It may sound silly to wonder if our huge, vast universe is 3D, but that's exactly what scientists are now beginning to question. According to a new study, some scientists now believe that the Universe is really just a hologram.
Holograms can be seen everywhere in real life, from credit cards to bank notes. They are two dimensional, but to us they appear 3D. The Universe could behave in much the same way.
According to the "holographic principle," a mathematical description of the universe actually requires one fewer dimensions than it seems. So what does this mean? What we perceive as 3D, could in fact just be the image of 2D processes on a huge cosmic horizon.
Until now, scientists scientists have studied the holographic principle in exotic spaces with negative curvature meaning those in which any object thrown away in a straight line will eventually return. However, for this latest study, a team at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) suggests the principle could actually be applied to flat space-time such as our Universe.
"Our Universe, in contrast, is quite flat - and on astronomic distances, it has positive curvature," Daniel Grumiller from (TU Wien) said in a statement.
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