Scientist can convey in a short article. But after a while this sort of thing seems like so much physics-porn for those of us who wimped out after a year of calculus.